Sensory History

Downtown 

Bumping music, competing voices 

Air stuffy, shoes stick

She's catching up with friends 

Gently caressing wooden railing spindles;

Swallowing Shirley Temple's 

I'm alone again 

Attic

Yelling below, thuds, & crys

Scared, thinking the worst

Angry, drunk mother slamming door on face 

Hot, bitter tears basking salt 

Death

A gasping breath under weighed fingers calling my name,

These legs are glued

A face turns blue

Small little plastic clock

Distraction to disorder 

Rescue

Projecting blame, unaccountable adult

None of this is right 

Suits, note pads & tables 

Seatbelts looser than her grip

Dreaming of far, far away

Runaway

Commands, demands pervasive parent

Angry, unable to escape

She barges through barricade

Wooden window pane opens easy,

Shaking & hungry 

Adulting

Your impatient, judgement tone

A daughter you never knew 

Escaping coping mechanisms 

Freedom to choose 

Lighting up in front of me

Sweet affections we lose

Black Hairs Cut

Lighting up a cigg

Stuck with black attached to hips

Afro hair you stink 

A bundle of mess 

Telling her to wait on steps

Saying goodnight with late kiss

Pulling tighter up

Boney hands winning trophies

I watch you murder

Trying to make ends

Screaming at the layers cut

White hair was wanted

Long beautiful hair

You gave birth to my sister

Wrapped around purple 

Starving for your love

Bellies empty of your grace 

Screams to sit up straight

Hot iron pressed upon me

No more of his fluffy curls

Black anger lingers

New adult child 

Hair growth never a skill learned

Covering up cuts

Thick, dry, brittle, hair

Caring not for history 

A shortened future

Love learns the rhythm 

Bit of patience and prudence 

An evolving style 

Freedom miles away

Keratin expounds beauty

Its legacy speaks

Will you let me speak?

Years told to shut up & wait

Dead ends litter clothes 

Bangs cover my eyes

BPD & Christianity Part 2

 Continuation of BPD & Christianity 

I try to think about the first time I perceived my individuality. It was ALWAYS there before I understood the words I, me, and mine. Before I choose to contort my fingers into a paw shape and mimic my cat crawling on all fours, there’s a video of me (how I can only best describe as) “trying to dig” myself out of Mom’s stomach.

My Grandma always took me to her Lutheran church every Sunday since I popped out. I was baptized while in the arms of my Mom, who stopped going to church after she was Confirmed (a ceremony of owning one’s faith by confirming your knowledge about the religion and church), and my Dad* (*not my biological father), who probably had never been inside an all white church. This was my Grandma’s decision no doubt, but Mom was/is more than willing to make her happy. Mom believes in God, but not like Grandma, and certainly wouldn’t want to ever talk about it like Dad. Then there’s me, the silent biracial baby intersecting all of their paths.

When I think about who I am, this collision of a unique nature with this unique nurture, it’s hard to say it without telling a story of them.

{Rapid Changes in Self-Identity

…feeling emptiness

….self hate}

A lot of people describe children as sponges-soaking in everything and anything. And yet, many still don’t understand what’s happening when that now adult-child is squeezed.

I was squeezed and hardpressed way before “adulting” became a thing. Am I black or am I white? Am I her’s or his* (or his, his, his, his?) Am I to speak up or be silent? Am I a cat or…

we’re not taught what “human” means well enough. 

Mom pulls my thick hair into a ponytail in the middle of my head where the hair now only grows to an inch. Dad paid for my hair relaxers, where my hair was “finally manageable.” I asked him to layer it when I was nine. It’s never been the same since. Mom made me promise never to tell Grandma what went on at home, yet all of my nightmares take place at that two-story white house off that gravel road “in the middle of nowhere” where my grandparents reside. There’s no one like me in my family, on either sides-and I only know one side. I still get the “What are you?”’s and “Where you from?”’s. I moved it seemed like every year, adjusting right and left dragging along PTSD like my worn-out teddy bear. 

I’m lonely. 

I’m fearful.

I’m angry. 

I repeat because god forbid someone see me cry!

I used my imagination to bring me comfort, but just like playing with my dolls, it echoed what I’ve heard, what I’ve experienced, what people say I am, and who I long to be. 

