Dear Me: A Letter to my 20 Year Old Self

If you are a reader of my blog you know that, since the beginning, this blog has been an open diary into my life; my life that is, at times, extremely real and extremely difficult to write sometimes because of how vulnerable it makes me feel. At it’s best my blog has made a few people feel less alone in this journey that is your twenties, and at it’s worst has hurt more people then I care to remember in so many ways. It has chronicled my various heartbreaks, successes and random thoughts on the world happening around me. Cheers to another year as I write my annual birthday letter to myself. 

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  20 Year old Me

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  28 Year old Me

Dear Chelsea,

I write to you now having survived this decade of life filled with lessons learned and roads both taken and not. It may seem impossible to believe it, but you are in for so much more than you can imagine. There are so many expectations and ideas in your head that, unfortunately will not come to pass; and the disappointment of failing to meet your own benchmarks will, at times, discourage you from seeing all the ways your unique path will influence the woman you become. Oh what a woman you will become! Self-aware, self-motivated, fearless in more ways than one; and despite thinking otherwise, prepared for anything life throws at you.

At this point you imagine that the struggles you are beginning to face can be solved with a relationship. You will yearn and search for love in so many of the wrong places, not yet knowing that the void you feel cannot be filled with someone else’s love. You will roll your eyes at the idea that you must first love yourself before you can truly love another, and you would be right, it’s not as simple as that. The trick to love is knowing your limits, what you will stand for and what you won’t. It’s not just learning to love yourself, it’s about knowing your worth, and figuring out why, in the absence of the “one”, you feel alone and abandoned. Some of your biggest regrets will lie in spending more time than you need putting up with men who barely love themselves, let alone you. The moments where they give you what you seek, will pale in comparison to the moments that they will spend making you feel undeserving. Do not feel guilty over choosing yourself instead of their toxicity; and stand strong as you find the will to walk away when you feel that you can’t carry on. Still, many tears will be spilt before you can recognize the signs of someone too broken to love you. You will think that this is personal, that this behavior is relegated to their relationship with you, but know that it is not! It is paramount that you remember that they cannot take away your spirit, that no matter how bad it gets, your ability to heal and rebuild is a gift, and your capacity to love is unparalleled. Even then though, know that real love is a hard thing to find and an even harder thing to maintain – even with someone great. You have it in you to make it work, just know that when people say, “with the right person love should be easy” they are people who have not truly been in love. Relationships meant to last will push you to be a better person, and they will magnify your deepest unresolved issues. Look for the person who knows how to recover from those painful times when it’s almost too hard to bear. You will find that love, you will!

Your ambition is so strong, but you will learn that ambition is not enough to achieve success. You will see that grit and determination is far more important than shear will, so no matter how hard you try you might fail but you must keep trying! So many of your career plans will get thwarted, but your confidence in your abilities (of which there are many) will get you further than you imagined. With that being said, your talent cannot carry you toward true joy in your work. It will allow you to shine, sure, but being good at your job is not the end goal – neither is that title you think will make you happy. You will search for accolades, and again, love, but what you truly love is helping people connect to their purpose and motivating them towards fulfillment. You’ll travel through so many roles and organizations doing just that – each getting you closer to knowing what gets you up in the morning. However, in the end, you’ll find that the way to move forward was right back where you started. You’ll spend years in silent shame about dropping out of college, but you’ll get there, and you’ll learn that more people than you know were in the same boat. You’re in the school of survival, and it’ll teach you how to stay alive by hustling, pivoting, and quickly iterating on what doesn’t work. Be proud of that ability because it’s the key to finding out how you thrive. Oh, and never trust HR (just some practical advice that goes hand in hand with you learning how to be a good server – helpful and harmful all at once).

My beautiful Chelsea, how I wish I could reach back and hug you. I know the pain you’ll have to travel through in order to get to the other side, but the level of empathy you have for those being challenged through hard times will grow so deep you’ll feel it in your bones. Again, let that carry you, it will guide you towards your purpose and it will allow you to pick up truly great friends along the way. Good friends will come, and some will break your heart greater than any man, but the great friends will stay. Keep those great relationships close to you, nurturing them, foster the loyalty that will turn into kinship, that will turn into family in the end. Those friends will be the family you chose, and alongside the family you were born to, will create the support you need to make it to the end (…of your twenties, we aren’t dead yet). Take the support when it comes, don’t despair when you feel there isn’t enough; these people may not always show up the way you want, but they will always show up when you ask.

I wish I could give you all these lessons without you having to do the work to attain them, but I can’t. Undoubtedly it will take the full ten years to see that you are not competing with everyone else to reach those milestones, everyone has their own pace. That life is a constant ebb and flow of good days and bad days in every aspect of life. That you cannot possibly “have it all”, you can only do the best you can at one thing at a time. That life moves fast, and sometimes life will always move on with or without you – in grief, and in trauma. Do not worry, just move with it and let go instead of moving against it (it will get you nowhere). Know that the more you write, the more you document these things, the more you won’t feel alone, isolated in your experiences. Most importantly, you will learn that your capacity to grow, and change – and the people around you capacity to grow, and change, is the lesson a lifetime. Keep up the faith that everything will work out, even as you go on hating you twenties. Remember, no one has ever said, “…and then it never worked out”.

Love,

Yourself

I Am Not Okay

When I was 11 I started getting migraines. The very first time it happened I had no idea why my head felt like someone was stabbing me and my stomach felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I would end up in excruciating pain until eventually I would throw-up and finally fall asleep someplace dark and cold until the next day when I would feel a little bit better each hour until I was back to normal. This went on once a month for a while until, eventually, my migraines would come only sporadically a few times a year at best. By the time I was in my early twenties I had both the warning signs and remedy routine ready to go. My vision always went first, altering my depth perception just before my hands would start to go numb and 45 minutes before the light around me would feel so excruciating I would be instantly out of commission. If I was lucky I’d be somewhere I could draw the curtains and lay down quickly, but sometimes I wouldn’t be and I would have to figure out a way to get myself home safely with my eyes half way closed. Then, instead of throwing up, I would drink a liter of water, down 4 or 5 Advil, and when it turned legal, consume some sort of cannabis until I would literally pass out. It wasn’t always a fool proof plan but I was no longer confused by what was happening, I knew when things were about to get bad, and I also knew how to handle the unfortunate few days a year where I was all but useless through no fault of my own.

Before I was diagnosed with depression I never knew the signs of when I was about to go into an episode. I would go from perfectly fine to, “I’m not getting out of bed” without much lead time and then would proceed to sink into it without any idea how I was going to feel better. I couldn’t hedge it off like my migraines, there was no checklist of items I knew would temper the side effects of pure pain and, without medication, it could be months before I felt better. The severity only escalated from manageable, to completely unhinged, just from the emotional pain of it all.

After my fair share of hospitalizations I was finally put on a mix of medications that seemed to help with creating a solid baseline. For the first time the cloud of uncertainty of how long, and to what extent I would sink into a depressive episode was a little more predictable. Steadily, with consistency and a firm commitment to the emotional work that goes hand and hand with medication, I developed my own sense of when things were getting bad and how to cope when they did.

