emotions

To be precious.

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

It was instilled in me at a fairly early age by our dear friends in the American media that to be considered beautiful or precious in these great United States a girl had to be thin, petite and preferably Caucasian. (None of these obviously, described me :p). As a little girl, I watched an ungodly amount of television and poured through mountains of fashion magazines. Rarely did I ever find someone that looked like me (that was until the Cosby Show came a long, but that would be way later.)

My adult perspective mostly allows me to look past the often intentional transgressions of the American media, but every now and then when triggered by certain  forms of fuckery, my childhood inferiority complex is shaken back to life. For instance, when the tea party was in full on post-election  “take back our county” swing in 2009; I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a billboard with some doe eyed cherry cheeked cherub staring at me.  The message was typically something having to do with protecting her future from “big government”.

Every time I saw those damn things, I’d become enraged. It wasn’t the the child’s image that set me ablaze,  but rather what the imagery implied.  Not once did I see one of these brazen take back America manifestos with a Black child, or a Latino child, or an Asian child … hell I never saw one with a boy on it.  Just a small, White, “innocent”, “fragile” female.  As is usual when I am highly pissed off, my creative juices began to flow.  I’d already been gathering ideas for a play about the black female psyche called Oppression Pop. 5. I knew right away that my anger about the limited view of what it means to be “precious” in the eyes of some Americans had a place within it.

The subject matter of the play is not easy, but definitely warrants  an open honest dialogue.  In Charlotte?  Open of mind and empty of stomach?  Join Kendrea Mekkah and I next Sunday for Dinner and A Reading, where we’ll be reading Oppression Pop. 5, enjoying a delicious meal of soul food, and discussing themes from the play!

Rosie.

Here’s a word from me and Mekkah!

Eat This!

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

As I sit here near the point of copious salivation in a manor reminiscent of Pavlov’s dog, infatuated with my friend Mekkah’s ketchup laden fries,  my thoughts drift back to my younger years.  When my relationship with food was cast in the annals of my psyche.  Food was and at times still is my constant companion, my lover, my friend, my enemy.

In processing my relationship with food with my therapist, my friends, and anyone else who’ll listen (thanks for reading in advance), I’ve stumbled upon some long forgotten stories that have helped me make sense of my strange love of food. I’ll share a few here.

Food as a the spoils of war.

To say my brother Curtis and I fought as children would be severely minimizing  the fact that he saw my birth as an official act war, an affront to his very existence.  Curtis’s disdain for me probably lay in the fact that he’d been the “baby” for five years before I brought my unexpected ass along.  Our battles varied in intensity, but there was no other area where the battle got quite as hot as when the source of conflict was The Cap’n.

exhibit A: The Cap’n

In our desperate need to get “crunchatized”(which I don’t think was even a term back then), we would outwit, steal, hide and any other unsavory act we had to commit.  Alas, I was often at the losing end of this battle, but there was one triumphant morning that me and Alteric (our brother from another mother) got the jump on Curtis the sleeping dragon.  We beat him to the freshly purchased box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries and proceeded to remove every crunch berry in the box.
Saturday morning  cartoons were funnier, the sun was shinier, and our bellies were stuffed  full of crunchaliscious crunch berries.  This state of rapture lasted for maybe thirty/forty minutes. When Curtis awoke to find a severely misshapen  box of Cap’n Crunch sans any sign of crunch berries save for tell-tale red dust, There was hell to pay.  Quite honestly, I forgot what happened. I think I blacked out. Hell,  I probably repressed it. If I had to guess, I’d say I got the natural hell beat out of me, then he probably turned his rage on Al, sitting on him and punching him in the chest until he ran home.  I still had the day though, and as you can tell I relish the victory to this day.

The Lesson:  Food obtained through violence, aggression, or Machiavellian scheming is the best kind.

Food as an analgesic.

It’s funny how other people remember your childhood.  When the facebook revolution began and I reconnected with some of the folks I went to school with, I kept hearing stories of how funny and well liked I was.   This was odd to me as I mostly remember feeling isolated, fat, unattractive, and picked on.

