The cracks that break the Mother's back.

The art of creating a human being is a delicate and intricate endeavor. I don't mean merely the biological dance of sperm meeting egg in a fluid swapping frenzy. I'm referring to the profound task of nurturing a soul into "being," with unwavering consistency and unconditional love, irrespective of their responses or achievements.  In theory, it might resemble programming a computer - crafting 'Tiny Turing Machines'. You condition them to a certain response by meeting or withholding their needs, guiding them towards more complex computations involving language, decision-making, and the manipulation of their environment.

However, as anyone (regardless of children knows) the reality is far more nuanced, complex and multifaceted than a simple algorithm. Or so we would have once believed. With quantum computing, data processing is faster than ever, allowing us to do more and become more convenienced. What we do with that convenience is entirely up to us. I suppose, if we govern our offspring correctly, they too will become 'quantum creatures able' to "mine" convenience at their own will (free or otherwise).

The parents are the first to be programmed.  In order to keep the child alive there sould be an innate biological, or at least culturally conditioned response on the part of the parent to see to the child’s needs, with the blind ambition to perpetuate the species.  It is only in service to the child's needs are they then able to begin their conditioning process; incentivizing or restricting rewards in positive positioning to gain a desired response. If we truly love them, they own us.  Our desired response is tied to thier reward system. We want their success and fulfillment - hard earned or not. I get a shiver of fear at how close that statement parallels (or maybe illuminates) my biggest pitfalls as an unconditionally loving individual.  Not knowing when to cut your losses and let go. 

I remember my father telling us children early on that if we were ever put in jail, he would not bail us out. I remember how unforgiving a statement that sounded and seemed to me at the time, but his thinking was that if we were so willfully adamant at going against his (read:"God's") commands, teachings and instructions; then we would need to live with those consequences. There would be joy and sharing in positive reward and recognition, but a cold back and unapologetic abandon during negative consequences and karma. Seemed unfair to me, and when I left school and he admonished me saying that he had been telling everyone that I was going to graduate from an Ivy League school, I made my sabatical all the more drawn out and prodigal. I felt any traditional "success" was all that mattered and was supported, or at least was worth boasting about - which is synonymous in a way.

Once upon a time, I would have willingly entered into romantic interpersonal contracts with unequal "give and take", giving much more than I asked or allowing myself to incur a deficit with some smug satisfaction that my love was somehow deeper and greater than theirs; wearing my bleeding heart on my sleeve like a badge of honor; my rose colored sunglasses atop my head - fat with ego.  

My son and the failed relationship with his father cured me of most of that ego, before it became inflated once more with how much I was willing to sacrifice as a single parent.  But, even that bubble burst abruptly with the recent realization that I had maybe been using the preoccupation of parenthood as an excuse for growth; avidly citing that I was always too busy to follow my dreams and to live in my ultimate purpose and power.  Even as that admission invalidates the importance of healing from past traumas, it never-the-less rings true for me. 

It has been in “the healing” where I perhaps linger too long.  After reaching a milestone of healing, I tend to stagnate, ostensibly to make sure the healing has not only crystallizes into something more than a performative habit, but is concretized in true integration, becoming part of my life’s purpose and ‘raison d’etre’.  With my life having much variability, that "crystallization" period is much longer than most. It must be digested, performed and integrated within the realm of "authenticity".

The healing needs to come in many modalities for me I've found. It is no wonder that I have an altar full of crystals; an array of essential oils, exercise equipment and home decor to remind me of my aspirations toward a "healed self".  They are representations of energies, entities and intentions that I call on and "call in" to find inspiration, incentivization, motivation and personal representation.  They may not always appear "routinely"; but perhaps more so algorithmically, and in a tandem during times when I need to perform my most healed and highest self. A "Hurry up and heal!" Hail Marry of sorts.

There is a crystal, charm, object or talisman for every corresponding trauma (potential or presenting). 

These objects represent a veritable "force field", "strong box", or even a weapon for the times when I am activated and my trigger finger itches for the "trauma button".  Up until recently, I carried these precious items everywhere.  Twenty pounds of extra cargo when traveling abroad was a metaphor for the emotional baggage I schlepped along as well. 

I spent so much time in front of my quarry, that one would query if that was not in itself an addiction or co-dependency that needed to be addressed, the hunks of sediment, weighty with irony.  I imagine that true integration of healing would transcend the altar.  The balance would come from within with no crystal accoutrement or involvement.  I do not consider it spiritual bypassing hold tight to this armor, necessarily; but rather both an anchor to return to and a badge commemorating struggling aspects of self recently overcome.  They are imbued with my unforgiven or broken attributes and set external to me, leaving me “free” to collect, refine and polish other parts of a fractured self, leaving me the shining gem.

The painstaking healing process is long and exhausting and I am am getting rather old. It is not that I had “gotten behind”, it was that I never cared to “get ahead”, or even “keep pace”.  At the end of the day, we are all racing toward a “dead end” (pun intended).  Even though it is popular to say: “It is not the journey, it is the destination”, as soon as you actually take the time to appreciate with sincere gratitude every present moment, you look up and realize that those very people vocalizing unsolicited botanical advice have graduated to retirement and you are still stopped “Smelling the Roses” in middle management hoping to one day be passed the torch of the most recent retiree (I should be so lucky) .  We are taught this competition from an early age.  It is inculcated into our psyche so much so, that we mistake it for being innate to our human condition.  