This is the part of the article where I would usually spend a paragraph going on about the benefits of “self-care” and how knowing what that means for you can make all the difference between mental competence and complete disaster, but instead I’ll just say that, like anything else it takes practice to know what you need and how to constructively make it from one day to the next. The harder thing still is knowing what you need to implement and when your self-care is actually just learned coping mechanism for functional depression.

Functional depression, like functional alcoholism is the ability to go through the motions so well that someone would have to be really paying attention in order to see that you’re not okay. The auto pilot that runs most of daily lives can hide the reality of distress even from those who are intimately involved in our lives. For some, the ruse of “everything is fine” is a performative way to distract those very same people from stepping in and shattering the illusion of functionality, but for others it is the only way they know to keep from feeling the pain of despair and unhappiness so deeply it stops them in their tracks. For those who are like me this “functionality” can look like a lot of different things and comes with its own red flags for knowing that things are not going as well as we’d like to believe.

After 11 years of living with depression I’m still learning the signs of when my mental health is a bit anemic; made even harder still by the pure amount of numbing we’ve all been doing for months as we struggle to stay afloat while the world feels like it’s burning all around us. We’re a nation in a functional depression, doom scrolling and meme-ing our way through the reality of unrelenting tragedy and indefinite pain. We know that if we even admitted to ourselves for a moment that everything is not okay many of us would fall so hard into hopelessness that it just makes the most sense to keep moving, keep pushing, try to let it out a little at a time so as not to sideline us from all the other bullshit that still somehow has to be accomplished in our day to day lives (not to mention distract us from the action needed to change the direction of our country so we’re not all fucked up permanently).

Still, over the past few weeks the signs that I’m slipping closer and closer to my baseline are interwoven with attempts at self-regulation in order to remain just above functional. The moments when I seem to be holding on too tightly to my need for control, desire for connection, and survival mode of proactivity that are more visible and less comforting as I realize my “coping” has become borderline obsessive. It’s like I’m holding a gun to my own head threatening to shoot and somewhere in my chemically balanced brain a voice is saying, “you don’t need to do this Chelsea, put down the weapon and walk slowly back towards sanity.” The positive self-care works marginally, but it’s the default coping mechanism that quickly turn towards unhealthy fixation that make me feel like I’m in the Bad Place of my own making, slowly torturing myself into full meltdown mode. That’s when I know I can’t handle the “functioning” part anymore, that’s when I know I need to unfurl my death grip from around the things I use in place of disassociating and ask for the one thing I never want to – help.

I realize of course that not everyone has a support system or other safety net to fall back on when things get rough; and, in this time of unparalleled disconnection, we find ourselves more isolated from those supports even if we are lucky enough to have them. We are in the middle of the migraine, defenseless and vulnerable, with no way out but through the inevitable pain that has rendered us here. That fact is uncomfortable and makes the situation worse for so many, including myself, but it is part of the process. Confronting the fact that we’re not okay may seem trivial, but it’s not. Admitting that we’re in pain, that we’re in the darkness so deep we don’t know when we’ll be okay again is the most important thing any of us could do right now, and if that makes you feel alone, I assure you, you are not. I’m currently physically and mentally at a wall, feeling cornered by my own mental instability and I’m sure how I’ll get out of it. I’ve held it together throughout this – this being the external demise of democracy, civil unrest, failing systems, mass death, and climate change, all while dealing with a host of personal things that seem to be going on in the foreground, and I am tapped out. We all are.

So today, if you see all these shoutouts for #mentalhealthawarenessday and you’re rolling your eyes because you know if you admit you’re living in your own bout of functional depression you might not get off the couch know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE, and it is okay to not at all be okay because trust me, I’m not okay either.

September

Do you remember, the 21st night of September? Of course most millennials, and an even bigger cohort of Gen-Zers would answer that question with a thinking face emoji, but for those of us who grew up with parents and grandparents who would sometimes whip out classic Earth, Wind, and Fire albums are all too familiar the repeated “Ba duda, ba duda, ba duda, badu’s” that followed the groovy chorus.

The song, ever uplifting is an example of #blackjoy at it’s finest – a reminder of how, through music, bad times could be forgotten, at least for a few minutes.

On Friday it seemed almost inconceivable that a moment like that could exist for me. A deadly pandemic, months away from friends, and as a Black woman a summer that started with the heavy injustice of police brutality and ended with the death of Chadwick Boseman left me in a state of functional grief that with any small push rendered me useless. Friday morning after an unrelated (but completely reasonable) mental breakdown that included an hour of sobbing to my partner about finances, 30 minutes of sobbing to my mother about the joylessness of this moment in time, and a 3 hour nap, I woke up to the news of RBG’s passing and I checked out of my body in a way that I hadn’t since my last depressive episode five years ago. I spent the next 36 hours smoking weed, playing Candy Crush and watching mindless Netflix shows on the couch void of any motivation to make myself feel even the slightest bit better. I felt crushed under the hopelessness of it all, ignoring the fact that after three weeks of perpetual smoke filled skies the air outside was finally fresh and breathable. It hardly seemed possible that just a week before I had woken up to a dark orange hue that signaled the impending inevitable of climate change that hit me all the more due to the fact that I consider the Bay Area my home, my birth place, and an important foundation to my expansive self- identity.

Yet, I still manage to move through each day just like everyone else – vaguely ignoring the unsustainability of our current political, social, economic, and mental state as a country. As someone who has suffered for many years with an undiagnosed mental health disorder, I am all too familiar with the functional disassociation necessary to manage this level of trauma. The difference of medication and a stable loving partner ground me and keep me more tethered to reality, but deep inside I can feel my heart braking actively everyday; partially by grief and partial by a feeling of pending disaster that outside of cable news and twitter seems gaslit by the normalcy of everyone around me.

Still, I know that barely making it through the day is all but exclusive to me. Every time a Black person, be it a supermarket clerk or casual passer by, asks “how are you?” I nod, shake my head, and say, “you know, making it through” followed by a knowing glance of shared despair that last for a moment before we’re both onto our the next active distraction. I talk with my best friends most day, neither of which I’ve seen in months with the exception of a FaceTime here or there. Through text we share moments of stress mixed with moments of anticipation and hope for a time when things are better, easier, less all consuming. I dismiss talk about how school is going in favor of my pending big life moment and the creeping closer of my 30th birthday with every passing day. I turned 26 the day after Trump was elected and vividly remember people trying to wish me happy birthday through streaming tears while I did my best to muster a smile amongst the tragedy of it all. Now, with arguably the biggest birthday I’ve had since age 21 rounding the corner, I worry that my birthday will be marred by civil unrest, a possible fascist takeover, and widespread uncertainty both politically and otherwise. Everything feels at stake and I can feel the pull between anger fill action and the sadness filled urge to lay down until next January gnawing at me constantly.