Exhibit B: Rosie c. 1990

One particular year of school, my 6th grade year, I had a falling out with a group of girls that had been my “friends”.  I was tormented for the entire year. I was called fat.  They talked about my hair and my clothes. They took “children can be so cruel” to new heights.  I spent most of that year feigning illness not to go to school, on the guidance counselor or nurse’s couch, and of course eating.

I would bolt home drop everything and head straight for the kitchen. Twinkies, Krimpets, Devil Dogs, Cereal (Cap’n or otherwise), pizza … essentially anything that wasn’t tied down, locked up.  After eating I always “felt” better.  None of the things I had endured that day mattered. My addict gene mutated that year, and became something that in my adulthood would nearly kill me.

As can be seen in the photo (taken only a year or two later), I’m wasn’t nearly as hideously fat and ugly as they made me feel or than I came to believe. I can’t say I lay any blame at the feet of the children who picked on me.  It could have very easily have been me on the giving end had the circumstances played out differently. I don’t hate them, but I do hate what the situation did to my relationship with food and essentially anything else that was pleasurable that allowed me to escape.

The Lesson:  You’d better not stop until you’ve eaten all your feelings young lady!

Food as the enemy.

I have the good fortune of having a great many food snobs in my life.  They challenge me (sometimes successfully) to experiment with new tastes and textures.  You see, my brother and I were and to some degree still are very bland eaters.* We barely did veggies, and while I would indulge in fruit fairly regularly that was about as far as it went.

Exhibit C: The Food Saboteurs!

Case in point:  My mother was a single working mom of four. She worked long hours during the week which left us on a lot of evenings popping tater tots or fish sticks in the oven and Steak Umm’s or other ‘easy’ foods, on the stove.  There were some occasions that Ma would get a wild hair and decide to fix us something “special”.  Curtis and I  had an “exit strategy” prepared for  these times: a strategically cut hole in the kitchen screen.  The undesirable food stuffs were simply shoveled out onto the grassy knoll outside our window.  No harm, no foul … that is until we were finally caught.

Ma, for some ungodly reason, decided that it would  be a great idea to prepare a tuna casserole.  The foreign smells had our guards up already.  We already knew what needed to be done.  Time came to sup, and before us sat generous portions of  Ma’s experimental meal.  We waited. Sifted forks around.  I even became brave enough to take a bite (either that or I’d been threatened. Can’t remember which.) Eventually the coast became clear and we proceeded to the window with our plates.  One after the other we scraped the ill fated casserole out of the covert slit.  Things would have went fine, except most of the casserole ended up on the window sill.

The next morning my mother was greeted by a swarm of pigeons devouring the meal we had so generously donated to them the night before.  Our cover was blown. Needless to say we never dared dispose of another meal in this manner.  We just found other ways. >:)

The Lesson: New food bad. Old food good.

Thirty-six years of practicing this and other kind of “bad” food behaviors can’t be undone overnight, but I’m working on it.  The hardest part I’d have to say is adding new food. My brain goes into resistance mode, and even when I manage my way through the meal, it tells me I’m not full :/.  Odd indeed, but I have managed to introduce some new items that I’ve found quite delightful like: Hummus and Sushi … the cooked kind. I’ll keep eating,  you keep reading (hopefully), and maybe one day I’ll be a certified food snob … MAYBE.

Rosie.

Exhibit D: In Gorton’s we trust!

 

 

 
*I’m gonna go ahead and say that my brother was probably the source of 85% of my hang ups with food. (Sorry Curtis, pero es verdad). 

i want me to want me.

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

Phrases like:

“The only way for someone to love you, is for you to love yourself first.”

or

“To thine own self be true!”

OR

“You’re special just the way you are! God don’t make no junk!”

Make me want to strangle the well meaning sages that deliver them unto me with a recently ripped off chain of kitten tails, and  I would two except for two things:

1.  I love kittens.  Oh how I love kittens.

and

2.  I know, as hokey as they may sound, all that bullshit is true.

Where does one start though? Regular mani-pedi’s?  Dinner for one? Movie dates with yourself? Meh … while that stuff helps, my experience has led me to believe that it’s best to start here:

Sarah Baartman a.k.a. The Venus Hottentot.  (It is strongly advised that you click her name to gain a broader … pardon the pun … perspective on the history of black female sexuality and the western world.)  Sarah, which is ironically my grandmother’s name, could be my butt naked body double (or I should say, I hers).

