My Rediscovery of Me

while craving love, I
hold myself tight from loving
longing beats hurting

I was born at home, in my sister’s bed, on a day she almost died.

At 2, I arrived in America.

Sometime, through my mother, I learned to create. I also hula-hooped, with basketball breaks.

At 9, a boy took a metal baseball bat to my head after I beat his brother in a game of kickball. I may’ve been wearing a dress.

I was 10 the first time I remember someone trying to convert me to Christianity. I never made it to her church.

I haven’t seen my mother since I was 11. The night before she left I started bleeding.

At 13, I lost faith in purity.

At 15, fearing my own sexuality, I called my sister a dyke.

At 16, I killed a snake and didn’t feel remorse.

Somewhere I misplaced the language of my birth.

At 17, I kissed a girl.

At some point, but not for that reason, I wanted to die.

At 18, 19, 20, 21, I was told I was “really nice for a black girl,” “really smart for a black girl,” “too smart for a black girl.”

In the middle of that, I got married.

At 23, I adopted a 13-year-old cat named Iris. I renamed her Sara. Sara preferred Iris. She died two years later.

Before 24, I was no longer married.

Somewhere, I relearned to say “yalla, y’all.”

Before 25, a chronic disease exposed itself.

Along the way, I kissed some boys, too.

By 26, I couldn’t define home, or myself. I know that I am more than my parts. I am more than my past or my future but I must know them. I must know my privilege, be aware of it, beware of its showing itself or its expectations.

To this day, I’m trying to perfect a hummus recipe.

(This was scribbled on the subway today. If you desire elaboration, please ask.)

Maybe it’s time for a somewhat real update, too.

I was home for four days. Things that happened or didn’t:

• I barely saw my father. Maybe 10 minutes total.
• I led a workshop for high school journalism students.
• I dropped and broke my iPad 1 — and then bought an iPad 2 that my brother found on Craigslist.
• I went to an Alpha probate. Now both of my baby brothers are in the same frat.
• My brother gave me a drawing he made off a picture I took. It’s becoming a yearly thing. I love it. Another brother gave me some Moleskin notepads.
• I fell (back) in love with a man I shouldn’t be loving right now. I adore my heart very much but do not understand it.
• I didn’t see the couple of friends I’d planned to see.
• I had lunch with my high school newspaper adviser. I love her more than anything.
• I helped a friend get through a breakup.
• I repeated “I never knew there were so many shades of green.”

Work has been all right. I’m still exhausted. I found out I’m doing a short stint in another department — the multimedia team — starting April 16. I’ll be there three days a week, working days, and then work a swing shift on Thursday and a night shift on Friday. And I just picked up an OT shift for 4/28. But still work is good. I’m doing fun stuff and I’m learning, and I’m surrounded by good people.

There’s a new building going up right next door my apartment, right outside my bedroom wall, the bedroom wall my bed is right up against. The work starts at 8 a.m. Monday through Friday. For the past few weeks. This hasn’t helped the exhaustion.

“Broke, but don’t fix it / Smoked, but not brisket” — I was on the train and wrote that. It makes me giggle.

I saw “Bully” tonight, right after work. It made me think of the girl who led most of my bullying/teasing growing up. She now posts about God and Jesus a lot on Facebook. Sometimes, she tells me she misses me.

After searching the web for months, I found and bought an armchair that I really like. I look at it now (it’s been here maybe two weeks) and the cats have already torn away at it.

I’m going to watch the Internet now.

In the hurt of hearts, 
the heat strikes hate,
spoils the fruits of wrath
and in that deep beauty lies

forgiveness is born here
see it rise in me

see me grow to become
see me become to believe, find me believing
in fifth chances and no regretting

do with this love what you wish 

I started that recently. Eh.

Today (Sunday) was an odd day. I sought silence and clarity and alonedom, but I couldn’t get that. I couldn’t reach that.There was so much to think about and pray about and worry about.

No, scratch that. I wasn’t worrying about anything except how I couldn’t stop thinking. I don’t know if that counts.

I did laundry, though.

And I half-assed cleaned my room.