On Saturday, after an upset stomach turned into a persistent headache, I slept for 10 hours. My sleeping patterns throughout the pandemic range from excessive exhaustion to nervous insomnia where I can’t help but spend the hours of 1am – 3am doom scrolling through social media apps and reading every news report & political poll posted. I intermittently mix in the self-care routines that have always helped me stay sane before – turning to journaling, listening to podcast, and my recent daily sing-alongs to the musical soundtrack of Hamilton. In some moments it works, and on other days, days where the reminder of dog-whistle racism and possible loss to our democracy seems to be the only news, I balk and turn to numbing out instead. “Just consume less news”, “just take a break from social media”, “just try to take more walks”, seem to be the prevailing advice from supportive friends, family, and bloggers a like. I attempt all three but it’s not the reminder of the external world around me that gets to me; the emotional drainage stems from the cumulative sorrow of 2020 which has left me with a small eye twitch that ranges day to day in severity no matter what I try to do. Deep breaths work, planning for a time when all this is over works, and when all else fails, when I feel like vomiting from the weight of it all, I take a moment of silence and gratitude and hold onto it as long as my mind can before checking back out.

However, today is the 21st night of September; a silly unofficial day where a 3 minute song makes it impossible not to get up and dance. I can’t help but blast it through my apartment, shaking my shoulders and swinging my hips to the sound of joy, hope, and of course, love. In this moment I remember that slaves would sing and dance even while surviving literal oppression. I remember the deep crooning of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come that sparked just enough belief to get people through the Civil Rights movement. I remember the lyrics of Tupac and Biggie, of Chance and Kendrick – the voice of Prince & Whitney, and the joy that comes from feeling all the complex emotions articulated through song. In our collective darkest moments, I remember the 21st night of September.

An Opportunity To Be Better

They say that you should write what you know – well, right now I know very little, if anything at all. They say when faced with mounting stress and anxiety to do what you love – so I guess we’re in a bit of a catch twenty-two here. I’m going to try anyway, my apologies if none of this makes sense.

I don’t know if other people are writing about the quarantine, all I know is, it permeates every conversation, every conflict, every surreal moment that has happened to me in the last 21 days, and words fail to describe it. Even now, I find myself typing out words that barely put a dent into the emotions that lie beneath. We’ve all lost sense of time, we all can’t remember what it use to be like, and we all are trying the best we can with the ever changing landscape of life as we know –  not to sound dramatic or anything…

Then again, if there was ever a time to freak out and be a bit dramatic, now would totally be that time.

You would think that after having Donald Trump in office for 3 years we would all be use to senseless drama being the backdrop of our lives. For anyone who’s experienced real loss or grief you are all too aware of how life somehow goes on, even as you go about the difficulties of your own day to day. Together, we’ve all been living in the inverse constantly; going about our lives while the parade of tragedies, malpractices, and general death to democracy goes on behind us. We’ve all learned how to adjust to it, how to turn on our TV’s and see it all and disassociate from the reality of our shifting political world. It is as if we are only now being forced to see it, forced to look at it, forced to live in a world where the everyday is another reminder that things are not the same.

For the first few weeks all I could manage to say to anyone was, “I don’t think we’re processing this”. I would use the royal “we” because it seemed to me as if half of everyone was awkwardly laughing about our state of affairs while the other half denied the seriousness completely. To me it seemed as if no one was grieving, no one was angry or sad, and that everyone was taking to social distancing as  more of a necessary evil if not a moderate inconvenience. The weight of it hadn’t kicked in, and for me, my anxiety lied in the anticipation of the whomp that reality would bring.

Of course it did, earlier this week (this being the third for most Bay Area residents) while listening to Ingrid Michaelson’s “Keep Breathing I felt tears well up in my eyes as I thought about how many people were hurting, dying, struggling to not only breathe figuratively, but literally too. Given that I couldn’t touch my face I let a few tears roll down to my chin and continued walking. My life at home was going alright, we were hanging in there, no one from my family or my closest friends families were sick, it was all going to be okay.

I kept thinking of how my generation hadn’t had its defining moment yet. We were kids when 9/11 happened, and while the war in Afghanistan and Iraq continued to rage on, it began before us and quite honestly would supersede us too. Sure, we helped usher in Obama, and sure, we had all protested in the streets, marching and fighting while Trump dismantled the economy that already wasn’t working for us. But millennials, for all their hype and poor reputation, lean towards action instead of cynicism; we just hadn’t had our moment. Boomers remained largely in charge and change happens slowly over time. We had found ourselves upstaged by the already woke Gen-Z, while also falling far less victim than the Gen Xer’s right in front of us.

So here we were, embracing real adulthood, most of us feeling ever closer to the elusive “having it all together” or whatever that looked like for people who would never own a house, get married late, and have fewer babies than any generation previous. Before this, it was so close you could almost taste it – the American Dream (or whatever was left of it).

Then a pandemic – a fucking global pandemic.

I thought about how we would rise in this. I thought about how the fundamental workings and way in which we operate in the world was shifting, and somehow we would be the ones breathing life into the terrible situation we found ourselves in. This was an opportunity to have our moment, but the weight of it, the weight of all of it, was just too heavy.

This, of course, was not the time to test the limits of my own personal growth, and yet I found myself a slightly unwilling participant in test after test of everything I had learned in my twenties. Control issues, here you go, a world in chaos and shifting circumstances daily. Anxious attachment issues, here you go, connecting and disconnecting with people you can’t see or be with at all. Codependency issues, here you go, try to regulate yourself while trapped with your partner 24/7. Mommy issues, here you go, try being both worried and annoyed at her all at the same time. I was exhausted. I could barely eat, barely sleep, and even as I reduced the amount of news I took in I felt myself in constant overwhelm trying to hold myself together, trying to process my own life and the world around me with limited access to the things that usually kept me sane.

The few small tears surrounded by thoughts of optimism and generational triumph gave way to something else only a few days ago. I stood in line at Whole Foods waiting to get in and trying desperately not to start sobbing uncontrollably at the same time while on the phone with my best friend. I wiped away a stream of tears, face touching be damned! I was not okay and I was only further bothered by the fact that everyone else seemingly was. Everyone was just moving on as if all of this was normal and not extremely fucking terrifying every moment of everyday. We could die, our families could die, we could find ourselves struggling to get out of an economic recession that would pull us all under for years to come, and to top it all off we were all standing in line to grocery shop at stores that you had to be at before noon or risk not getting no food at all!

I am fortunate, I know, it would be stupid of me not to acknowledge my extreme privilege in a situation where so many others are far more intertwined in fear and anxiety than I. Most importantly, of course, I realize no one is okay, that behind each hand crafted mask everyone is just as overwhelmed; but, that was just the macro-level, that was just the noise in the background. On the microlevel I felt like I was walking on a tight rope of emotional stability, attempting to be the best version of myself within the worst version of reality (queue ,“this is the darkest timeline” for those of you who watch Community). Though a part of me feels like I’m failing, another part can’t help but see this as an opportunity too.

