Why I Stayed,

No one knows why I stayed but me. We reach a point in life and specifically in certain relationships where we've grown so comfortable with the bullshit that we wind up convincing ourselves that to start over defeats the purpose. So we stay. I did. I convinced myself, with his help of course, that I didn't have the patience or the time to meet and get to know another person and their habits, attitudes, likes, and dislikes. To learn someone new again. Who has that sort of time? So I stayed. "We not gettin' any younger T." So clearly, I was getting too old to seek and find and learn a new person too. I stayed through the cheating, lying, verbal abuse, and sheer laziness. I stayed through the excuses, schemes, and blaming everyone else for why you're where you are in life. I stayed. I stayed through the threats of if I can't have you nobody will, through the threats to knife up your wrists with our kitchen knives, stayed through blocking the door so I couldn't escape - to stay and wallow with him in his misery.


I stayed because I was the good girlfriend playing "good wife".


But eventually, that shit got old. Real old. And it started to stink and to wear me down. There's but so much encouragement that I could give when what I really wanted to say was "shut the fuck up and get up off your ass. no one owes you shit, not even a good fucking morning sunshine". I began to spend my days off at my mother's for a piece of peace of mind. I grew tired of my brain always working and working the majority of the time to keep him functioning.


A weary woman is not a happy woman no matter what she says. If she claims she's happy, she's fucking lying.


I was tired of redoing resumes and hearing the dreams of how to make these moves and build "our" legacy. Build a legacy when you don't have a leg to stand on. The irony was appalling. But my being so comfortable and being OK with it because it'll change, things'll get better was just as disgusting. As much as I was tired of working 16 hour long days at work to catch up on the late rent and past due bills, coming home to take the trash out, do the dishes, and straighten up the living room while he was stretched out in the bedroom, I'd convinced myself that this was as good as it gets. I stayed because I had already prepared myself that this was going to be my life.


Oh yes, I stayed.


I continued to make excuses and enable the behaviors. But, if I'd said or did what I really wanted to, my day and quite possibly, my week, or months to come would have been severely fucked up. My level of miserable would have been beyond 100.


I stayed so I wouldn't have to hear the bullshit. So I wouldn't have to be threatened with what I wasn't going to do and what he was going to do. The threats were just as empty as the promises but it took me a while to realize such.


I stayed, because while he didn't have a leg to stand on, I'd lost my original backbone and needed one rebuilt.


Don't get me wrong, there was love. Insurmountable amounts of love. But the shit was fucked up. I fell in love with who I thought he would grow into and he fell in love with who I was when we met. I fell in love with thinking I could mold him into who I wanted him to be versus who and what his reality was. It didn't take long for him to show me his real face, but I didn't believe what he showed me, so I stayed. And grew angry at him for my knowingly mistaking him to be someone he wasn't.


My mistake was taking my frustrations out on him for not being who I imagined him to be instead of admitting such and leaving well enough alone from the rip. Instead, I stayed thinking I could change this boy into the man I wanted.


And don't get me wrong, he put it down. On the regular. But I got it and other bitches got it too. Yet, my simple ass stayed thinking shit would change. And eventually it did. But, a cheetah doesn't change its spots like a zebra can't transpose its stripes. And change, well that bitch was a few days late and several dollars short.


Believe what you see when you see it. That, is the difference between now and later.


The love we shared was limitless. There was nothing we would not have done for one another - other than leave. We both knew we were both better apart than we were together, but we weren't strong enough for each other or ourselves to let it go.


But eventually, the weary woman wanted to be happy without the weary or the drama or the pain. She wanted to be with someone who she could genuinely love for them and not for her thoughts. She had to own up to the fact that lost trust and non-belief alone was more than enough of a reason of why she couldn't walk that well trodden road yet again.