I was thinking about how I haven’t written substantially, here or otherwise, in a long time. Like maybe seven months. I’ve got no understandable reason for it. I just have been feeling, a lot. Too much maybe. Too many things, for sure. I mean, I can’t isolate all the feelings. But sometimes they’re debilitating.

Well, often they are. I’ve been sleeping really late lately. Like, until 3 p.m., sometimes 5. But I’m also up really late, often because of working late and then thinking or doing things to distract from the thinking.

What am I thinking about?

Ha.

So much and so little.

I wondered briefly: “Is this depression again?”

But no.

Because, damn it, I’m happy. Probably the happiest I’ve been in my life. Like pray to god daily for all the beauty and the blessings and also the heartache. Like twirl for no reason when I walk and giggle to myself often (and often for no reason). Like fall in love dozens of times a day, with sunshine or a stranger’s smile or my tripping over cracks in myself. I am happy.

But feeling other kinds of ways, too.

So I’m just working through it — or sleeping through it, I guess.

I’ve neglected much, and I feel the strain that’s causing, but the motivation to do more than think and feel (and work) has been lacking significantly. Seriously. But because I haven’t been able to express it, the strains grow more strain-y. Apologies to the universe.

Today while I was doing laundry, I found a red feather boa piece.

While I was cleaning my bedroom, I found a bigger red feather boa piece.

All I can do is continue, right?

I think my inspiration board could use an update.

–

Other updates:

- I’ve been making chai at home. The spices are sometimes off, but my quality of life has improved a bit.

- I made a rug. It didn’t turn out how I wanted (I think I sewed it too tight and it started to curl up) so it looks a little weird. But I don’t think I want to fix it now, because of this:

That’s pretty much where I find him every night. On the rug I made, right in front of/below the kitchen sink. (I took this photo about 10 minutes ago and he is in pretty much the same position now, but his face is resting on one of his paws.)

- Work has been OK. I’ve been working longer hours because I’ve been doing a lot of training lately. And then I got a bonus because I’ve been doing a lot of training lately. It was very unexpected, and much appreciated. So that’s nice.

- I’ve decided to not try to find a new place to live but to try to renew my lease. I hope my landlord doesn’t have other thoughts.

- Remember how I couldn’t remember my dreams or even remember having dreamed? Now I’m remembering three to five different dreams a night. And in most, I’m aware that I’m dreaming and I’m able to change the course of the dream. It’s scary and wonderful and, like so many things lately, full of beauty.

- I flew to Mississippi in mid-February. I arrived on my baby brother’s birthday and surprised him. I stayed until the day before my birthday. I’m going back on Thursday. This time it’s for a high school newspaper conference in which I will head a session. (I’m still not sure what I’ll say.)

- I’m 26 now.

- I should go to bed because I have to be at the dentist in Manhattan at 1:30 p.m. Night.

–

“It’s every human being’s right to know love.” -Character in the Fringe episode I’m watching now.

1) How I once drove a car straight into a wall.
2) Spring
3) “I should finish my taxes.”
4) How I’d complained about a late package delivery only to find that I’d mistyped my ZIP Code. (Tracker says the package is heading back to the shipper.)
5) My next trip home.
6) Hugs.
7) Signs.
8. How I found more red feather boa bits.
9) Sleep.

To be continued

There’s so much we need to talk about.

But first let’s look at how I seem, based on answers to lots of questions, on OKCupid.

First photo (the longer one): Sept. 27, 2011
Second photo (top center): Nov. 13, 2011
Third photo (top left): Dec. 14, 2011
Fourth photo (bottom center-ish): Feb. 7, 2012
Last photo: March 8, 2012
(*click on the image for a bigger size)

To the right of these boxes is always a short explainer. Toward the end, it always says, “For example, you appear to be more sloppy than bisexual women your age.” I do, indeed.

–

Well, this was one of the many (SO MANY) things on my mind tonight/today/when-the-f-forever.

Related: I’m not dating anyone and I’m strangely really OK with that.

–

I haven’t had enough poetry lately. Maybe that’s why it feels like little is enough.

“…thinking how many dishes have i broken this week?
in an attempt to not break myself …” -Andrea Gibson

Number of dishes I broke this week: 2.

