Memento Mori: September 2021

There are only two months left in the documenting of my Memento Mori and three months left in 2021. I ended August looking forward to more easy breathing, love, peace of mind and abundance of everything that’s good for me and less to none of what isn’t. Even though this is a monthly recap, it gives me an opportunity to be as honest with myself as possible as to where I am mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically in life. Facing facts is a thing I choose to do because without that kind of self-awareness, it becomes easy to lie to myself. If I’ll lie to myself, I’ll lie even easier to others. I’ve seen delusional worlds created too often of what people wish things to be instead of accepting what is and working to change what’s in our power to do so.

The more I speak up, the more I feel like I’m getting the voice back that I used to love. I’ve silenced myself for distinct reasons over the years. Sometimes to accomplish things quicker than if I kept speaking up every opportunity I got… other times because of the conflict that speaking up naturally creates. I noticed that I was attracting people I didn’t really want to be around because I’d stopped speaking up about everything that mattered to me.

I remember someone telling me years ago that even though we can have an opinion about everything and anything, it doesn’t mean we need to share it with everyone. While that’s a truth, it was stated to silence the things I was choosing to speak up about. There was a time that I’d unequivocally accepted that speaking up would create distance between myself and those I might have grown comfortable with being around. As I started experiencing loss on an unbearable level, I unconsciously started to lower my voice. Speaking up was only going to cause me to lose more and as I saw myself unraveling, I did the only logical thing. I shut up a little more.

This didn’t really help do anything but convince some people that I was okay with things that I don’t really fuck with, so I realized I needed to make some different changes on my end. I needed to get back to the part of me that could accept loss better. The reality about people is that they will come and go. Being surrounded with people who we’re not aligned with, will attract more unwanted things and situations than blessings. So, September has been revisiting the Art of Letting Go.

As I continue to let go, it makes room for where my attention needs to be invested.

Paying attention to the kiddo isn’t negotiable but the older she gets, there are things that I don’t need to be as attached to when it comes to her growth. She’s at an age where I can give my own growth more attention. This has allowed me to focus on going back to school to finish these 45 credits, sharpen my professional skills in other areas so I can transition into something else than what I’ve been doing for almost 30 years, and enhance the happiness in my personal life.

Life has always been a juggling act but raising a child without the help of their other parent has been a rollercoaster ride I wouldn’t wish for anyone. I’ve done my best in trying to make sure the kiddo has enough adult figures around to rely on in addition to myself. For a minute I was beating myself up about some of the people I had chosen because they weren’t invested in her or me enough to stick around. That’s 100% their choice they have a right to but it did fuck with me mentally because I’d made the mistake of assuming that my years of “friendship” with these people would solidify a mutual understanding. We don’t all grow at the same pace or in the same areas and I had to swallow the tough truth that those are just some of the people that won’t move forward to where we’re going.

I had to remind myself of the people who are choosing to stay. They deserve my time, attention, and work because they’re already giving me those things. Fixating on the Why’s of those who no longer have time, attention or space for me and the kiddo does nothing but add to what I feel I lack. There will be moments where I’m operating from a place of survival because of the reality of my life circumstances that I’m working to change. There are also moments where I can operate from a place of thriving. My focus remains on balance and harmony. I don’t want to balance or harmonize with dysfunction. Things/people that aren’t in harmony with me and the kiddo, threaten to disturb where I currently am and headed. I think it’s important to acknowledge this because there’s so much information out there that tries to convince us that we must choose one over the other… and that just isn’t how life works. We don’t acknowledge our duality enough and it traps us in this extreme space of either/or as if there’s no middle ground to living.

In October I look forward to acknowledging my duality more in how I live my life. I look forward to continuing to unblock this throat chakra so I can get back to fully speaking my mind. I look forward to attracting everything I want, need, and deserve.

Here’s to continuing to let go and making room for better.

Memento Mori: August 2021

As July closed out, I told myself that I’d look forward to reclaiming insurmountable amounts of time and freedom in August.