As a Christian, we are taught that God was/is always there. He (using not gender specifically) is the Alpha=the beginning and the Omega=the end. There was nothing before. There is nothing greater than this God, YHWH/Jesus/Spirit (three in one God). God was “the missing piece” taught my junior high youth group. He knew me before I was born. He had plans for me before I took my first step. Thus, just like moving into a different place comes with its own set of rules, I am under new management. I freely accept this Jesus that’s presented in a grandiose way because “no one loves me the way God does.” I didn’t know what I was doing with my life-what twelve year old does? My obvious need for Him turned into a want. Why? Because “He wanted me first.” 

You want me? Me. Me? Me!

I break from addressing myself and comforting myself to now being on all fours worshipping an invisible, all-mighty Spirit. I will trade in this depressed outlook on life for one that has a “peace and joy no one can take away.” I see the error of the world, the corrupt nature, the fallen mankind. 

And then those arms open wide showed me a mirror. 

I am the broken one, not just from other’s stones but from my internal bricks it says. I can’t change others and I don’t know what’s best for me they say, so I eat everything that’s on my plate because “there’s kids in Africa starving.” Jesus must be consumed DAILY to defeat the evil. My fear of Mom not returning is replaced with this fear that I have abandoned the King of Kings.

Christianity isn’t about going to church, helping people, or just being nice; no, in fact, according to Romans 6:23 outreach tool we were taught in Ministry team, those things lead you to Hell if you’re without Jesus. Your faith is meant to be active, passionate, alive, on fire, electric, and always willing to testify! The powerhouse of the New Testament writes: “Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” (1 Cor. 9: 26-27). My body must be stricken into submission for my Lord.

Now we have a conundrum, the person who hated life finds True Life only to feel guilty. 

Good things given to me? Why, again who am I that you would die for me? 

I hated that my Mom didn’t give me the love I needed and wanted. I hated that I wasn’t enough like the alcohol and drugs. I hated that Jesus had to suffer so much because of my sins, but here I was singing “Amazing Grace” and cutting myself because I would always fail Him. 

This spring, now a couple years of being an ex-Christian, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Like my once god, you couldn’t see it unless you “looked a little harder.” It was the reflection staring back at me this whole time.  With therapy, I’m relearning what it means to reconnect with my body…to be whole and not ashamed of anything I am. There was no “God-shaped hole.” The “brokenness” I was taught we had was just another name for the maladaptive coping mechanisms. 

My only responsibility is to love me. May I love me well. Whomever that is.

I'm Not Wanted

 *The following is based on true events to the best of my capability. Trigger warnings: alcoholism, childhood trauma, emotional abuse

My alarm goes off, it’s time to get ready for another day at Blackhawk School (whose mascot at the time was a young 'Native American child' with a Warrior's headdress). I had already been going there since we lived with David. We now live with another white, racist man named Joey. He is part Italian. Joey’s apartment is a large lavender Victorian two-story home converted into two apartments. We live on the bottom. The only times the front doors open are when I’m journaling underneath the shade of the decorative overhang listening to both my stereo and the busy street. Our place sits on Highway 26. Joey’s daughter is occupying the second bedroom until she moves to college in a month or so. I envy her massive water bed. My mattress sits on the floor facing away from the bedrooms and towards the front doors. My right wall consists of Mom’s and my wooden horizontal dresser along with an old sheet she 'got' from work. My bedroom doesn’t have much privacy, only rounded doorways. Between their bedrooms and mine is an empty space I often mimic our cat in. (The same cat Joey later shoots because it gets 'trapped' in a sewer.) I go to gently wake Mom up so that she can help me get ready for school; she mentioned the night before that she wanted me to take a bath. “What time is it?” I answer her. “Wake me up in fifteen.” The problem is I struggle with reading clocks. I don’t understand how the numbers printed turn into increments of five; I see no fifteen. I take a guess at what time she meant and wake her up accordingly. She explodes with anger because not only is it passed the time she originally thought but school has started (or is close to starting). I usually don’t hear this much anger unless she’s intoxicated, so I presume she’s hungover. Her words hack me apart: “WHAT DON’T YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?! HOW THE HELL DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO TELL TIME?! YOU'RE TOO OLD FOR THIS, SAMANTHA! DIDN'T THEY TEACH YOU THIS IN SCHOOL?!” Stomping to the kitchen where our clock hangs, she frustratingly explains how seconds work. “GOD DAMMIT, SAMANTHA! I TOLD YOU I WANTED YOU TO TAKE A BATH! FUCK!... GOD DAMIT! UGH, I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE EIGHTEEN AND MOVE OUT!” She rushes to get ready. She has torn me from head to toe; a wound she'll never be able to heal. I’m frozen once again, trying to hold in the tears because if she sees (or perhaps she did see) she’ll yell, “STOP CRYING!” We finally arrive at school and I’m escorted to class. It’s here I know I’m able to let go. It's here I know I'm heard, I'm safe. At some point, I’m taken into the hallway and my first-grade, pregnant teacher, Mrs. DeWall, asks what’s wrong. I repeat my Mother’s words with heartache, “...I can’t wait until you're eighteen and move out…” My teacher gives a sympathetic look, trying to comfort me she says, “Oh…I’m sure she didn’t mean it…”