I’m not an aficionado of silver linings or anything, but maybe on both a macro and a micro level this is calling us to live in the state of discomfort that can only come before true transformation occurs. It’s okay to freak out and be not okay with our safety blankets so very far away from us. Everything we find ourselves hiding from, or barely doing, is now in front of us to do, whether it be personal growth, physical renewal, or a reestablishing of connection to other human beings; there is no more time than the time we have right now. I try to remember that when I feel like I’m fucking losing my mind and freaking the fuck out. I try to remember that I’m human and right now that means a person who is struggling through many many things right along side everyone else. Are we trapped in this nightmare, or are we being presented with the opportunity to change ourselves more than we ever have? Are we spinning out, or is this the moment where we even out the scales of cosmic, economic, and political justice in ways of which we had only ever dreamed of before? Will this be a catastrophe on a global and personal level, or will we find that at the end of this we are better people, better neighbors, and better friends than we were when this all started?

I guess we’ll find out, somehow

together.

 

 

 

 

My Mother & My Best Friend

My mom and I use to be best friends. As a teen mom she and I were always close, growing up together and developing an “us against the world” mentality from a young age. She came out while she was pregnant with me, which was only hard to explain to people as a kid because she wasn’t just a single mom, she was a lesbian single mom in a world before Ellen came out. There were partners along the way, but no one who could ever have our bond, no one who could ever be in equal standing with who we were to each other.

The world was really against us back then (and even now when I think about it); a young black lesbian mom and her young black daughter with the odds of our success scientifically minimal. Yet, my mothers’ effortless magnetism and strong understanding of early childhood development allowed both of us to skirt the usually pitfalls that research showed we were destined for. It wasn’t until later in life, upon deep reflection that I could even admit that, objectively, I had an unstable childhood. When I was young we lived even poorer than pay check to pay check, and I remember being dragged on buses, moving place to place and frequenting large amounts of buffet restaurants as some of my earliest memories. It was never traumatic, I always had clothes and food and beds to stay in even if they weren’t my own. Despite the varying characters that moved like ghost in and out of my life I was never abused or sexually assaulted, and to her credit my mother surrounded me with as many normal things as possible (Girl Scouts, Sunday school, swimming lessons), in her attempts to create the stability she was never able to provide.

As I grew older my mother never tired of reminding me she was a person first and a mother second. In a society where mothers are taught that motherhood is their main identity and perfection is achievable, my mother rejected that and made sure I knew it; choosing instead to expose me to being an adult at an early age. Fights happen, people cheat, relationships are hard and life is hard and you need to keep moving to survive. They were valid lessons but, it made me a pretty serious person even as a child. I became neither an optimist nor a pessimist but a realist, an adjective most people wouldn’t usually use to describe a ten year old.

Yet, the lessons that my mother really imprinted on me came in the form of her relationships. There has been around 8 “girlfriends” throughout my life, some for shorter times than others, but all of them overlapping one another. I remember loud fights and dramatic exits followed by a new partner who would spend their first few months doting on my mother and I before the pattern started all over again. To me it always felt like my mother was looking for something she could never find; leaving me in the chaos that always surrounded her and the havoc she left behind. Though her intentions were that of any mother, for me to be happy, I was so only in the moments when there was no one, when it was just her and I.  Because, our bond always withstood whatever “toxic” partner that happened to be around. We would spend hours on road trips laughing and talking and finding ourselves in random shenanigans. I became the straight man to her wacky character, the sidekick to her buoyant anti-hero, the unwilling participant in the less than ethical dilemmas she would find herself in. I never tried to change her, at some point along the way I had accepted that the closest my mother would ever get to a TV mom was Lorelai Gilmore, and that was fine with me. But, when it wasn’t just the two of us, the buddy comedy where my mother was undoubtably the star, I was the reluctant prized child that no one thought she’d have.

The statistic for young, single mothers, let alone mothers of color were (and still are) dismal. The script was that only mothers who worked three jobs with an all-star athlete son were lifted out of “the ghetto” later in life, but my mother did everything she could to save us from poverty while I was still young. We were never set-up to succeed and yet by the time I was five I could have full on conversations with adults. I was smart, an excellent reader, a strong public speaker, and I was endlessly charming (a trait I got from her) using a myriad of vocabulary words that even some adults couldn’t use in the right context. After sailing through GATE programs at school I was asked to skip a grade after 2nd, and though academically I was advanced, I struggled emotionally with the older kids. Yet, by high school I thrived as a cheerleader, a student body representative, and a writer with the ability to channel emotion through words on a page. She never pushed me, never became one of those moms that takes a talented kid and works them past the point of exhaustion; but she relished in my accomplishments and exaggerated them when cornered by well meaning people who could judge her. “Tell them about your writing”, “tell them about being a White House intern”, “Tell them how you live and work in San Francisco now” she would exclaim in front of people I didn’t know without prompting. I knew she was proud, but behind her eyes I could always see her watching the other people, begging them to see that she indeed was a good mother, and that despite their assumptions she had raised a quality kid.  She needed the validation that I never did, and it always left me feeling annoyed as if I was playing some versions f myself that wasn’t the whole picture.

As an adult, therapist would always start by asking about my parents. I would smile and talk about how I had a Dad who was sort of in the picture but could never emotionally connect to me, or even to relate to me if I was being honest. I would say that, “yes, I’m sure that had an effect on me”, but that had always been our relationship – minimal. Then I would say what I always said about my mother, “you’d have to meet her to understand…. but she and I are best friends”.  Everyone always understood me better after they met my mom. When my friends would meet my mother they would revel in her charisma immediately before looking at me and saying “I get it” as if that was the clear reason I could be such a buzzkill sometimes. I would describe her quirkiness, her ability to dazzle a room, and then I would say she wasn’t perfect, but I knew she did the best she could. I would shrug and move on to the next subject, my career or my relationships. I was willing to talk about my depression, my struggle with anxiety, how both of those affected my career and relationships, but I would steer sharply away from any connection or criticism of my parents. I had my feelings about them but I had an okay childhood, I turned out fine; my mother was my best friend.

Of course, there were times when she wasn’t. After I turned 18, any criticism of my mothers lifestyle or choices was a no-no. For 6 months when I was 21 she refused to speak to me because of some argument over her girlfriend. During the deepest part of my depression she would grow frustrated with me and disappear for weeks at a time citing her own life drama as the reason. She was the one yelling through the phone trying to get information when I was hospitalized in my mid-twenties but wasn’t there, and, when I had to move home, it was my estranged father who had a place for me to stay. She was never particularly affectionate with me as a child, and, besides her incessant selfies, was not a big hugger even when I was in front of her. She was always there but she was never there in the way I needed her, in the way where in the moment I mattered more than she did.

But, what do I know, I’m not a mother. I couldn’t possibly understand the sacrifices that comes with birthing and raising a human. I think about it all the time; the pain, the exhaustion, the mere fact that you’re now endlessly responsible and accountable to this tiny human. I dread it, and the closer I get to the reality of having my own I balk at the amount of fearlessness that it takes to walk into motherhood. Could I have done any better than she did? One of the hardest things is to live life as a black woman, unseen, under appreciated, systematically oppressed by society – so there is no gratitude for creating a strong black girl. It’s thankless mothering. My perception of my mother comes in spite of all of that; ironically, it comes from the fact that she is a person first, not a mother.