Sarah (B), is definitely where I’m at.

The hardest part of  accepting myself has been getting past my body image.  I have lost tremendous amounts of weight.  Gained part of it back. I have cut, pasted, prayed, and starved in an effort to deny my Sarah Baartman body.  She will not be denied.  I have to accept what most diet/exercise programs don’t tell you … your body type is your body type.  I will never diet away my thunder thighs or the delectable craters found within my ass cheeks.

Now maybe your issues have nothing to do with good ole Sarah, maybe it’s your nose, or your relentless uni-brow. No matter, it’s not about what the thing you dislike about yourself is (at least not for me).  It’s the fact that it exists.  It’s the fact that my feelings about my weight , are a parasite that has drilled itself into my psyche and taken up residence.  It is with me of every moment of everyday whispering gems like:

“He couldn’t possibly want someone that looks like you, don’t even embarrass yourself by saying hello or even looking at him.”

or

“You look terrible in anything you put on,  so what’s the point.”

…and some that are just too unbearable to write here.

The only way that I’ve found to battle back the parasite that works (as alcohol, mani-pedi’s, and self-dates proved to be dismal failures) is facing that sonofabitch head on. There ain’t a quick fix on the market that trumps honest, loving self appraisal.  It’s a journey that I’ve been on for most of my life, but the honesty part just crept in about two years ago. Needless to say, it’s been a rough, albeit rewarding, two years.

More recently, as recent as this past Wednesday, I had another … break through? break down?  Hell, I broke … and had to come to accept that a man that I’d endeared myself to, for far longer than I should have, would likely never be able to give me what I needed or wanted from him.  I had been holding out hope that somehow if I proved how awesome I was to him that he would have some type of miraculous epiphany, look past my misshapen body, and “pick me” giving me a chance at the relationship I’d so desperately wanted.*

*Yes, on an intellectual level I know this is bullshit, I cringe as I write it, but it’s what my inner dialogue had been.

If I’m honest, and again I try to be these days, I’ll have to say that it wasn’t necessarily him, but ALL of the “hims“.  All of the men and the shitty situations that came with them, that I settled for because on a gut level I assumed that no one else would want me. It’s the parasite, the disease, my thinking (call it what you will), that had me believing that one sided situations with emotionally or otherwise unavailable men were all I could hope for. Now?  I’m just too exhausted to give a fuck.

The prospect of being sans a partner for the rest of my life is no longer terrifying.  The prospect of wasting my life lying in wait of what might be, is.  So if being single is what it is for me right now (or longer) I need to continue to do the work of being okay with the person I wake up to everyday.  I have to take care of me which for me includes:

-Taking care of my emotional and spiritual self by continuing do the work of recovery.

-Taking care of the one and only body I will ever be given by eating right and exercising, not toward any magical goal weight, but because it feels good.

-Getting enough rest.

-Setting healthy boundaries in my relationships, which include running in the opposite direction when I see the red flags.

-Taking care of my responsibilities (having bad credit is no longer “cute”).

-And most important, CONTINUING TO WRITE!

Despite all my emotional ups and downs I do feel a shift happening.  With continued hard work and perseverance,  I might just fall in love with myself, Hottentot table top ass and all, at some point before I’m dead ;).

Rosie.

Oh the irony.

http://youtu.be/sMU0ycZEMzY

Pushing the car.

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

Best Advice
I used to have horrible cars, because I never had money, so I’d always end up broken down on the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself—people like to see that. –  Chris Rock

 

I read the above article around the time I suspected my Singaporean goose was cooked.  What got me at the core was the bit about the car.  Was I doing enough on my own behalf?  I can honestly say, I wasn’t.  That’s even hard to write, but it’s true.  I could have worked more hours, I could have dedicated more time to fleshing out more feasible better planned fundraisers.