That didn’t happen the entire month of August. HOWEVER, the first two weeks? I felt like I was on a neverending cloud of happiness. I anticipated the 4th of August with every anxious nerve in my body. That was the day I signed my divorce papers.

There are people who don’t consider divorce to be a good thing and good for them. I am not one of those people. The idea of marriage, the wedding, and the appearance of a union is honored more these days than the actual partnership and responsibility involved in a marriage. It’s become a norm these days to value performance and aesthetics instead of everything included that are the nuances which will determine if the alliance succeeds or fails.

I grew up WISHING my parents would get a divorce. They separated and got back together so many times that I stopped counting by the time I reached my 20s. The outside world only counts the combined total of years they were together… they were together 48 years and married for 46 years. My father passed away a month after their 46th anniversary. The outside world doesn’t care that my mother only had one genuine year of happiness during those 46 years. The IDEA of four and a half decades spent tied to another person MUST be a beautiful thing, right? It must be for two people to stay attached in this way… right?

That’s what we want to believe because years are romanticized in ways REAL love and growth aren’t.

I got a divorce because time spent in misery isn’t a ministry I ever committed to preaching. The ex and I were friends (with benefits) for 3 years before the magnificent bundle of greatness was birthed, our daughter. We were legally married for 9 years but separated for 7 years. During these past 9 years, I’ve experienced some of the worst days of my life.

I could never imagine reconciling with a man who intentionally put me through his house of horrors in order to extol multiple decades of marriage. We create a belief in our minds that a person MUST love us BECAUSE they (repeatedly) asked us to marry them… they MUST love us BECAUSE they married us… they MUST love their child BECAUSE their offspring is flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood. Then reality settles in and some of us accept that sometimes people don’t love us or the child(ren) they created and what they really enjoyed was the idea of it all. Some people even convince themselves that others just show love differently, even when that “love” is toxic, abusive, dangerous, and soul sucking.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t dedicate decades of time to anyone who made it clear, I was not loved. With every year that passed since we separated, I was shown that love was just another four-letter word to this malignancy appearing to be a human. Divorce wasn’t the quick in and out process a lot of people were determined to imply it should be… as if they’d ever had to divorce anyone. There were lots of stop and go moments that could have been eliminated. Lots of stress that was shouldered more by me than him.

So to be divorced completely from a life draining entity is… divine.

Signing those papers gave me a lot of freedom back that was tied up in possibility. It released a level of control you’ll only know if you’re married and seeking a divorce, are a family law attorney, or just care to know how marriage works in every state of this un-united America. I woke up happy for two solid weeks… something I haven’t experienced in 12 years. So… divorce is a good thing for me.

My two weeks of breathing easy dissipated because life is still happening. There’s still a pandemic popping off, white supremacy is still running rampant and affecting my everyday life, parenting is non-stop with very little to no Me Time, STILL grieving a load of shit, but also still choosing to breathe, smile and laugh through it all.

The kid started middle school 5 days after the signing of the papers. This was another reason to stay on the cloud of happiness. Seeing her push through her anxiety was a proud parenting moment. It also assures me that I’m still capable of getting some shit right since she isn’t turning out too bad. Watching her growth sometimes gives me that tiny nudge I sometimes need to keep moving forward. If she’s this great at oney-one, who will she be at 21, 31 and my age (41)? I guess I gotta keep taking my mother’s advice to “keep living” so I can find out.

So, what do I look forward to in September? More easy breathing, love, peace of mind… hell, an ABUNDANCE of everything that’s good for me and less to none of what isn’t. Sounds simple enough but we’ll see…

(Originally published on September 15, 2021 via Medium)

Memento Mori: July 2021

1,085 words were written on August 1st for my July Memento Mori.

I’m not going to delete them, but all of it won’t be for public consumption. No matter how honest, true, and real, something else needs to be said.

