Hanging in the Balance

I was at work when I’d gotten the call from my mother. Sitting at my desk, with a freshly made cup of raspberry green tea, I was counting down the hours as they passed and ushered me closer to signing out and taking my 40 minute train and bus ride home. My evening was somewhat planned: Aveeno stress relief foaming bath, dinner, write my nightly letter, and off to bed.

My mother was hysterical, frazzled and could barely get her words together. When it finally did come together, the news was that my cousin, to whom I carry her name as my middle name, was high off of wet, PCP, marijuana/weed/ganja/ooo-wee soaked in embalming fluid – whatever name you want to call it by, had jumped out of her sister’s third floor window and wasn’t responding. The words you just read don’t even look right in print, but it’s the truth. This, is currently my family’s reality as we pray that she makes it through without knowing how severe her injuries are or possibly, how difficult her life may become due to this horrific situation should she make it out. It’s that deep.

With a fractured skull, concussion, internal bleeding, bleeding in her head, partially collapsed lung, partially fractured spine, and broken top portion of her back, it’s a wonder she’s still here. It’s a blessing and a reason that she’s alive.

I come from a family of drug abusers and addicts. The list is long and the affects that it’s had on my family is saddening. But this situation, tops them all. Takes the cake. And truthfully, pisses me off. Some may question, why are you even dishing your family business out there for the world to know? Let me tell you why…

Aside from this blog, I also write for an online magazine, Urban Plateau. And I really wanted to save this piece for our October issue. But the issues in this “blog”, in this “piece”, this “work” are too important to hold off for a few weeks when maybe, just maybe, I may be able to save someone. Or help someone save someone. Or give someone the thought to be proactive instead of reactive. Urban Plateau is an online magazine that gives me a monthly opportunity to write from my soul. And that’s what I attempt to do each and every month. This online magazine, for those of us who contribute to it, we don’t do it for the glory or for the comments. But, because we have something to say and so long as our words reach at least one person, we’ve succeeded. We don’t do this to increase our friend requests or followers on Facebook or Twitter. We don’t do this for recognition or accolades either. But because there’s something to be said. I don’t know how many people read my work. I don’t know how many lives my work has, do, or will touch. I don’t even know if there’s a point to me writing. But I do it. And I’m faithful to it. All of the same aspects apply to this here blog. I do this to share. To write, to be an artist and not share your work, your God given gifts, to be selfish at all costs.

As I write this, my cousin’s life literally is hanging in the balance. Should it falter in any way, shape, or form, she could be gone – forever. But as her life depends on the steady hands and intelligence of hospital physicians, our family is split right down the middle. Separated and torn. Yes, we’re all devastated, but, not all devastation is the same. Not everyone can carry or handle life when life itself becomes fragile and tender like a nerve. And many of us in my family are proving we don’t know how to handle tragedy. That we don’t know how to conduct ourselves in public, or in the confines of our own homes.

In my family, in my community, drugs rule the world while they simultaneously destroy them too. I’ve watched aunts and uncles, cousins, my father, be destroyed by deadly chemical concoctions that are not meant for human consumption. Yet, they consume. They take in. The high takes them somewhere they’ve never been before. Some think they are invincible and won’t burn in a house fire. Some, think they can jump from windows and roofs, and fly. Some think and thought, they could puncture veins and no one would notice.

Yes, it’s just that deep!

Life is not a game to be played with. It’s not Spades where you get rewarded for having more books than you originally predicted. Or 2500 where the winner takes all. This life is not a game meant to be reckoned with. The fact of the matter is from the moment we come into this world, from our first breathe and first cry, we’re dying. And because of this, we ought to live life daily as if it’s our last.

There are so many things wrong with what’s going on right now not only in my own family, but in families and communities across this country and throughout the world. Mothers and fathers are abandoning their children to “do them”, and leaving these same children to grow into adults who don’t know how to be adults. Parents are being incarcerated at alarming rates while state department of corrections can’t build prisons fast enough. So bad that in Pennsylvania, men have been transferred to Michigan and Virginia, and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is building a new prison to which they’ve already named SCI Benner. Schools are failing, below average, with sub-par teachers who do it for a check – or do it and don’t know how to get the job done. The rich get tax breaks while the poor get taxed and are forced to work outside of their county in hopes of earning a better living to support their family or themselves.

Yes, it’s just that deep!

In black communities, we don’t take the addictions of our friends and family serious until the elephant in the room decides it’s tired of sitting still, quietly, not making a sound. It’s not until this façade of one of the world’s most dangerous animals becomes a reality and comes to life to realize and admit that there’s some direly wrong with this picture. Same applies to my family, and hundreds, thousands, millions of families throughout.