Would these things have made the financial difference that landed me in school this year vs. next year? Probably not, and since I’m drinking from the fountain of self honesty, on my gut level I knew this.  My credit rating, an F.  My current student loans, while not in default, are a reflection of my youthful (and not so youthful) wastefulness. Add what I owe in taxes, and my day to day bills, and making it over without a wealthy sugar daddy or a co-signer (which would have been an incredibly irrational direction) was going to be highly unlikely.  Even with all this reality lying in wait I prayed that somehow my effort (albeit half-hearted) would part the heavens and allow for some Dickenesque Christmas Carol resolution that would allow for my passage into all that I’d wished and hoped for.  But, a wise man did once suggest that I wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills first.

I could see this experience as one of the most humiliating in my life (and it probably is), go hide, and give up on the idea of grad school in general, let alone on the other side of the world, but that would make me a quitter. Quitters suck (unless it’s self defeating behavior then by all means quit dammit!). No, I shan’t quit, and while I appreciate all the support I’ve been given, the reality is that I have to push my own car.   I have to take this year to get my shit together financially, physically, and emotionally … basically shit I need to do anyway. I have to go back to working night shift (bleh), pick up extra hours (bleh!), and many other things savory and unsavory … all legal I assure you. In short,  I gotta know on my inside space that I gave this shit everything I got before I’m willing to give up.

So here we go world. With the help of a HP with a fairly wicked sense of humor,  I’ve got 365 days to make this thing happen. Help is still appreciated, but it’s time for me to get out and P.U.S.H.

Watch me work.

Rosie.

 

Uncle 2.0 (A kinder gentler surrender.)

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

When I began the graduate school application process I tried to maintain the belief that no matter the outcome, “good” or “bad”, that it had nothing to do with my ability to write or my value as a writer. I probably should have taken it to the next level and said that it had nothing to do with my value as a human being, because ultimately it doesn’t.

Grad school was to me was about what I valued.  I value education.  I enjoy becoming educated. Academia is my home girl.  However, I do realize that there are non-conventional ways of receiving the education I desire, and if it ends up that those are the avenues I have to stroll down that it is okay.  The sting of my experience comes from valuing the means of getting my education more than I do the education itself.

There is a balance I seek to find between my desire to achieve and the realization that my achievements do no supersede my humanity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me wanting to succeed, but that success should not come at the expense of what really matters, my life and happiness. Looking back over the last few months I can see that I have been highly driven, but not exactly enjoying my life, even during times that were intended to be enjoyable.

I’m entering an easier phase of surrender as I continue to raise my white flag and wave it at Tisch Asia (the game is not entirely over, but it appears to be a blow out). At this point, I’m not too clear on “what’s next”.  I’m still feeling some residual yuckiness, but I know it is dangerous for me to live here.  I want to hide because I am embarrassed and ashamed, but I won’t.  Instead I’ll volunteer to be the fool that is brave enough to fail fantastically and be willing to tell the tale.

Rosie.

Uncle: (an angry rageful prayer of surrender not intended for the faint of heart.)

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

I am utterly defeated. I have nothing else to give to the cause of me attending Tisch Asia.  I have hustled, planned, acted as if (I quit my fucking job! Great!), prayed, meditated, and burned incense. I am tired. I have a $20,000 per semester gap in funding.  I do not qualify for the Grad Plus loan.  This morning one of my final doors/windows of opportunity closed. My white flag is waving.  I don’t have anymore to give this cause emotionally, spiritually, or mentally. Right now, I don’t give a shit what the lesson is.  It hurts too fuckin’ much for me to care. I know it won’t always, but today it does.

Being hopeful about this situation has only intensified the shitiness of my feelings and fueled my desperate actions to force this thing to happen.  These are the times I don’t want to be in recovery.  I want a license to be completely reckless and unconcerned about the damage I leave behind, but fucking recovery. Fucking spiritual principles won’t even allow me to indulge. Because underneath this raging heap of fuck the world I have going on I know that the shiny happy recovery Stacey would suffer in the long run along with those she loves.

