I used to laugh when people called me a witch. I used to think it was cool. It used to make me feel good. It made me feel like a novelty...like I had some extraordinary admiration.
I've known for a while now that my energy is strong, influential, intense. I've known since I was 7 and my older male cousin started molesting me. I've known since my gardener sneaked into my room on one of my mother's trips and molested me. I was 8. I've known since the first and only boyfriend my mom ever brought in to our home accused me of being "too womanly" for my age. His friend who was visiting thought that I was flirting with him. I asked too many adult questions and he wanted my mom to put me in therapy, he told her that something was wrong with me. I was 9. I've known since that strange neighbor grabbed me and forced me into his apartment at my friend Andre's house and pressed his forehead up against mine, telling me things that I've forgotten for almost 30 years. I was 10.
I'm 39 now and I've gone through so much personal trauma and the guilt of not believing that my trauma is even worth it since such an early age, I don't know which one came first anymore. My tears or the actions that caused them.
I've felt like an object all my life. An object that tied my mom to my dad. An object whose cry as a baby stopped her from throwing boiling hot water on him and became the pivotal moment that started their divorce. An object to be fawned after and touched and grabbed and attacked and beat up and dismissed and rejected and abandoned and to not have hugs and not have love and not have support and not have peace and not have joy and not have any modicum of humanity.
This feeling of unbelievable loss always leads me back to one thing.
I first contemplated suicide at age 11. I was in boarding school. I wrote my suicide note, then I walked out behind the dormitory, past the buildings in ruin, past all the hillside dwellings and I found the highest peak I could and just stood there. Looking out at a world of green and smoke billowing out of shanty homes, it was the most magnificent scene I had ever seen, right there in the mountains of Mandeville, JA. I looked down and I wanted to jump, but my feet never left the ground. I was afraid.
Days before I found out about being pregnant with my first daughter, I wanted to die again. I've had so much chaos and confusion in my head, but most of all it's been guilt that I struggle with. Guilt of not being good enough. Guilt from not loving myself enough. Guilt from not speaking up enough. Sometimes I think that I am the dumbest, most lost, insignificant speck of carbon dust. Something in me wants so much to be loved, that I took whatever scraps of it I got.
It's complicated. I am complicated. I know this about myself. I know my truth and my experiences. I know the ways in which I've betrayed myself, continue to sacrifice myself. I know what it means to admit this out loud and the repercussions. Those repercussions that have held me breathless for:
32 years
31 years
30 years
29 years
28 years
23 years
18 years
12 years
Each year, representing a year that now equals decades of suffocating trauma.
I think I've been called a witch more times than I've been called a nigger.
I've been accused of stealing the hearts, souls, spirits of men by more women and men than I care to remember. I've been alone for most of my life because of this. Truth is: I've always had a guiding grace. It looks after me, it protects me. For every trauma, I can remember a time when I was saved by grace, or a dream, or a voice, or a stranger.
My entire life has been a journey of protecting myself from myself. It has been a journey of knowing pain, hate, anger, betrayal from others and betrayal at my own hands. It has been the only power I have ever possessed. The only power that anyone has ever felt or seen. It is what makes me strong. It is what makes me live. It is what makes me laugh and love. It is my faith in myself: my own voice. It provides grace and grants me miracles. I've lived a life full of sorrow, tears and self-pity. I've had enough self-pity and regret to last me a lifetime.
So now I get to choose. I choose to put aside sorrow. Strength is easy to exploit. I am expected to be strong, I am expected to take these hits and move on. I am expected to take abuse and hate and marginalization and all the blame. I am expected to be victimized and then be the heroine of my own story. I am expected to be a superhuman while only receiving less than human compassion and care.
I say fuck that.
I choose to pursue happiness for my self. Unequivocally. Everyday. I AM the heroine. But it's not my trauma or my strength that makes me a hero. It's the fact that I won't stop. Some people may be intimidated, some may dismiss me, but there are still some yet, who can see my faith for what it is: an undying attempt to love myself. And to do that I can not ever stop. Everyday, I will wake up and love myself even more than I love myself today. And that's it. Even when I want to give up, I will love myself. No acts of grandeur. Just a promise... to love this witch, seductress, heathen, and, whore.
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