When I step back I am able to see the effect that she and her choices had on me. I’m not sure when, but you do at some point start to see your parents as the flawed people they are – as humans. It’s hard to adjust your relationship with them and reconcile the person you saw them as growing up with the person right in front of you. What’s even harder to digest is how all those flaws leave holes that you yourself have to fill. When you reflect on it you hear everything they said to you, everything you saw, everything you didn’t see, and it hits you to your core that those things that you can’t figure out and you hate about yourself are manifested in those moments. When I took the time to look at my own holes, an anger rose in me so strong that the bond between my mother and I broke, and with it a sadness and mourning that even now I can’t explain. It wasn’t because of all of her mistakes from my childhood, it wasn’t even because she was the antithesis of a “ideal mom” (whatever the fuck that is) it was because she was still digging those holes, still making choices and living a life that hadn’t really changed in 30 years.

I’m hardly the first person to have a complicated relationship with my mother. In my mind I will always be the moon to her sun, orbiting around her while she powers everything else. I realize that the mother/daughter bond is a journey of self discovery that never ends, and I know that when I have my own children I will uncover yet a deeper understanding of her sacrifices and relish in her strength and determination to give me all the things she didn’t have. I can only imagine all the terror of having children and knowing the inevitably you will fail them in some way, the even out of the best intentions they will become a living reminder of everything you’re not and everything you could never be. That’s the gig. We read every mommy blog in the world now and forget that we ourselves are still trying to figure out what “mommy and me” really means. For us grown women it’s not all fun and games, but we find our way, we always find a way back to our mothers in the end.

Dear Me: A Letter to my 28 Year Old Self

If you are a reader of my blog you know that, since the beginning, this blog has been an open diary into my life; my life that is, at times, extremely real and extremely difficult to write sometimes because of how vulnerable it makes me feel. At it’s best my blog has made a few people feel less alone in this journey that is your twenties, and at it’s worst has hurt more people then I care to remember in so many ways. It has chronicled my various heartbreaks, successes and random thoughts on the world happening around me. Cheers to another year as I write my annual birthday letter to myself. 

Dear Me,

You are ok. You are supported. You are strong. This is the mantra you will use all year long and it is in this year you learn the most important lessons about who you were in your twenties and who you want to be as you exit out of them.

You fall in love this year. After wishing, and praying, and hoping, you fall in love and build a real grown-up relationship. But like any relationship there will be pitfalls, moments where you feel yourself pushed and stretched to be a better person, and moments where you feel you’re no where near the person you need to be to have a partner like you do. All of that wishing, and hoping, and praying worked, it brought you exactly the person you were suppose to find. Someone who loves you despite all your flaws, someone who loves you so entirely that you have the freedom to bring your full self into the picture. You will come to know that this type of love comes at a cost, and the cost is doing the work needed to sustain a relationship so honest and true. The fights, the doubt, those will come and so will the desire to want something flashier, more dramatic, but you will see in the small moments, in the moments that count you have someone who loves you unconditionally in a way you never saw as a kid and you never imagined as an adult.

There’s another lesson you learn this year that goes along with that because there are times in this 28th year where you will feel stalled, like the big things aren’t happening and the movement to getting there seems unsurmountable. Give yourself the grace you’d give to someone else going through it, learn to count the wins even when you feel like they’re not wins at all. You will see that, though it’s slow moving, there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing wrong with not rushing, not moving, not having all the answers. You want to get to the big things in life so badly, to this idea of what being an adult is but at some point you’ll realize you are living it, and the part you’re dreaming about will come, just not on your timetable, not in the way you envisioned it.

Each step of the way this year is bigger than you can see. The months in between now and the next year will unravel so much, so many insights, so many take aways. You will have more questions than answers this year but in learning to live in the unknown and embracing not knowing you will find yourself confronted with the many unhealed scars that have followed you – some your whole life. Healing is such a brave thing to try and do and yet you do it so much better than you can see now.

You are ok. You are supported. You are strong. It is in the moments that you forget that you will need to draw the most strength for yourself. You are allowed to break, you are allowed to stop moving long enough to sit in the discomfort that plagues you and fully feel those emotions. You don’t always have to have the answer. Everything you’ve done up until this point has prepared you to be here, in this moment. Enjoy it because it all starts to rush by so fast, and the next thing you know the twenties you hated so much will be over and a new chapter will begin.

Love,

Yourself

The Last Emotionally Unavailable Man

*** This article will soon be featured on Thought Catalog!***

 

“I’m kind of emotionally unavailable right now.”

I read and re read the text. If he had said he had an STI I would have been less reactive, but the fact that this, something I had suspected but had not confirmed, was a worse case scenario. At 29 I had my fair share of EUM (Emotionally Unavailable Men), I even did the unthinkable and fell in love with one whom I dated for a year before my sanity left me entirely. Since then I had been careful not to get too close to one, and besides a brief summer fling and a few losers here and there I had managed to avoid them completely. I was too old for their bullshit, but I was predisposed more than most to be drawn to their endless charm and aloofness.

I stared down at the text contemplating what to say next.

Don’t seem desperate, but say what you want. Try not to sound pushy, but don’t apologize. Be respectful, but also stand in your no nonsense womanhood like a fucking boss! Thanks Lizzo.

We had started out as coworkers, and in the beginning I had no interest in him though objectively he was good looking and I enjoyed our conversations. Then one day it was like someone had put glasses on me and I really looked at him. Fuck he was fine, and for the first time in recent memory I had to remind myself to close my mouth and stop staring.

The flirtatious energy was palpable, but he was that way with everyone and I was at least smart enough to know that his subtle winks and sincere compliments were not because I was special. Besides, I was never super into guys other people hyped up because they were usually overrated and extremely egotistical. But it was like he was turned off by his own popularity. He shied away from overt compliments and acted, convincingly, like he had never heard anyone suggest he was good looking in his life. Instead of turned off I was endeared, almost to a point of emotional blindness.

After a couple of weeks of giggling and the occasional brush of the shoulder I asked him if he wanted to hangout after work. To my surprise he said yes even though it was crazy hot and there wasn’t really much to do. He suggested drinks at a bar on the other side of the lake from our restaurant and without thinking I hopped in his car and felt a rush of adrenaline and anticipation. Was I going to make out with him? Touch him? Divulge my closest secrets, fears, and anxieties?!

I should probably just not respond… but I don’t want to be a dick. Should I text my best friend and ask her what she thinks? Do I want to know what she thinks? I already know the answer to this question but maybe I should just check and have her validate that this is a big no, red flag, see you later, bye. 

We sat in the corner of the restaurant talking in hushed voices. For some reason we started with beer but quickly changed to wine, which I admittedly told him had a tendency to make me a bit handsy and all together horny. A few more glasses in and our body language was anything but platonic. We saw another colleague from work who I wasn’t particularly on good terms with and he went over to say an obligatory hello while I waited sipping my fourth glass and silently freaking out.