The thing I desire most right now is to consistently see and know I’m cared for beyond all the words we toss around that don’t seem to mean much if they can be replaced with “I was busy.” While the rest of the world was busy during the last year, I was busy raising a ladyBug as best I can, becoming a mental health advocate, losing my job, moving across the country, getting another job, starting divorce proceedings, falling 3 times, fucking up my hip, dislocating some ribs, starting a project management course, having a major surgery, losing my father to cancer, and experiencing some other shit I never imagined would happen in my lifetime. Some of this shit JUST happened in the last 3 months… so wounds are still fresh, with no scabs in sight.

Every month, I looked for silver linings, trying to insert balance so the words I shared wouldn’t start to sound like the dark spiral of clouds I reside in. I kept telling myself it was having balance. It wasn’t. I was trying to force myself to feel something other than what I woke up feeling. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, none of this shit feels good. Especially when some of the people you’ve called friend only want to experience you when you can make THEM feel better about their lives. There’s no space for you to experience anything other than what they can benefit from… they aren’t available for your struggle, pain and tears.

All the talks of relationships not being one-way will go out the door… especially when we can use “self-care” as a reason to dip out on reciprocity.

The one authentic silver lining that had nothing to do with forced happier emotions has been the friend who inspired the Monthly Memento Mori. I’m reminded of her and that reminder triggers thoughts about the others who are fully present for me and Bug. I’m cautious as to how much I lean on them because of this deep-seated fear of when I have needed my friends, expressed it and then was treated like a stranger… as if my expectation that they follow through is too much. There’s a part of me that’s waiting for the other friends to do the same thing. Irrational? Not really, if you know anything about trauma. I do understand that THIS IS MY SHIT to deal with so I’m vocal about it, while still being apprehensive.

Back to the fully present friends… they keep me alive because contrary to all the cliché messages, memes, affirmations, etc. life sometimes don’t feel like worth living. Yes, I have a child that some people think should be the reason I KEEP living but that line of reasoning ain’t all that healthy. That’s a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a tiny human. I was two months shy of 30 years old when Bug left my womb. I had a reason to live prior to her and that never disappeared simply because she arrived. That reason was fading but knowing that you’re necessary beyond being of service to others? That shit makes me want to live.

So, shout out to friends who remind you that you’re necessary, wanted and worthy of time.

I got a 2 for 1 with silver linings this month though… finally got a date to sign the divorce papers. Talking about that marriage still causes me to feel a lot of unprocessed rage so there’s only one person who knows the most intricate details. She saw some shit in real time and other shit she’s been privy to because I trust that she’ll never use my lowest points against me. Being married to the person I share a last name with has been a never-ending nightmare. As much as I’d love to pretend he’s dead and a none factor, we have a child together. She cares about him even when she pretends not to and I see this… as a daughter of a man eerily close in personality as the husband and also as a mother who wants to fiercely protect her daughter from anything, everything and everyone that can cause harm.

So as July closes out, I look forward to reclaiming insurmountable amounts of time and freedom in August.

I can’t promise an immediate rise of happy emotions in August. That isn’t really how my depression works BUT I can assure myself that there will always be silver linings throughout life. That’s why I’m writing this in the first place.

(Originally published on August 7, 2021 via Medium)

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 50 whips were beat into 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 her 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.

{Originally published on July 8, 2021 via Medium)

Memento Mori: May 2021

They say that April showers bring May flowers. I haven’t been viewing any of my growth as flowers lately. I owe that to FEELING the pain of my roots pushing their way through the bullshit. It’s the part of growth we don’t talk about enough because it isn’t glamourous like our end results. I wish we openly talked about process more and that it was actually encouraged. Not the obvious A to B steps but the navigating of all the roadblocks that will present themselves. I wish people were more honest about their privilege and how THAT helps them navigate life a little easier than someone else. However, we don’t. We live in a society that constantly wants us to show up as attractive as we can possibly be so we don’t upset others with our normal ass ugliness. We all have it but work SO hard to hide it behind memes, posts, laughter and curated pieces of life intended to show us at our best.