If you have donated to my noble cause, know that your funding will now be re-purposed to cover my ass as I eat crow and I slither back into my life as a Respiratory Therapist. Universe … I turn it over to you, because I have not shit else.

Rosie.

Miss Direction: Which way is home?

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

When I laid eyes on this photo, I felt an immediate identification via a deep sense of uncertainty I wrestle with daily. There are some things I know:  My name, place of birth, general location on the planet earth at this moment. There are  things that I do not know:  Whether I’m going to raise enough money to attend this program I want to so badly.  What am going to do if I fall short of my financial goals and don’t end up going? What I’m having for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?  As usual, its the what I don’t know that’s eating my lunch right now.

Like the photographic subject I am a soldier in the middle of a war.  Unlike the subject, my war is unfolding between my ears. I battle myself for my attention constantly. I battle to stay focused  on the task at hand.  “Eyes. On. The. Prize.” has been my mantra lately. But with atomic bombs of distraction going on, it makes it pretty hard to stay in the fight.  If I played the sound track  to the feature film Inside Stacey’s Fugged Up  Mind, you’d hear the sickest mash up of shit that makes absolutely no sense together. Broadway tunes, story ideas, to do lists, disaster scenarios, positive affirmations, negative affirmations, and *clears throat* unnatural/unhealthy desires are all doing the shimmy shake around my psyche.  It’s a wonder I can walk, think, and breathe at the same time.  Some how I manage to.

I first try to remember that I have tools that point me in a Good Orderly Direction.  Prayer, meditation, a network of people that love me. It’s just making myself use them! It’s riding out the feelings of not  falling back into my old familiar boobie traps like my ex-husband or the Cheddar Chicken Melt at Cook Out. When I do use my tools and I don’t do things that are going to make me feel like shit about myself later, it gets better.  It doesn’t always free great, but I avoid self made disaster scenarios that often lead to me hitting the self-destruct button and checkin’ out all together.

Mostly, I just want to be at peace.  I want to feel “at home”, which I’ve not felt in a long while.  If I had to guess I’d say it was before this whole grad school process began.  Hell, maybe even before that. Riding out emotions straight no chaser is definitely not for the faint of heart, but bit I’m doing it. I’m glad I know that nothing impermanent is certain. I am practicing the art of war against self. Against the false belief that my happiness can be born from anywhere else but right inside of me. Understanding all this on a gut level? Well, that will come with time I hope. According to Mick Jagger, it’s on my side 😉

Rosie.

Singapore Girl

/ StaceyRose / 3 Comments

I’ve been a lil silent here lately. It’s mainly been because I was locked in crippling fear about my future.  Now that I know to some small degree what the next few months hold for me, I’m paralyzed in fear.  At least when I was crippled I could wiggle around a little bit.

Okay, I’ll stop being vague now.  I was accepted into the Dramatic Writing Program at NYU‘s Tisch School of the Arts … in Singapore.  The idea of me relocating to Singapore was not some grand pre-existing life path I’d put my self on. It actually thinly presented itself to me as a simple check off box in my NYU Tisch New York application.

“Would you like to be considered for Tisch Asia?”

“Sure!”

I thought.

“Why the fuck not? Since I’m applying to grad school why not just balls it all the way out!”

I check the box, complete the application and submit all the required hutzpa by 11:59 pm 12/1/11. Then I proceed through four months of self induced torture, applying to grad school after grad school only to have my spirit swallowed whole and shat out by the  Ivy’s, The “First Choice” school, and even my shit kicking “safe school” (those bastards rejected me FIRST – there will be blood.)

The only institution left was NYU, and it wasn’t looking too promising.  I’d sent the app four months before and heard not word the first. Then …

“Dear Graduate Dramatic Writing applicant,

Greetings.  Your application has been selected as part of a small group of semi-finalists under consideration for the M.F.A Graduate Dramatic Writing program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.  We would like to request an interview with you regarding your admission to our program.”