I stayed because change was too scary. Because I misconstrued a lot of things for love when it wasn't about love, because sometimes, love just isn't enough of a reason to hang around. It's frightening to see the person you've shared your life with stand before you threatening to cut their wrists if they can't have you as if you're their property. There aren't enough words to explain the sheer fear of thinking you can't move on with your life because that person won't allow you to do so.


There are a lot of things that love is, but equally, there are many things that love is not.


I apologize for staying around longer than I know I should have. I apologize for not being the stronger one sooner to let it go so repair could have began earlier. But life is about learning and I pray that you've walked away with just as many lessons as I have without holding an embittered heart. Love is worth fighting for. But love is also worth letting go for individual repair versus combined destruction. We stayed thinking time really does and would heal all wounds, but not if you're not brave enough to stop patching up scars as if they don't exist.


To finally have let go is honestly one of the best decisions I've made to date. My individual happiness means the world to me and I honor it just as much as I honor the love we shared. But, the truth of the matter is that it was time. We'd taught all we could teach and bought to the table everything in our power, including the messiness. This was nothing more than a good ass chapter that had to come to an end.

Wrecking Brain

I can tell when a particular best friend of mine is up to something, just like she can tell without seeing me when and if I've been crying. So, when she called me the other day, asking a million plus one questions about a particular someone, I knew, with no proof, that either she was up to something, or, she knew something or some things that I didn't. And when I say asking a million plus one questions, this was like a police interrogation - but not as intimidating. And in between our laughs and my not being able to stay still, I knew what it was all about and where it was coming from. Without her saying so, I was given an outside view of what I've always kind of wanted to know.

And when she asked the question I've quietly asked and answered for myself, I cheerfully answered yes. If asked, the answer is and would be yes. For a long time, the answer has always been yes without a shadow of doubt.

Sitting on the phone with her, I wrecked my brain while trying to pick hers to no avail. And as much as I figured that I had it figured out, I just wasn't sure - and still am not.

She said to me, as if I didn't know, "you know sometimes we look and it's been sitting there right in front of us all along". I know just who she was talking about and what she was saying, but, I wanted to know why? And where was it all suddenly coming from is what I couldn't figure out. Were there truth to her questions? Had she heard it all from the horse's mouth and was just encoding it so I couldn't repeat it verbatim? Hopefully, this won't end in the world may never know like the age old question of "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?"

I hope, for my own sanity that I'll be able to get to the center of it all because by all means, it's been a long time and all sorts of emotions are bound up like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

If I took my own advice I wouldn't be wrecking my brain over my best friend's hidden messages or your sometimes cloudy disposition. If I took my own advice, I'd be at the center of the tootsie roll pop already. But clearly I'm not.

It's been said that good things come to those who wait. And I hope, this, is a classic example of such. I don't expect a fairy tale ending because in the world we live and function in, fairy tales don't exist. But the sheer feeling of a love so transparent that it becomes contagious will do. 

Anthony Hamilton Do You Feel Me

American Gangster soundtrack

Better & More

"Being at a place where you no longer care is never a good place to be, but, it's often the best place because that's where we put ourselves first."

These words I posted on Twitter when it finally hit me that the situation I'd once again found myself in, I was in, but no longer cared about it or anything but me. And I was and am ok with such feelings. It doesn't bother me.


I always talk about self-worth, self-love, and how we, especially us women, deserve better, more - the best. But we also know that to get such things, a demand is created. Just like closed mouths don't get fed, a heart's desire is never satisfied if we don't pursue its wants and sometimes, its needs.


The steps to a better life, to the lives we want for ourselves always began with us. Point blank. There's no other place, no better place than there to began.