Our survival hangs in the balance.
And something gots to give.
Something needs to be done.

I know I usually write about love and life as if I’m looking through rose colored glasses, where I fill it up with sweet words that we get drunk off of. But this is something like love. Matter of fact, it is love. It’s love enough to take off the rose colored glasses, sit them down, and look at what I’m surrounded by and admit that this life, is a mess. And something gots to give! Daily, I’m watching little girls bigger than me, switch and prance hips and breasts that they don’t know what to do with them. They lick their lips and talk slick without understanding the meaning of these innuendos. Yet, no one says anything. No one loves them enough in these rough streets, these war zones, to let them know they’re better than what people see. I’m a woman and I’ve been there. But someone loved me enough, a woman who knew me and my girlfriends only from seeing us huddled in the back corners of the 32 bus. She loved us enough to check us and pull our coattails because no one had done it with her. She loves us enough to guide us and protect us during a time when our mothers couldn’t. She was privy to our young girl mentalities and loves us enough to love us as if she were our kin. She showed us where we could end up should we not abide by life's rules where it gives us very little wiggle room to create our own rules. She showed us that being naughty can be a good thing - when done correctly and at the right time; then, wasn't the right now. She checked us. And because of her, to an extent, one of us is a married mother of three, we all take care of ourselves, and have grown into responsible, respectful and respectable women.

At the end of the day, something has to give. Something has to be done to promise our children and grandchildren, those here and those to be, a life worth living. A life worth fighting for and struggling on behalf of. Our todays are not guarantees to become memories. It's not promised to us that tomorrow and next week, month, or year, that we'll be given the chance, the opportunity to remember today.

And while my cousin fights for her life, and my family bickers worst than a gang of alley cats fighting for scraps, I write none of this for condolences, empathy, or conforting words. But instead, I hope that someone, at least one person, takes something from this because our lives don't have to hang in the balance. They don't have to waver or linger between days. They don't have to be meaningless. So I pray you, the reader, gets something from this. And if not now, someday.

Visit Urban Plateau @ http://www.urbanplateau.com/ It's a well-worth treat!

Ol' School Married Kind of Love

I remember I'd said to him in a serious voice and an even more serious facial expression, Divorce is not an option for me. I'm not marrying nan soul just to get divorced. You marry me, and you're in this for good - til death do us part. Needless to say, he looked at me as if I'd called him every foul word and name known to man. So be it. I meant it then and to this day, still do.

Marriage, is not a joke. Yet it is and continues to be made fun of. Marriage is treated as if it's something to do before you die. Something to try out like a pair of red bottoms. Test it out and toss it if you don't like it.

Bull-sugar-honey-iced-tea!

There's a special woman whom has taken the place as my Great-Grandmother because mine passed when I was two. This god-fearing woman, with a sharp tongue and fabulous sense of humor was married to her husband, until his death, for 63 years. They'd gotten married in Atlantic City, New Jersey at the local court, said their vows, and walked around the corner to eat dinner at her parents home. Simple. Old school. Classic. But most importantly, everlasting.

I'm 23 and by the time I was born, they had been married for a good 40 plus years already. They took their position and role as husband and wife seriously. They realized and understood that there's a reason that 'we' is spelled with no 'I'. There's a reason that couple is spelled with no 'I'. There's a reason that 'vows' are spelled with no 'I'.

I was reading and studying my Bible recently about marriage, and in it I found this passage: "...and that he said, 'That's why a man will leave his father and mother and will remain united with his wife, and the two will be one' So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, don't let anyone separate what God has joined together." Matthew 19:5-6 Perfect sense it made and makes. Oftentimes, we, both as individuals and couples, as items, allow for others and everyone else not only into our relationships but into our bedrooms, and subsequently, we allow for them to decide what does and doesn't happen in our relationships. We allow for them to curve our attitudes and emotions, how we feel about situations and about our partner. We, allow for them to be the third person in our relationships.

Some time ago, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about marriage. I'd made mention that I wasn't going to drop my last name - I'll just hyphenate. Calmly, she said to me, 'Why do that? Take your husband's last name and be happy, make it known you're married. Plus, you've been Clark your entire life and last time I checked, Clark wasn't married.' She made it clear to me that if marriage is supposed to and is designed and designated to be a union, it should be treated as such.

