Soft Circles

"Pretty Wings" by Maxwell

...your pretty wings / pretty wings / pretty wings...

I spent a week out of town. I needed a break from this monolithic flavored life I live here in the City of the Rich. My mother didn't seem any type of happy about it but it seems as though she doesn't have anymore guilt tactics to employ in order to make me do what she wants me to.

So I left. It was an interesting little vacation. It reminded me about how bad I want to move away from the Commonwealth State. I forget how restricted and anti-cultured this state can be sometimes. It could also just be that I have spent my formative years here, had my fill, and need to move on. Actually, it's both.

My best friend Gwendo had a graduation cookout yesterday. I returned on Friday to spend the night at her mom's house to cook and prepare. Gwen and her mom Novita picked me up from the train station (I love the train). I haven't told my mother that I am in town. That is probably really bad but I just don't want to see her or talk to her right now. She hurt my feelings so bad. Ever since that argument, I have been itching to get away.

The cookout went well. The food was delectable, although it is hard for food to be gross to me. Gwenny's family and friends are so wonderful. Everyone is a colorful character.

I thought I would be sad at the cookout. Being around families can be hard sometimes. I miss my family often. Of late, I see them often but I don't feel apart of the family anymore. They love me and they are all so excited to see me when we do hang out, but I don't feel like a part of them anymore. Ever since all the mess of my life unfolded, I have felt thoroughly alienated from the people I love the most and need the most. To sleep in my mother's house is comparable to staying in a nice jail. An emotional jail. She hasn't any pictures of me up in her house, as if to inform me that is not my home. If home is where the heart is...girl, I don't even know about my heart. That sh*t is broke, blackened, weak, and wandering all about my body.

Anyway, this is my formal proclamation of love for family. I love my family, my good old Sierra Leonean family. I love our selfless culture. And I love my American family. I love our selfless culture and our emotional availability. I think that I am learning that family is not just the people to whom you are related. People who show and know true, good love are eligible to be family too.

Thank you God for more family than I have time to thank you for.

Enough Vitamins, Eat This

I have low self-esteem and very little self-respect, but I do think that I am beautiful. I think I know my qualities and my flaws and I think I know them pretty well. Therapy made me consider myself in a manner that people typically cannot.

It is hard, if not impossible, to be objective about your behaviors, habits, flaws, or anything about yourself. I, however, have had to subject myself to some radioactive scrutiny that allowed me to expand the protective image we all create for ourselves. We are not as good as we imagine. This could be evidenced by the shocking/hurtful/mean/bad things we do under different stress, although we woul like to imagine that we would do right by other people. We don't.

And my conclusion was I don't like myself. I understand that some of my personality is genetic. I am what I am. And I understand some of the person that I am as having been formed by environment and experience.

I still don't like myself. But I can NEVER, NEVER EVER resist a glance in the mirror. I do love my face and nobody can tell me it isn't beautiful. Dig?

Color Me Bad as Hell

"Stronger" by Kanye West

...i know i got to be right now / cuz i can't get much wronger...

I'm following a young lady's blog. She's Black, she's a woman, and she's a lesbian, my three favorite minority statuses.

But she is remarkably brilliant, open-minded, and eloquent. I of course do not know this young lady, but her blog reveals her to be the aforementioned adjectives.

I just read an entry about her depression and her embarking on therapy. She is kind of upset about being in therapy, which I think is an interesting thing about people in therapy. I remember that I knew I needed (and currently need) to be in it but there is something shameful, disheartening, and annoying about being in therapy.

Especially when you are smart and understand psychology, you feel as though you should be able to treat yourself, handle yourself. It can be demoralizing. I am aware of the life circumstances and history that make me who I am, I am aware of who I am in a way that I don't think most people are, and I know what I need to do and the thinking that I need to change/implement.

However, I am unable to make the connection between what is wrong and how to rectify it. Emotions, especially those of childhood that have been allowed to develop just as one has physically, and those of resentment and anger, do not give a damn about intellect. I try to give myself therapy, but I don't listen.

That is the magic of therapy. There is a professionally trained person objective enough to make you aware of the reality you choose to deny by remaining "sick", burdened, guilted or whatever emotion you punish yourself with.

Anyway, after I read her entry, I realized that I say nothing about my depression, although if one reads these blogs in their entirety, it is painfully obvious. But I don't think I have ever said "I have depression". I just tell my blog how pointless I think life is.

Well I have depression. And I don't want to be ashamed of it. A lot of unfortunate things happened to me and I made a lot of bad decisions for my life. But I am/was just living my life like everyone else was doing. These (take a look at my current life) are the results. There are no directions to living. Each person does what they want, what they know. I ended up with depression (although I am genetically predisposed to depression because there are a gang of people who seem to suffer from depression in this African family).

I even cried today over the frustration I feel about my life, although the thunderstorm outside made me quite vulnerable to my own dormant sadness (not even that dormant).

I say all that to say this: I am not ashamed. I couldn't really help it but I can help myself out of it. I have been telling my depressed friends and family (a bunch of us are heading to therapy, need therapy, or in therapy in my circle right now) that they deserve to be happy. I may even believe that I deserve to be happy.

I will go back to therapy soon and I will unabashedly describe my thoughts and progress.