For four years, we tried endlessly to make us work. Call it forcing, contrived, or imaginary, we fought in our own ways, for our own reasons or motives, to make that thing work. One may have felt or thought they did more, experienced more or less pain, gave more of themselves for something that they wished and prayed for some sort of positive return. But oftentimes, God doesn't give us what we want or what we think we should have because it's not meant for us to have. This is a realization that never quite hit me until I decided I was finally done. After countless attempts to work, I caved, and gave into myself. Decided that I was and am too good of a woman to allow someone to use me as target practice. To brandish my heart with actions that left it heaving for air on those nights when the "I'm sorry" and "It was a mistake" weren't enough. Granted, I know he would beg to differ - these are my thoughts and feelings. I'd reached a point when thinking and whispering to myself that I deserve better and more, needed to be known all across the board. Subtle voice undertones and text rants about what I thought I deserved, no longer worked; I knew I deserved better and more, and was going to go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure I received them. And it didn't matter how anyone perceived it - as long as it was known.


Because of then and those moments that I spent alone with myself and with my heart and its contents spilled out ahead of me, I've found myself beginning again.  And as difficult of a decision this has been, I realize it's the best one for me. A chapter has been closed in my life, for new ones to have the opportunity to begin and the option to end. And I welcome them and their many facets with open arms. I welcome my life's forthcoming chapters with an endearing, understanding type of love that only I can comprehend. No amount of love or life songs can adequately describe just how I feel or what exactly lies in my heart. But I know I deserve better and more. And I commend myself on giving me to opportunity to live and the option to experience myself, by myself, and alone in my own skin.

Jill Scott, Hear My Call

I know I've posted this video on a past blog piece, but this is poignant and important :)

Letter to a 2 Year Old Me

Little Girl, Little Brown Girl-

What to say to you, I have not a clue as I'm still figuring this thing called life out myself. What are the facts of life and how will they benefit or hinder you? Wish I could tell you. But, your life will be one that when you look back on it, you'll be satisfied with the strides you've made.

There's much for you to discover and anticipate in this life. The journey though, is and will be rough and rugged; it's parched and dry. But you will learn that nothing is given to anyone who doesn't want to earn it. Who doesn't want to work hard and effortlessly. Not to spill the beans, but you'll grow into a hard-working woman who's tone and demeanor is endearing and passionate. People will gravitate to you because your smile is soft and gentle, it glides across your face with ease, and comforts the troubled spirits of many.

You've been born into a situation that you have no control over, but you, being the little girl you are, and the woman you'll  grow into will make the best and better of it. You will use it not as a crutch, but as a stepping stone. Your current situation, are the bootstraps that you'll pull up tightly and hold onto as a woman.

You're mother, to many right now, is a little girl herself. But to you, she's the world. And she'll always be that to you. Like the relationships of most mothers and their daughters, the two of you will go through rough patches, but only because a mother's love has no limits and because a child has to figure out who they are. Your love for her, limitless. You'll inherit many of her traits and take on her personality. Her laugh will become your own. Her sarcasm, willingness to lend a hand to those in need, and "pull no punches" attitude, will all wrap themselves around you to become yours.

Your favorite color will be purple. Your truest and best friends will be girls named Ashley, Brittany, and Deahna. It's from these women you'll learn the meaning of friendship. With them, you'll go through life knowing you're not going through it alone. The four of you together, will learn to love and nurture what it means to be women.

You're an artist. A writer to be more specific. You're a Pisces too, so the arts is something that's ingrained in your identity.  This, will be one of your greatest accomplishments. This, is the outlet that you carve and make for yourself. It is the place you go to in order to escape. It is a trait, a practice that will allow for you to understand the complexities of life.

I don't have all of the answers for you. I can't tell you what things you should and shouldn't do, but, do what makes you happy. I know this is I'm sure years too late, but it's best to do what makes your heart content - I've watched you spend years trying, attempting to make others happy before taking yourself into consideration first. But, that's life: it's about nothing else but learning how to make it and yourself better.

I speak to you candidly now because I've been where you're going. But there are places that we'll visit and things we'll experience together.  Life you will learn, is full of roller coasters and when they come, my best advice to you is to buckle down and face them head on with eyes wide open because there's nothing in life that you ever want to say you've missed out on. Have fun, because you only have one time to do this. Life is no dress rehearsal, no do-overs, or repeats.