I think we both liked each other for the same reason – the mystery, the sex appeal, the inability to read each other in a sea of people who were so easy to read. We were drawn to each other and if you asked me right now about our conversation I would only be guessing at the details. I’m sure we talked family, and ex’s, and how we both ended up here, and although it wasn’t explicitly intimate I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was a date, a point only emphasized by my insistence on paying. Not wanting the evening to end just yet we decided to walk along the lake and I was suddenly reminded that I was wearing work clothes and smelled of sweat and desperation. We didn’t walk for long before we found a grassy spot over looking the sunset and he took out a book to start rolling us a joint. Our facades temporarily disabled by the booze I tried my best to pry a little deeper into him, but instead he turned it on me, giving me a subtle dose of my own inquisitive (and frankly intrusive) line of questioning.

I’ve ignored this warning before, I should definitely block his number. No, wait, I’m mature enough to handle this, I’ll just proceed with caution by telling myself I have control over the situation…. I know the pitfalls this time. Don’t get too attached, never force him to make plans, be as distant as possible. Stuff all your feelings into the pit of your stomach and NEVER LET HIM SEE YOU SWEAT.

If it hadn’t been for the sudden Truman Show like appearance of a stranger sitting next to us I would have kissed him. In hindsight I was both glad and regretful I didn’t. He busied himself with the strangers thrift store bought golden goblets and somehow got us two more glasses of red wine. Instinctively he knew the moment was intimate and had stopped it, maybe unconsciously, before it got too intense. I felt more exposed than ever, trying my best not to vomit out a string of vulnerabilities that I could not take back. What was I doing? What was this even? In a summer filled with disappointments I was trying my best to hold myself together with glue and tape. My home life was a mess, my work life was a mess, and when I did see my friends I felt like we were working our way through a Google Doc agenda of things we needed to catch up on. Honestly, I was sad, and I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs with no one to see me. But he saw me. Maybe it was just for a moment and maybe it was all in my head but for a brief moment he could see how desperately lonely I was and connected with it. It revived me, but probably scared the fuck out of him.

“I really appreciate you… you’re so sweet…. it’s just that…”

Is this dude for real? Is he blowing me off because he thinks I want to date him?  I wasn’t really asking him to date me…. I should say that, just so it can be on the record that I never wanted anything more than friendship. Right? Right?!?!

After the sunset the sprinklers turned on and we were hosed. If it hadn’t already seemed like some strange romantic-comedy this really sealed the deal. I agreed to walk him to his car noticing the sudden chilliness in the air and wanting to get home so I could slowly pick over ever memory of this. Once we got back to the restaurant I looked at him and smiled as he reached to hug me. It lingered for a bit before I grabbed his hand daring not to let go as we parted ways. I never looked back, though now I wish I had. We texted later confirming how nice it had been, how much we wanted to hangout again, how good it felt to have a new friendship because it’s hard to make new friends as an adult.

But then, just like that, it was like it had never happened. We went back to working with each other and I did my best not to embarrass myself with my obvious crush. For one thing, I definitely didn’t know what exactly had occurred, for another, nothing had occurred, and lastly I had been in the industry long enough to know what happens when two coworkers engage in this type of behavior and it was about as productive and uncomfortable as a White House reporter questioning Trump. We exchanged texts back and fourth occasionally, me always trying to make plans, him always trying not to. He was cordial and kind about it, but three weeks after our outing I felt much like a little girl chasing the object of her affection around the school yard. After a month of asking to hangout I was exhausted and a rising bubble of anger was threatening to upend it all if there was anything to upend to begin with.

“…. look I’m sorry if you thought I was looking for something more…” I hastily erased the text hoping he wasn’t watching the dots appear and disappear on his phone. He definitely wasn’t.

I can’t say that! But I also can’t tell him how broken a guy who was emotionally unavailable had made me before. I couldn’t tell him how long I cried, how intense my disappointment, how much it made me question everything I knew and everything I was. How do I even express the trauma this brings out, the bubbles of anxiety that leave me panicked and alone? He doesn’t care about that, and there are no words in the English language to express it without him bolting in the other direction.

“I hear you, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I was disrespecting your boundaries.”

I sent it without thinking if I should add anything else. I meant every. single. word and yet I waited for him to keep texting me. I was helplessly bound to his inattention, I knew logically this was a dead end but I was only at the first stage of grief: denial. The part of me that thought that there was a moment, that we connected, had never felt so alone, but I was sure I had felt it, I was sure there had been. Connection is valuable and we underestimate it in our society, disregard it, take it for granted; yet the moments when we truly connect with another person is part of what makes being alive so great. I think that anyway, but I always run into people (men) who run from that connection, who for whatever reason see it and think it’s too big of a risk, too much of a hassle, too easily complicated to pursue it further. If I were honest, I would have written more than just, “I hear you, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I was disrespecting your boundaries.” I would have said:

There’s always talk about being in the moment. People talk about it endlessly, wanting it, striving for it, but when we get the chance to live in the moment we let it pass us by. For one afternoon I was living in the moment. I wasn’t thinking about some other time, some other space, somewhere else that I would rather be. For one afternoon I was myself, flawed, emotional, filled with a sadness that could only be seen by you. I’m sorry if you’re too emotionally unavailable to hear that, but that’s my truth. I value what we had, even if we never have that again.

Maybe if I said that I would have felt better. Maybe if I had said that I would have left it alone like any sane person would. But I had to go down the rabbit hole, and the ways in which I tried too, unsuccessfully, recreate some sort of momentary experience left me stark naked (sometimes literally) and begging for attention. It’s so strange how we all become that girl, even with evidence, even with knowledge from the past; desperate, confused, left wondering what we did wrong. It’s also easy to characterize EMU’s as the problem (actually it’s an epidemic that’s symptomatic of our toxic masculinity culture) and in return internalize the distance they create as a personal attack on us as people. It’s not, and I have been lucky (?) that each one I’ve encountered has made clear their non intentions and truly haven’t wanted to hurt me. Some call them fuckboys but to me their just hurt people; and as we know hurting people, hurt people.

I’m done. I value myself. This was the last emotionally unavailable man I will ever tolerate. Even his friendship is hallow, fleeting, withheld. The only thing I have left to do is walk away –  and just like before, never look back. 

 

 

10 Years Later

” This never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened.” – Don Draper Mad Men 

Ten years ago today I graduated high school. It doesn’t seem like yesterday, but it also doesn’t feel like a decade has passed. Their are a lot of expectations around what it means to attend a high school reunion, but for us, the class of 2008, the pressure to “catch up” with old friends from high school feels both redundant and unnecessary.

Even though Facebook had been available for select college students since 2004, it wasn’t until 2007/2008 that people moved from the popular MySpace accounts to the social media platform that would soon become a ubiquitous way to keep up to date with friends and casual acquaintances without ever having to talk to them. Over the past decade I have watched as we all went away to college, as we navigated the early part of our twenties, as some of us got married and some of us had kids, and now here we are and I’m not left wondering what became of these people because I already know – we moved on with our lives.