Marriage today is played with entirely too much. And society wonders, questions, why. Celebrities don marriage the same way they do purses and diamonds that cost more than what most of us make in a year. Statistics are spewed at us in heavy rotation of how marriage is failing and falling while divorce steadily increases, exponentially it seems. We hear friends talk about being single for life because there aren't enough good girls or bad boys; that they're tired of the same ol' love song. Tired of running the love gamut.

A friend of mine on Facebook whom my parents grew up with, also an on-air radio personality for Philadelphia's local WUSL Power 99FM, Uncle O, posted recently on his Facebook status that "Some of yall wonder why when u get married it dont seem like nothing has changed...one reason is you have to drop the maiden name[,] a hyphen in ur last name dont show ur new hubby that u are ONE[.] drop old habits and get new habits...Joint bank accounts same last name the whole nine...u guys become one but u still have separate lives. Just my opinion. I see a lot of hyphenated last names not good." Needless to say, a lot of women told him he was wrong, gave countless reasons as to why they've chosen or are choosing to hyphenate or not change their names when they do get married, and at the end of the day, made it clear that they didn't feel that changing last names was necessary. I for one, absolutely agree with him.

"Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die." Sounds like marriage to me. Everyone wants be loved unconditionally; wants their own piece of the pie, but doesn't want to take the necessary steps to get there. Doesn't want to do what's necessary on their part to make sure the entity remains intact.

No, I'm not married. Never been. But someday I will be. And I'm doing it once and one time only. And it will be til' death do us part, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad.

Marriage by far is not a two-way street that allows for us to be one, yet, walk in opposite directions - defeats the purpose. Instead, it's a one way street with two individuals from two different walks of life, walking, trekking, running, traveling, and experiencing this all together. At least it's supposed to be.

Many of us have become lazy and assume that once the engagement is agreed to, the ceremony and honeymoon take place, that no work is necessary. We feel that no work is needed and that things will just fall into place on its own accord. We assume that our partner knows we love them, and that there's no need to say I love you, I need you, I want you, I appreciate you. I admit, here and now, right here on this blog and in this piece, that's a mistake, a move, a decision, a habit, that's not worth making. It's not worth making assumptions that he knows you want and desire him. It's not worth thinking she knows you love her with every fiber of your body. Speak it into existence and let it be known. Speak it into existence and practice it, show it, prove it to be true. Love, as much as it is about itself and proving that it's real, it is also about knowing.

I remember freshman high school non-fiction with Ms. Litman and one of the first lessons was show, not tell. And for months, he asked, borderline begged me to show my love and not just tell it. Show it in simple kisses when I arrived home from work, or send a text message explaining just how much I not only loved, but missed and couldn't wait to see him, type of love. We'd been together for nearly three years at that point, and he was still asking me to do these simple, basic feats, but I, a fish as stubborn as a bull, silently refused. And I can say now with every womanly existence I have, it was an uneccessary refusal because love, is work. Point blank. No way around or away it. It's a 24/7, 7 days, 52 weeks, and 12 month job.

Love and relationships, including marriage is ongoing, nonstop work. And it seems to me, that we're either too afraid or too lazy to work for what we claim we want, need, and deserve - including our partners - whether married or not.

I vouch for old school married kind of loves. Trade in our platinum weddings for City Hall in Sunday's best and quaint celebrations with those who truly are happy for us. Trade in the contractual concept for the love contract, til' death do us part, for better or for worst. Trade in hyphenated names for family names, married names. Trade in 10 year relationships that turn into two year marriages and end in divorce, for everlasting togetherness. Trade in the girlfriend, homeboy, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, tweaker, hoochie, boyfriend and girlfriend #2, side jawn talk with husband and wife conversations in bed, together, late, and full of love. Let marriage be what it is supposed to be. Let marriage exemplify the best of love, and at times, the worst of it too.

I speak and write, I attempt to practice these very things, because love and marriage are one of a kind; they are simple and basic, they are fragile and easily break like 60 year bones. If it, whether the relationship, love, or marriage, is what you want, ladies and gents, men and women, lovers alike, I beg of you to work on it. Fix it. Struggle and hustle and bustle for it. No longer allow for irreconcilable differences to be the reason you end what at one point and time you wanted. No longer allow for your mother, father, sister, brother, aunt and uncle, cousins, nieces and nephews, friends, co-workers, strangers, groupies and hoochies alike, man on the street, the cat, dog, or goldfish in the bowl, be why you don't make it.

Yes, it's that deep.

I'm Truly Yours

Phyllis Hyman



Special thanks to Uncle O for allowing for his status to be used. Listen to him and Mikey Dredd, The Hot Boyz on Power 99 FM (98.9 FM) in Philadelphia from 6-10pm Monday-Friday