The Isley Brothers were on to something when they said, “but at your best, you are love.” It leads me to believe that this is why we stay pressed to present ourselves in the way we do. Well… the month of May isn’t me at my best. It’s me feeling at my worst and being furious that I must LOOK like it for it be taken any kind of serious. It’s knowing that when we do look how we feel that usually signals we’re on our way to meet up with Elizabeth.

The final hours are nigh and the light at the end of the tunnel is a few steps away. This makes me think about my dad because cancer made him age what seemed like 50 years overnight. It was over the course of 4 years but that’s still a short amount of time, especially considering he looked like he could be my older brother for 38 years of my life.

this is what cancer looks like for some people… this is a progression of what my father looked like over the course of 4 years. at his death, he was even thinner than the third picture. I don’t feel like digging for that picture. it’s even more jarring than what’s here…

My mom recently visited for Bug’s 5th grade promotion and I found myself staring at her in the same way I stared at my dying father. She’ll be 65 in December but doesn’t really look a day over 35. She looks like she could just be my older sister. It reminded me that despite the insurmountable load of stress she’s been under, she STILL has a ton of life left to live. At least that’s what I’m telling myself because I don’t want to face the reality that she’s closer to check out time than I want her to be. According to the life expectancy of my grandparents and great grands, she has a good 20–30 years left to spend with the people she loves the most.

Mom & Dad… mom don’t look too much different than this now. She’s thinner but that’s about it… she looks young for being 64 years old.

There’s a part of me that hopes me and Bug are included in that because we haven’t been for so long. She says now that my father is gone, she can work on having a better relationship with us. There’s a part of me that says “just be grateful she’s trying” but there’s also a part of me that’s little Synitta being furious that she had to wait until my father passed away to SHOW she cared more about me and her granddaughter. She didn’t wait to do this with any of her other children or grandchildren. It feels like a consolation prize… especially because if my dad were still alive, she wouldn’t be doing it at all.

He had THAT much control over her… and our entire family. He was the dominating force for how we all moved. In a way, it’s good that he’s gone. It’s allowing change to take place that he blocked. I suppose this is also some of those May flowers that are blooming because of the April showers. His death was 4/13/2021 and it still feels like it happened yesterday. I’m curious as to when that’s going to go away. I have the urge to talk to people who’ve lost a parent… specifically people who had complicated relationships with their parent(s). Even when your parent was a complete dickhead to you, it’s still YOUR parent. You came from them… part of them STILL exists because you do, whether you like it or not. I don’t want to talk to anyone who thinks that death wipes slates clean. It doesn’t. If anything, death reminds you exactly of who that parent was to you. Especially if the relationship didn’t even change before they died.

I desire to talk to people who understand that no parent is perfect, no matter how we create the façade in our mind that they are to stomach that one of our Creators just wasn’t a great person. The goal is never perfection but the result should never be that a child isn’t loved. I don’t want to talk to someone that wants me to reframe who my father was. That isn’t how I get to a place of peace. Pretending some shit wasn’t what it was doesn’t help any of us heal. It’s deception of the worst kind and it doesn’t allow me to grow. My flowers won’t bloom if I infuse lies into my soil. Sometimes the truth is ugly and it hurts. I want to talk to people who understand that and make space for it. I want to talk to people who will talk back, not just respond with “mmmmhmmm” and “girl.”

May has reminded me that the things I want are important and I should be okay with stating them aloud. Everyone isn’t capable of meeting those needs and that’s okay. It doesn’t make them useless. It just means they aren’t the fertilizer I need now. I look at June wondering what it brings other than the heat. If we’re sticking to the theme of things, I see growth still happening. We had the rain in April to wash away the bullshit. May presented the growth. June… burns away everything else I don’t need to make room for what I do.

Hello June. Promise me you won’t be an insufferable cunt as you do your job.

(Originally published on June 6, 2021 via Medium)