We are racing to define and refine our lives in comparison to others that we lose relation to ourselves - killing any potential alternate timelines and opportunities to live a life of pure expansion regardless of the audience.  There is a sort of purity in absolute chaos (evidenced by my own life); and in a way, can be observed in the young.  They are oblivious to the demands to compartmentalize their instincts and even intuition at times.  Instincts that adhere to the satisfaction of the “Id”.  The only measurement of time is based on the discrepancies between getting their needs met.  Apparently the “journey” matters as long as you do it linearly, moving forward in time and space.  It is not thought to be objectively worthwhile to revisit past places or to re-work old mistakes.  Understandable.  Logical, as it is not the most efficient way to reach success or to “retire” for most people.  Just keep going. "Don't look back, you're not going that way.", I remember hearing somewhere along the way

I always felt that if I moved swiftly enough and got better at making fewer mistakes - which for me seems different than getting better at making better decisions - then by the time I “retire”, my karma will be complete and I can quit this infernal and eternal return.  I will not look back. But that is institutionally committable logic to live by.  We frown and call those people “crazy” or “flaky” when they express too much eccentricity.  We hate any true heterogeneity.  It is unrelatable and unstable.  It tends to highlight even the most subtle conformities and commiserations with the toxic systems of homogenization that we all find ourselves apart of.  

I know how oxymoronic it is to lament a lack of belonging and substantiation within oppressively toxic systems, all the while recounting experiences of building community and being embraced/engulfed or enfolded by it at times - or by extensions of those very systems.  It is difficult to explain the feeling of constantly feeling like in outsider looking in.  In crowds, I felt as if someone else might have been better suited to be in my skin, so foreign the feeling of performing “self” in front of others in accordance with my physical form, external life experiences and incessant and ever pressing of life's expecations. Or perhaps that is the inception point of all my trauma leaving me to now feel diffused (read:disassociated) and floating as a lucid dreamer in this "awakened" state.

Being born in the margins, it is no wonder I fell through so many cracks.  I didn't even have to go anywhere to find them.  I, like most black women, was born in them.  I felt held there systemically, oppressively, perpetually.  I understand that I am a particular breed of contradiction to most people, and so I tend to engage others with a lack of attachment, foreseeing the future rejection of my “being”; and reduce it to their self-preservation within these same systems which were designed to oppress, exploit, divide and control us.  

Still, there are those that I have known for many years who have become so indoctrinated into these systems that they are unrecognizable as “individuals”.  I could not necessarily blame them for their voluntary commitment to the machine, nor their constant “correction” of my behavior with their unsolicited suggestions, advice and opinions.  I have reinvented myself so many times that I might now be unrecognizable to most people, and few would now take any pride in “knowing me”, so foreign I have become to them.  I found that I had to shed them too, for their egocentrism and arrogance.  They could have their old version of me, and with her, their endless projections of who I was supposed to be to them, for them and with them in this beast of a system that continues to disenfranchise and do harm to its constituents.   

Some of these individuals were more than just familiar, they were familial.  Most of my siblings are not just Machine dwellers, they are machine revelers.  And so far have not seemed to acknowledge any of  “the work” that I am engaged in if it is not directly adding to the Gross National Product.  I judge them for not placing their “blackness” in places of not just change, but influence.  To be fair, I haven't either and purposefully. I do not believe those spaces truly exist yet for a black woman living in radical authenticity.  I think that by default, my courage to live subversively has garnered me some level of respect, if only by way of “self”.   I think we are just beginning to see the extent of “black influence” that does not apply to the music or sports industries.  Therefore, I take this particular form of documentation and label it some sort of “art”, with my being a radical performing artist. 

Here, I show up with honesty, humility and wisdom (though debatable at times).  That is all, I think we should ask of artists. Therefore, as an emerging artist, I should be allowed to learn and grow, and yet I still sometimes feel that for the most part, my journey has been stunted by outdated versions of me that continue to run in the Machine’s operating system.  It shows up as expectations for how a single black woman carrying a lot of “baggage” could and would show up in certain spaces and in various institutions within the system; it shows up as my family’s constant invalidation of all that I have endured in order to “be” and “become” and it shows up with my acceptance of these narratives that I feel I have no ultimate control over and can not seem to change. 

How can I allow myself to be supported in a way that aids to vs. hinders my growth and expansion as a multi-dimensional being?  If I refer to myself as an artist, will others allow me the respect of "fucking up" in the name of "artistry", asking for help, and then offered rehabilitation toward ulitmate refinment? Or would my chaotic external state ("artistic" or not) be viewed as an indication of a deeper, more debilitating internal one. Would they necessarily be wrong in that assumption?  Does this documentation lend validity to my “artistry”, or does it give evidence to any "debilitation" or developmental arrestation given that I have been consciously and consistently working on my healing for decades?  Harsh truths for a stark reality. #nofilter