I Don't See

 *The following is based on true events to the best of my capability. Trigger warnings: alcoholism, medical emergency, childhood trauma

My Sunday ritual is like many in my hometown. I get dressed in an outfit that pleases an older generation and am hustled to a church I don’t want to go to. Grandma is the only one in our family who consecutively goes to church. She had tried getting her children to stay, but once they were confirmed at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church they split. Lucky for me, she always seems to be in charge of getting coffee ready; thus, we have to be there even earlier than the first service. She waits for me in the parking lot behind our blocky U-shaped apartments. The night before I didn’t get much sleep due to Mom, (Bonnie?), Dolly (Bonnie’s adult daughter), and Dolly’s boyfriend partying. It was the first time in a long time that Mom was having fun, but it still involved liquor, weed, and cigarettes-the three things I’ve learned to have hostility towards. Yet, laughter was better than the fighting. Yells which I now heard from Dolly's bedroom instead of the living room where Mom has kept the mattress she and Bonnie once shared. It’s also way better than the cries of Dolly’s daughter, Wynter, who is a toddler also living with us. I walk from my bedroom at the end of the apartment to the bathroom across from me, then down the cold tiled hallway, and into our moderately sized kitchen. It’s here I see Dolly’s boyfriend, a short, big-eyed African-American man lying on the ground. He’s lying on top of our sink floor mat. He’s lying on his right side facing me. He isn’t sleeping. He is convulsing. He is having a seizure. A puddle of foamy saliva pours from the corner of his mouth as his eyes seem caged. I don’t know what to do! I’ve never seen anything like this! Do I try to talk to him?! Do I  try to touch him?! I remember this shaking uncertainty mixed with distress. I don’t scream. I don’t make a sound…for I’m afraid of the consequences. I’m a thirteen-year-old afraid of consequences. My Mother is snoring away behind the sheet separating the kitchen and living room where she traps the air conditioning. She’s always a pain to wake up. I could already imagine her big bugged, glossy, dead stare; looking but never comprehending. If I wake up Dolly I risk waking up Wynter, which risks waking up the whole apartment. But should everyone be awake? I feel the pull of needing to help, dragged down because I didn’t know how, and tied to this belief that somehow I would get in trouble with Mom. I couldn’t delay any longer because then Grandma would know…even if she is a retired nurse…if she came inside she would see the beer cans and smell the smells that Mom desperately tries to hide…Mom made me promise years ago to never tell Grandma what goes on at home…So what am I to do? I’m angry to again be put in a situation I feel like I shouldn’t be in. My solution is to just lay a towel down beside him hoping he’ll be ok. I wipe the developing tears in my eyes, walk head down the long sidewalk, and into Grandma’s white van. She says good morning. I greet her back. I mention nothing about what just happened (or is continuing to happen for all I know). I feel guilty thinking that maybe I had just let a man die. My fear of my Mother prevented me from once again helping. After service and Sunday School, I return home to find only Mom. She asks if I saw anything that morning. I tell her. She is solemn and without saying it, scared. Yet, she hints through her words and demeanor that what happened was his own fault.