–

Something I wrote at a museum recently:

“too many people, too much heat (an experience I don’t often feel), too too sacred a place to share — no, to experience together — nothing is too sacred to share, right? — but experiences sometimes demand alonedom, singlehood, even if only briefly.”

–

Something else:

“After our lovers storm
your tongue tornadoes my breast”

–

I step on glass. I don’t feel it. I bleed. Repeat.

–

I hung out with a friend to(yester)day. We had coffee, and then we went to this and then here. And then I walked to work, about 40 blocks. (It took an hour, and it was amazing.)

He and I talked about a lot of stuff. At one point, we were talking about dating in New York and I said, “it’s awful; isn’t it awful?” He agreed. We shared stories, kind of, and continued to agree on how awful dating was. And then I said something about how it’s only awful for me when I realize I don’t want to be with the person I’m seeing but don’t end it. He said that didn’t apply to the situation he was in.

I’m still thinking about all this. Is dating in New York awful? I think it ties into how isolating the city can be. But I don’t think it’s hard to meet people. I meet people all the time. It’s hard to meet the right people. (Yesterday, I took myself to a movie, a bookstore and dinner at a burger place. Just as I finished eating, this man walks by and then in, straight to me, and introduces himself. We talk a little — he tells me he’s a painter — and he gives me his number. When I get home, I Google him. He’s 49. That isn’t old, but it’s not what I want.) Helen says I get bored too easily. Sia says we INFPs are never quite satisfied. I just always go back to the knowledge that I’ve let a lot of love go. That makes it easier for me to just experience things as they (or we) come or don’t come.

–

I found out that one of my aunts died following her circumcision. She was 7 or 8 years old. Another aunt died in childbirth, also shortly after her circumcision.

My great-grandfather wrote an autobiography. I found it in its entirety online. I started to read it but I was too emotional, so much was opening up to me and I had to breathe.

–

I have a celebrity crush. (Well, really her character on Fringe.)

–

And sleep, soon, I hope.

I’m sitting up in bed, playing Bejeweled Blitz, and I just had a strong need to post about how happy I am that I’m sad. I am so thankful for this darkness.

I’m beginning to picture my desires, the pure ones, uninhibited by perceived (or true but unfortunate) responsibility.

–

I sometimes wear this necklace that has a key on it. A friend asked me today for the back story of my chain. I said I found a key at a shop in Wichita and I put it on the necklace, not much else to it. “Everything you do usually has a meaning to it,” he said (or something like that).

–

I think about home all the time. I still don’t know where it is, but it feels nearer.

–

Bismillah.

–

Videos I’d Watch: Shit Introverts Want to Say to Extroverts; Shit Black Arab Fathers Who Raised Their Children in Mississippi Say to Those Children, in Arabish, with a Southern Accent; Shit Everybody Says to Nobody (or Shit All Y’all Want to Say); Shit Mississippians Say About William Faulkner; Shit Journalists Say About Journalism’s Future.

–

Is “Bejeweled Blitz shoulder” a real condition? Can we make it one?

Instead of being in bed, I am Facebook-chatting with Charity (I have been for about four hours) and I am Googling [INFP Pisces] combinations.

I found this:

Any INFP who has made it this far in life and not had a serious meltdown due to:

a. being unable to juggle their constant cornucopia of thoughts and emotions
b. being unable to to relate said emotions to anyone.
c. never being able to achieve their stratospheric goals.

seriously deserves a call from the Justice League. Empathman anyone?

Is this a serious meltdown?

I had a really rough day. I was in bed for a long time. I got up, tried to distract myself, but I broke down. I thought I’d composed myself and then Sia gets home and I break down in front of her.

Two friends have gotten upset with me today because I’m not communicating. I was/am too akdfja;dkjadf to try to explain.

I can’t explain, though. I just can’t. There are so many somethings.

I think that’s why I’m Googling. I’m thinking another INFP/Pisces combination might get it or has experienced it and created some sort of artistic work about it, from the other side.

Charity has helped a lot. Of course.

I’m “very allergic” to:

• cats
• dogs
• “all type of grass”
• trees (all of them except beech trees)
• household dust
• mold
• mites