I feel like this is nothing but a collection of cliches and quotes from famous and unfamous people. But it's not. It's all original. And new. This, is for you and for all of the little girls who will come after you. This is to tell you that though you'll worry yourself crazy because life is going to stress you, there's nothing to stress about. As you get older, you'll garner a relationship with God and strengthen your faith that will allow for you to weather any storm. You'll learn and come to understand the power of prayer. The importance in patience. You'll learn that it is OK to put yourself first.

I apologize to you now for putting others before you. And for holding grudges that weren't worth holding onto. I apologize for learning what it means to forgive later than I probably should. I tell you these things now because things may have turn out differently for you, for me, had you been given these facts of life earlier. But you'll learn that life is about learning. Every waking moment is a chance to learn more and be better.

I'll tell you though, there's a little girl you'll meet in about 20 years who will teach you just how beautiful life is. And she, is the inspiration for this. She is the little girl who's made it easier for me to not only to look back to then, but to look forward to and anticipate what's to come.

Live your life because God gave it to you for a reason.

Love always,
You.

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!

root of (most)(all) evil

I've come to believe, that love, not money green papered money, is the root of most, if not all evil. As children, after learning to say Mama and Dada, the first phrase to which we're taught is I love you. Not I'm hungry, I'm wet, or sleepy, or even the infamous 'leave me alone', but, I love you. It was one of the first phrases I tried my damnest to teach my now two year old sister. She only began to grasp and repeat it this year, but since her first utterances, I drilled this three word, three syllable phrase into her ever growing and expanding vocabulary.

Even as children, we correlate love with hugs and kisses, with holding of hands and grasping of calves. We understand and understood then, that there is something simplistically difficult about this word, this action, this phrase. We realize as children, with a very limited vocabulary, that my responsibility, is to comprehend exactly what love is.

The reasons we're taught and teach this phrase can only be one of two reasons; either to embrace it or avoid it - at all costs.

Most of my writing is about love and my mishaps with it. Most poets write about love and their desires for it. Most celebrity blogs dramatize it. We search for jobs that we love. Blushing brides search for that gown to which they love. Teachers take measly salaries for their love of the job. Women endure, whether out of stupidity or not, because of love. We make love and make babies out of this love. We open our eyes daily because some higher power loved us that much to keep us. And some of us, don't open our eyes and succumb to death because some higher power loved us enough to take us away.

Everything we do and everything we search for, is for and because of love.

At some point in our lives, love does us wrong, does us raw, and skins us alive. Love, as merciless as it feels, and at times it is, at particular and certain points in our lives, is like the summer's wasp. With sealed lids, it functions off and out of sheer emotion, and sometimes, blindly enters into realms and situations that are no good for it, places that could end its existence. But love, like the wasp, moves rapidly. It doesn't budge or shake like the bee when swat at; doesn't die immediately when hit either. Love, stands alone and by itself.

I remember being a young teenage girl, along with my best friends and school peers, sharing stories and tales about what we thought then was love. Love then, didn't require trial and error; love then, were mere experimentations, tests, to see if we, as girls, were ready. The irony in it all, is that even now as women, our emotions and reactions to the real thing tend to be as gentle and succulent as our then 16 years old girl hearts were.

Love, is the only emotion, that keeps trying. That is forever enduring and growing. Love, is the only emotion that transcends time and species. Love, is the only emotion that attempts to be all-knowing, but is also, the only emotion that is ever present.

And even though I personally believe, in my heart of hearts that love, not that money green papered money, is the root of most, if not all evil, I for one, will continue to conquer and perfect it. I, will continue to practice and critique it. I, have and will continue to evolve because of love.

It is an evil after all that is necessary.

"Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves; this is its nature".

Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, 1953

Hear My Call

Jill Scott

performance from 41st Annual NAACP Awards