Memento Mori: June 2021

June hasn’t been the insufferable cunt it could have been BUT it has been a month of reflecting and tough decision making.

This month has been difficult to write about because I want to change how I feel but that ain’t how processing feelings works. I used to be so skilled at telling myself NOT to feel a certain way and FORCING myself to feel something more acceptable. My body is dog ass tired though, tired of FORCING itself to feel something else.

You ever sit and think about what REALLY being in the moment involves? I did that during June and had to accept that when we force ourselves out of a certain feeling, we’re not being in the moment. We’re fast tracking ourselves to a future feeling. Black people’s survival has involved this action for generations. We weren’t (and still aren’t allowed) to process the normal spectrum of emotions. We must suck it up and get back to work. We must turn that frown upside down and smile for everyone, regardless of the pain we’re in. Physical, emotional, and mental included. WE MUST PERFORM, PERFORM, PERFORM.

Think back to when we were enslaved, with no pay.

Nigger, you better pick that fucking cotton. It didn’t matter that you just had 50 whips across your bare back 2 days prior. Pick that fucking cotton. It didn’t matter that they had just stripped you of your offspring. Feed the white babies because they need to eat. It didn’t matter that you had just been raped the day before. Girl, peel those potatoes faster because you gotta go scrub the floors. Boy, clean up this shit. It ain’t gonna clean itself.

Now? In 2021? We STILL work for companies that have no fucks to give that your dad died one week, you had his funeral the following week, and a few days later you had surgery that has a slow healing process. It doesn’t matter that you inform your supervisor and human resources that your workflow might slow up because typing aggravates the surgery you JUST had. “Our billings have been too low. We all need to do better.” Doing the best you can doesn’t matter. DO MORE. PERFORM. PERFORM. PERFORM.

So I do.

I’m also in the middle of a divorce that started earlier this year. I’m aware that these things don’t get processed overnight. With every little bit of information that seeps out that the husband managed to keep to himself, I still gotta pick my face, heart, and soul up off the ground and take my ass to work. I gotta feed my kid. I almost forgot, I gotta feed myself too. The daughter constantly reminds me, “Mom, you know that feature in your phone that lets you schedule reminders? USE IT.” Sticky notes are more my thing and she’s never seen my desk at work to know otherwise.

Divorce is this ugly ass thing that constantly reminds me of why I left. You think that you’ve arrived in this place where you cannot be affected by the spouse anymore and an uppercut torpedoes out of nowhere, ripping apart all the stitching together you’ve done over the years. That gaping wound now represents a reminder that you’ve failed at something your parents and his parents doomed from day one.

When my mother met the husband for the first time, she waited until he left the room to tell me, “He’s a nice-looking guy but I don’t like him. It’s his eyes.” She didn’t trust him and didn’t know him. I hadn’t told her much of anything about him. My dad never acknowledged him as anything but That Nigga until we got married. I only heard him call him by his name once after we got married. His parents? We took Bug to meet the grandparents when she was 3 months old. As I stood in the kitchen holding this tiny bundle of love, her paternal grandmother whispered in my ear, “You can’t have my son, you devil. You were sent here to destroy us, but I won’t allow it. You and Joseph will never succeed as long as you’re together.” Who speaks that kind of evil over their own child and grandchild? But look at where we are… I hope she’s happy with that whack ass prophecy.

The worst the paternal grandfather ever said to my face was also a whisper, “You’ll never be a Samuels.” He was right too. I’m not a Samuels because the husband changed his name right before we got married. So, I’m a Walker Delano… but Bug is a Samuels. She holds on to that piece of her dad dearly because that’s literally all he’s left her of himself. She wants us to share the same last name, so she’s asked to change her last name to Samuels Delano. I’ll oblige because that’s the only thing I’m walking away with from this marriage… the name WE created and the best thing we created together… the Lovely LadyBug.

This isn’t even the tip of the reflection iceberg. Just a sliver of the things I’m being forced to acknowledge because I’ve pushed them down and away for so long. It’s like acid reflux though… unable to stay down where it belongs because it’s pushing its way back up and scorching everything in its path. One of the reasons being around people isn’t something I necessarily want to do, despite this raggedy ass pandemic forcing people to be distant for the last year and a half. Sometimes I feel like my name is Vesuvius. Erupting can happen any day and because of all the suppressed heat, dangerous is all I can think of and as great as it might feel in the moment, the destruction it could also cause isn’t something I want.

So, I sit with all these thoughts and sort through them at my own speed. Being around people changes my speed so, we’ve come to an emotional impasse. I know what a healthy me can look like and right now… I’m just not there. I haven’t desired boundaries so much in my life. I’m in pain every day, all day and I don’t feel safe, most days. I asked the universe that June not be insufferable… all I can say in response to that is, I’m still here.

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I’ve grown to hate this saying because what hasn’t killed me has weakened me. I’d be lying though if I said I haven’t learned anything along the way. So… what doesn’t kill us can make us wiser. That’s my takeaway for June. For everything that has seemed too hard to swallow, I’ve acquired a nugget of wisdom after digesting.

July…I look forward to moving away from some of this pain and anguish.
Give me more happiness than all of this draining mourning.
Please.