Grieving

Well as you all can see, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life and the past. I’ve been sorting through things with my adult woman perspective, and it has helped me to see that all of the things I hated about myself were normal. And that I was carrying these enormous mental and emotional burdens that were too much for me to carry. And that feeling the way I felt back then was perfectly sane, given the things I’d experienced.

It’s hard to stay sane in an insane world, ya know?

Revisiting the past with my new, self-compassionate, adult understanding has generated a lot of healing in me, but has also caused me to grieve. I can’t think about the past or the years and years I spent living with daily suicidal ideations without wanting to cry for the girl, teenager, young adult, who had too much on her shoulders and somehow managed to carry it.

I’m so glad I live in the time I do, where we have space in our culture to have these conversations. A generation ago, I would have spent my entire life convinced I was the only one who found life so hard. I would have thought my depression and anxiety were truly evidence that I was weak and broken. We all would have thought this. We all would have walked around with smiles plastered on our faces, thinking that we were the only ones who were breaking underneath all of our mental/physical/emotional/spiritual traumas.

I’m also so happy to live in a time where we are allowed to tell our own stories. When I was a child, I remember feeling like there was a certain way to be black and to be a woman. Not surprisingly, I abused tf out of myself for failing at both. My definition of what it meant to be black was influenced by white supremacy of course–there’s no way to be an American and not absorb that shit, unfortunately.

So here I was, this little nerdy black girl, quiet, shy, terrified of everyone and everything, beating myself up because I was performing blackness wrong. I wasn’t tough, I wasn’t down to fight, I wasn’t…I don’t even remember anymore. Just whatever it was I was “supposed” to be, I wasn’t that. I was a terrified little girl who just wanted to stay in the house because I was convinced that everybody would beat me up/ostracize if I went outside.

And of course, this applied to my womanhood as well. Here’s a pro tip for anyone who is considering having daughters in the future: please don’t teach your daughters that men only want “one thing,” but then also raise them to be extremely obedient people pleasers. 2+2=4 every time.

I grew into an extremely ashamed young woman. My religion, where I sought refuge and guidance, told me I was damaged and ugly and going to hell. And what I absorbed from the culture around “successful womanhood” was bullshit like never being dumped, having men pay my bills, having men obsessed with me–nevermind that that’s the shit that gets women killed sometimes. I took things like not having a stalker as evidence that I’d somehow fallen short as a woman.

Women were supposed to be cool. I was not. I was extremely emotionally disregulated and looking for someone to accept me so that I could accept myself.

Every time I had an issue with a guy I was dating, I felt like everyone in my life always told me it was because of the things that were wrong with me. I couldn’t be so clingy. I had to play games. I couldn’t be so emotional.

I wish that someone in my life had had the tools/vocabulary to say things like “If he brings out these emotions in you, it means you two have a toxic dynamic.” Or “There are intimate partners out there who will accept you for who you are and you don’t have to change a thing about yourself.” Or “The way you think and feel are perfectly sane responses to the life experiences you’ve had until this point. There’s nothing to ‘fix’ about yourself. You’re in pain and your pain is valid.”

I’m sure people have said things like that to me in the past, but memory is so emotional, and the emotion I remember feeling for decades was that I was gross and dirty and broken and crazy and a failure as a woman. Poor little 25-year-old Bryoney, still more girl than woman, already haranguing herself for failing at something she’d barely even started.

Now, that I have finally been an adult for nearly half my life and I have some kind of concept of what adulthood and emotional regulation and trauma mean, I look back and I grieve for all the years I wasted despising myself. I don’t want anyone else to waste decades of their lives hating themselves. As my best friend used to tell me, put down the bat.

Let the anger and self loathing and whatever else you built up inside yourself go so that you can feel what’s really in your heart and soul. I was afraid that if I ever let myself feel all the things I’d stuffed down and covered with shame and self loathing, then I would turn into this out of control narcissistic/megalomanic who would have no parameters for living a “good” and “moral” life. I ignored my true nature, which has always been to seek the “good” and “moral” paths in life. I was always a perfectly lovely human with flaws like everyone else. And my god do I grieve for the fact that I didn’t see this sooner. I hope someone who reads this will begin to look at themselves in a more objective way and begin to see that they are a good person with flaws, just like everyone else. And that they put down the bat and let themselves cry and grieve for all the time they spent thinking otherwise.