Looking back now it’s easy to romanticize the ending of high school in the greater context of what the world was that June. Barack Obama had all but formally locked down the nomination for President and we were a country of “Yes we can” unaware that we were on the brink of a financial crisis and a housing market that would crash and take out many peoples savings. We were enthralled by the FIFA World Cup and the Beijing Summer Olympics and with Rihanna & Chris Brown songs playing in the background long we were oblivious to the disturbing facts around their publicized relationship.

Everything seemed so important, and for me, I couldn’t wait to leave the small beach town I grew up in and everything that it represented. I had no idea the crazy up’s and down’s up ahead along the winding road that would lead me here.

In searching for the right photo to put with this post (which I didn’t even find!) I was able to take a picture tour through the years, which in my mind had blended together but honestly had somehow buried themselves in the hidden corners of my memory. All those memories feel far away and it’s “shocking how much it never happened”. The emotions, the learnings that felt so big after graduating remain in this nostalgic place where I looked thinner and was untouched by what “adult” life would be. Retrospectively it feels like 20 years since putting on that cap and gown and walking towards a diploma, but probably for many who graduated 10 years ago it only seems that way because we entered another era over these years, an era that we were on the border for, the mid mark for millennials but separated from Gen Z following behind.

As I write a DJ Earworm mashup from 2007 & 2008 plays and I’m reminded of riding around in my small Ford Focus with the windows rolled down not knowing that the things I didn’t know were allowing me to dream of possibilities so big that nothing seemed out of reach or unrealistic. It was all skipping class to go to the beach, sipping on Smirnoff Ice while attending bonfires, car sex, assignments that only mattered until college apps were in alongside homecoming, grad night, senior pranks, prom and grad night. It was the very best moment in time but we didn’t know it and yet we enjoyed it as if we did.

My graduation itself was on a cold foggy afternoon a week after our schools Black Graduation with my actual graduation party in between the two events. My mother, ever the party planner, threw a backyard bbq that rivaled a wedding and while I didn’t accumulate as many checks as my friends, I walked out of the party with a whopping $700 which lasted me the whole summer (those were the days). I remember my mom and dad waiting in the high rise bleachers as the rest of my senior class lined up wearing oversized caps and gowns and quivering from the cold quietly underneath. Afterwards we met some of my friends at a fancy restaurant where I basked in the glory of being done, of thinking, “now I’m an adult!”

That was ten years ago. I sit here now typing on my work computer half way between finishing something up for a deadline and texting my friends about weekend plans. A bank statement notification pops into my email inbox and I wonder if I’ve taken anything out of the freezer for dinner tonight since I’ll be home late after yoga. I’m debating on whether or not to have a cold brew or drink more water and adjusting myself uncomfortably in my work dress with my company zip-up hoody that’s a prevalent outfit accessory for those in the tech industry casually thrown over. I need to write a check for utilities, update my card for Netflix, do laundry and put in a prescription for my anxiety medication even though I won’t have time to pick it up until Friday and I have yet register my FSA card. I’m making a list of reminders to call my aunt, send a Father’s Day card and make a decision on where to travel to over holiday break this year instead of just silently daydreaming while browsing Airbnb.

When they handed me that diploma I didn’t think this is what it would look like ten years later. I had dreams of being married with a kid on the way and killing it in my high powered career. I’m not disappointed in where I am (all the time), but I imagine various conversations about the realistic mundaneness of actual adulthood as something I would not enjoy with people I’d much rather give a “like” to on Facebook or Instagram than talk to. We don’t need to physically catch up, but reunion or no reunion here we are at a strangely arbitrary milestone and it’s not that bad, it’s just different. At least now, I know to want everything but expect nothing for the next ten years ahead.

 

 

The Person You Are When Shit Hits The Fan

This post is not about my trip to Thailand; in fact, I probably won’t write an article solely about my trip abroad because there’s a million of those out there and quite frankly my experience probably wasn’t much different than the many many millennials that frequent the country and it’s surrounding islands anyway. What I will do is talk about it in the greater context of my last year, my last 6 months, my last two months all leading to here.

I’ve had this blog for five years next month and while I can’t pretend to know everything about being in your twenties, I’d like to think over the course of these five years I’ve become a stronger person, a better writer, and a more relatable human being in general. I feel the growth with every passing year and the unfolding and discovery of myself has led me to understand a lot more things than I did in my early and mid twenties. In the past year I’ve increased my Salary by 40% (I fucking kid you not), I dealt with the wedding of my mother and the new family dynamics that entails, I moved from a space that didn’t fit me to a place I’m happy to call home, have gone through work drama that left me more humble than ever before and I uncovered the key triggers behind my insecure attachment style when it comes to relationships. You’re thinking “wow!” right? How do you do all of that in a year and come out on the other side? I’m a millennial in my twenties and it feels like those kind of success are too overwhelming for me to handle alongside day to day life.”

To be fair, in writing it sounds easier than it really was. There were multiple situations and experiences where I had no idea how I was going to get out of them. In many instances my ego, and the reality of my own insecurities made me feel like, at any moment my whole life could just crumble. The funny thing is, I’ve experienced so much in my twenties that truly could have broken me and instead of breaking me each situation lit a match inside me that has only grown. My resilience to set backs burns brighter, the principles I value has guided me in every thing I do, and who I am is so strong it outshines everything else. I have learned to be fearless in the face of overwhelming obstacles, steadfast in my own worthiness, determined to grow up, fix myself, face my demons. When shit gets real it forces you to be that type of person, it forces you to believe in my motto, ” No one has ever said, ‘and then it just never worked out’.

Some might call that faith – in my mind it can be whatever you want to call it, but at its core it’s about knowing who you are when shit hits the fan. That person who brings out the very best, and sometimes, the very worst of who we are in a crisis. When things get real can you call upon that version of yourself, the part of you who, regardless of the situation you trust to figure out what to do? Because, like I said, it’s not about what you believe in, what coping mechanisms and family upbringing you’ve grown to depend on in those anxiety inducing, overwhelming moments. In the moments where the puzzle pieces of your life feel so disconnected and nothing makes sense you think to yourself, “God, I hate my twenties” do you lean on things to get you through or do you rely on the only person who drives your life – you?

I missed my flight on the way back from Thailand. In an otherwise mostly enjoyable trip my poor planning led to me missing my flight by over an hour and I was left scrambling in another country, with limited options, in a packed Bangkok airport where I didn’t speak the language at midnight. After some mild tears in the face of a checkout girl, (which yielded nothing) an angry call with an customer service rep, and a last ditch effort to catch my plane laid over for 8 hours in Kunming, China, I was left with very few options to get home. My mother, worried but determined to let me figure it out, had honestly never felt so useless. This is not a negative thing, in fact it made it even more clear that I needed to pull myself together and depend on myself to get back home. Hungry, tired, sweaty and defeated at 3am I sat on a bench, cradled my head in my hands with tears streaming down my face and sat there for 5 minutes. People bustled by me and all my luggage and yet I had never felt more alone. I was jobless and more than 8000 miles from home and the idea of being stuck in a foreign country literally terrified me. Then, after exactly 5 minutes those matches started to burn my insides. I knew exactly what to do and with a million concerns for how I was going to pull off spending an unexpected $800 dollars fell away. Every trauma, every difficult moment I knew had equipped me to handle, literally anything and it was with that thought I got up, bought a ticket, and made it home.

