Students at Protestant secondary school, Mbandaka, (part 2) Congo by  Eliot Elisofon 1972

There is a song by Nina Simone that has since been playing in my head, more so the live version recorded at Morehouse College in Atlanta in June of 1969. The song is titled Take Me To The Water. She does a short intro on the song which goes-”…I’m a pisces and I am on the cusp of an Aquarius so I got to say, take me to the water.” The song always validates something I’ve always known to be the truth, which is that I belong to the water.

Letter08

I read once on twitter that if we are to have long lasting relationships, we must be willing to do much of the forgiving.

As we approach the closing of this year. I cannot help but look back on all the things I've found myself having to deal with, some of which I may be too young for and have caused me heavy trauma in the process. Much of this year involved hurting, dealing and pressing forward. The commas are probably the perfect estimate of how long I allowed each to live out for.

Hurt can be instant, it's the pain that follows it that tends to linger long after life does as it pleases with you...or people. Pain is pain I don't believe there is a measure of legitimacy for the different kinds. Although our minds won't always allow us to believe that. And so I often find myself being grateful that I have never experienced particular levels of pain, the kinds of pain I've seen many of the people I love and have come across suffer through. Perhaps God knows my tolerance and strength, that it does not meet the threshold for survival of certain experiences.

The dealing really is a mere pathway to pressing forward. How do you deal when the responsibility of your life stifles any plans of an alternative you for that day? The reality of having to show up, even when you didn't feel like being that person on that day. All you know is that showing up is something that you have to do. That's the dealing.

So you press forward because your context doesn't allow you the luxury of being tired of your life. That thing that Zora Howard speaks about in Sister Girlfriend when she says "When being women, and of colour and getting out of bed is just too damn much."

All this matters because it contributes to how I present myself to the world and ultimately respond to it.

Only now it grips me. The necessity of centering forgiveness in how I relationship with others but most importantly with myself. Hard as it may be, I have to constantly devote myself to forgiveness for all the things I did and did not do, all the hurt and pain I've allowed to take up space- how that manifested into the uglies of poor decision making. How else will I do it if not like this? How else will I mute out the anxieties and little self hate voices trying to drag me further away from the fullness of life.

That tweet continues to sit with me today. It challenges me to do the work that isn't always easy while questioning the value of forgiving a particular thing or person as opposed to just cutting off its/ their existence. An opportunity at longevity of friendship and self.

Banyana

My only wish for myself today and beyond, is to be a little less afraid to live.

Saturday.

Letter05

I wish we spoke more about how we present our love to others. And how that really is informed by how we experience this world. The extent of harm it causes and the the little we do to remedy our bleeding because of how love was served to us, and how we serve this love.

I was listening to Daniel Caesar 's Freudian sometime this week and Blessed came on. I clinged on to everyword because I wanted to relate so badly to what the song was conveying lyrically. But my first thought when 'Yes I am a mess...' layed itself onto my subconcious, was...'well that sounds toxic'.

In another time in another place, that song would have made sense to my life. But I believe my love doesn't exist like that anymore. There is a tint of cautiousness in it. A subtle obidience and a particular understanding of the responsibility of loving.

I've woken up to the nonrecognition of my own love, that which I offer to people, that which speaks to my humanity. I couldn't explain nor understand why I was being loved and why I was loving. That was a result of an accumulated toxicity that I allowed because of the dissonance of the purpose of loving.

It can never just be about self service this thing. How you love your neighbour is an extension of how you love yourself and so that thing needs to be working well for you before it reaches. And when it reaches the hope is that it is amplified by how some will meet your love, with an equally healthy love. A concious love, A breathing love.

back to work: damaris goddrie for les echos serie limitee sept. 2017

The only thing more impossible than staying, was leaving

E.Gilbert (via thabangblynx)

Letter01

I'm having one of those nights where I can have thorough thoughts about myself without having everything else that I share myself with interfer with that. Praise be to small mercies such as these. I believe I'm well, for anyone reading this and by any chance wonders how the people she reads feel when they write. I'm well. God is doing right by his promises and love in its fullness meets me where I can't. Often the 'can't' happens when I fail at myself. Imagine. I'm my major subject, and I happen to be my most important one too. So how could I possibly fail at it. This used to bother me very heavily, until my ex housemate came to my room this one night and found me wallowing in all my sadness at coming to terms with the fact that I don't really know myself. I mean what had I been doing for all these years of growing up, in fact wasn't that the whole point of growing up. After I lamented to her about that which was bothering me she said..."Knowing yourself takes time Banyana, similar to any relationship...it takes time to know someone". This made sense then but every year seems to be a testament of that. So here we are a while after that conversation happened and I have to remember to not allow myself to be played by the pressure of knowing myself on demand. That thing is difficult, it's a required process of existing and it happens when it does. Sooner for others and never for some. And maybe thats okay, maybe loving ourselves with out reason is it. Maybe loving ourselves beyond the knowledge of self is exactly what we need.

Do not fear old age, for with it with comes wisdom. The one who is wise is surely kind. And kindness is the greatest manifestation of beauty.

Hellessy | Spring/Summer 2018