It took me three days mind you, and a lot of thinking about being the best version of myself, the adult version, the one who understood that everything is always okay no matter what it looks like on the surface and despite the fact that I have pretty active anxiety and what I like to call “remission depression”. I don’t talk about my mental illness enough but that’s part of me too, apart of me that is has been in survival mode for the past five year, the part of me that brought myself here, in the life I live now. It is nothing short of a miracle because three years ago I almost died, to come back from that, to see where it all lead to and not feel utterly grateful is a slap in the face to myself.

In this moment in time the world feels on the precipice of shifting entirely, society is changing, systems are crumbling, we are all connected and disconnected at the same time. Our faith in our democracy and the injustice of that democracy towards vast constituencies labeled as “other” is weak and waiting to be exposed and rebuilt. It’s easy to lose who you are these days, whether by internal or external pressure. Don’t give into it, know who you are and stand firmly in that truth. It won’t be instinctive, shit, it won’t even be easy but it is what I know, and they say you should write what you know.

 

 

 

When shit hits the fan, be who you are, because “no one has ever said, ‘and then it just never worked out’.”

 

25 Pounds of Trauma

I’ve never really struggled with my weight. I’m one of those obnoxious girls who can stop eating bread and go to the gym and lose 10 lbs. in 6 weeks. When I was younger I was always a bit tall and a bit lanky but not extreme enough to have those adjectives excessively applied to my body type. I developed early and started cheerleading during my tween years and so my weight was just never a problem.

In college I yo-yo’d from time to time but after college, after cheerleading, after my body had, for the most part, stopped growing I rarely thought much about it. That is until now.

As a woman, and more specifically a black woman, I’m well aware of how obsessed people are with my appearance. The pressure to look like Beyonce or Michelle Obama’s arms, is ever present and when I’m not worried about how people are perceiving me mentally and emotionally, the physical perception is a constant. I’ve written before about how my black doesn’t always feel beautiful but lately the color of my skin plays as a background insecurity while my weight has taken center stage.

Now I will state here, before going any deeper, that I’m coming from a huge place of privilege. I can afford to eat healthy, have a monthly gym membership and afford hot yoga classes when I want. I also know that my weight problems pale in comparison to those who have been be struggling with weight their whole lives or those who’s body type can be described as naturally curvy/thick who and will always tend towards being bigger. When you break it down culturally and historically Black and Brown folk are several times more likely to be obese than their counterparts and I am no where near obese. So it is here that I am acknowledging the things I’m about to say about my weight struggles are personal and to pretend otherwise is marginalizing the experience of those with much further to go in their weight-loss journey .

I’ve experienced weight gain like this once before. In 2013, during the darkest days of my depression I must have gained 15- 20 pounds. It was unnoticeable to me but others saw such a difference that even my family wondered if I was pregnant. Looking at pictures now I see it, the pain, the trauma, but no one said anything and I lost the weight after some commitment to my health later that year. But this time is different. This time I can feel the weight creeping on me as my skin stretches and the weight distributes evenly throughout my body. I feel weighed down and the guilt I have about gaining without the same steadfast commitment to losing as I’ve had in the past causes me nothing but sadness and defeatism.

But over the last 6 months I’ve been going through trauma again. Moments of such deep sadness and hostility that eating an entire Dominos pizza is the only thing to bring me comfort. Carbs and more carbs, sugar and more sugar, cravings of nothing but fried and salty food so that every emotion and feeling could be stuffed as deeply as the food I’ve been putting in my body. I know why I’m eating, I know what the matter is, but for the first time in my life I can’t force myself to stop, I can’t flip the light switch and then magically be 5 pounds lighter, it has been a fight and I have to admit I feel like I’m losing it.

Of course no one sees it as much as I probably think they do. Sure my face is a little rounder, and my mid section seems unnoticeable underneath sweaters and drapey shirts that is a common outfit staple here in San Francisco, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.  Over the fall I would squeeze so tightly into my size 6 jeans that my stomach would feel like a boa constrictor was wrapped around me. I would take them off, hold them against my body and ponder why they looked so small. The widening of my hips, a physiological joke that my body is now in it’s “child-bearing” prime, was something I accepted fairly early on. I parted ways with jeans I knew would never fit my slightly curveier lower half but the truth of my weight gain still remained, hips be damned. It became so painful to put on jeans that I would only dare put them on for dates and networking events, silently suffering the entire time. I finally decided to find more suitable pants, a size up for more comfort but within 6 weeks, as my emotional state continued to crumble, the pants too grew tighter.

Luckily dresses and leggings are also staple fashion statements of the SF #basic life. Pair some boots and a jean jacket or hoodie and I was golden. Every weekend I would tell myself, “Monday is a new day, I’ll start taking better care of myself then” but by Wednesday there I was again, burrito in hand while I tried to keep the never-ending trauma from taking a hold of me. I was happy eating, but the regret and self-loathing that came after was something I had only heard about while watching episodes of my 600 pound life. “I’m not 600 pounds, I still get out, I still can walk the SF hills and run to catch a bus, this isn’t all that bad”, I would think to myself anytime I was getting too down about it. I felt bad for eating, I felt bad for gaining weight, and now I felt bad that I wasn’t accepting myself the way that I was. As a feminist and a millennial I didn’t want to body shame myself and I definitely didn’t want anyone to know I was body shaming myself because that meant I cared about the unfair standards that our society places on woman, which to the people I roll with was way worse than weight gain.

So I was losing all around but not in the way I wanted. I was never excited to go workout and the thought of it made me tired and sleepy. Trying on clothes was a disaster and even though I was starting to feel my own sense of style developing I was simultaneously figuring out what worked well on my new frame and it was not what I had been use to in the past.

After some processing with friends, family, and my support group it became even more apparent that what was happening was that I wasn’t putting on weight, I was putting on trauma. I wasn’t dealing with my emotions and because I wasn’t out of a traumatic situation the trauma stayed on and my resolve to get it off was bound to fail. So I took . different approach, I started telling myself, “I need to heal myself and then the trauma will fall off”. I would tell myself this on the treadmill, on the stair-master, in every yoga pose and ab crunch. I started taking iron so my energy would replenish and drinking probiotics so that if all else failed my guts would take over and flush out any processed crap I was putting into it. I tried to use my upcoming Thailand trip as motivation, working towards that perfect bikini body but every time I changed my focus from healing the trauma to losing the weight I would see no results and my urge to eat would crawl back up.

So I’m taking it one day at a time; balancing between being acceptive of where I am and how I look and actively doing things to make my body happier an aid in the healing process. I’m learning how to love my body while also being at peace that right now when I look in the mirror I see myself differently because it’s still there, it’s still fresh, I can still feel the situation weighing me down. It’s going to be a bit longer before the trauma is off and healed but in the meantime I invested in the right size jeans and I wear them everyday.