My sphincters tightened. My mind raced. I hadn’t even sent my materials to Singapore as the application had called for. I was confused. It was an interview though, and after having endured a grad app process reminiscent of 300, some redemption was in order.  On March 9th 2012, I interviewed  and it was fantastic.  They liked me.  They really liked me. More important, I liked them.  It seemed as if the program was made for me and had been placed in front of me randomly because, quite frankly, I’m a coward. The idea of attending school abroad is slightly horrifying.

I then began to consider Singapore, for real this time.  I did a little internet digging and discovered the beauty of the country and how doable the transition from here to there would be. Still, after the slaughter I’d been through, I didn’t allow myself to explore much further.  I went back to life as usual.

Then I began to notice the calendar.  Days eeked by. Hours. Minutes.  I scoured the grad forums for answers.  The ones I received only made me desperate for more.  I swore the forums off, then went back five minutes later.  We were tortured souls yearning, burning, dying to be liberated from purgatory! Then it hit me.  I could call!  So, I called NYU New York and got the most loving caring rejection I’d received all season. I was reminded to keep Tisch Asia in mind and that their decisions were just around the corner.

Gently let down, and still quite defeated, I attempted to go on.  I threw myself into work, and in the back of my mind lingered thoughts of Tisch Asia.  I’d almost resolved that I wasn’t going to get in this round until …

“Dear Stacey,
 
Congratulations! You have been admitted to the Tisch School of the Arts.”

I came completely unglued, interrupting every business deal and break up chat at the Starbucks I was in.  Baristas came to check on my psychological well being.  It was fandamtastic.

Since then, the black fog of fear has settled in for what I hope is a brief stay.  Among the shit storm stirring in the fog are the thoughts:

“Yeah, you’re scholarshipped, but it doesn’t nearly cover everything.”

“Bitch, it’s Asia.”

“What are you gonna do with that boy?”

“BITCH, it’s Asia.”

“Will you have to work?! Shit, you can work and go to school in Charlotte!”

“BITCH IT’S ASIA!”

All of this while trying to live a semi-normal life over the past three days.  The good news is I know I’ll survive. The not so good is that I’ll have to re-live my middle school/high school emotions during the process. There is a hell of a lot of grown up work for me to do and it’ll suck having to do it while still feeling like a chubby wheezy nerd that Jake Ryan will NEVER ask to the prom.

Yes, a new chapter in the life of this completely sane lunatic has begun. Pull up a chair, grab some concessions, and join me.  This shit outta be good.

Rosie.

*Update:  I’ve set up a fund to help pay for my trip over!

“Throw Stacey On The Plane!”  make it rain please.

gracious thank yous!

Oddly this was one of my favorite commercials when I was a tyke.

Black Mom’s Burden.

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

I am the mother of an intelligent, articulate, talented rambunctious 13-year-old boy.  As a mother my natural expectation, barring any unexpected illness or accidents, is that I will see him grow, get his heart broken, break hearts, learn to drive, graduate high school, go to college, start a career, get married, raise a family, raise children … in short my son should bury me; not vice versa.  An inconvenient truth in these great United States is that as a black mother of a black son there are other things I have to factor in like:

1. Getting him through a public school system that does not instill in him any cultural sense of self and within which I have to do battle to ensure he receives the basic knowledge he needs to survive adulthood.

2. Teaching him the realities of institutionalized racism.

3.  Keeping him out of the back of a cop car.

4. Preparing him  for the reality that he may end up in one any way because he “fit the description.”

5. Keeping him ALIVE in a society where black boys like Trayvon Martin can be murdered simply because he fit the fear based convoluted description in someone’s head.

… and this is the short list.  I have to fight this fight within a society that refuses to acknowledge any of it or either chooses to lay the blame at the feet of the “black community” and its “leaders”, whoever the hell that homogenous group of folks might be; this society that views the election of a black president as a “game over” for racism, all the while ignoring the rise of neo-racism in the form of “ultra conservatism” that has resulted from that election.

One foot in front of the other, one day at a time; I’m am raising a self sufficient, independently thinking black male that can not only be a productive member of society, but who can also be a vital asset to any community he chooses to be a part of. I pull from as many resources as I can to make sure he gets what he needs. I do everything in my power to instill in him a base sense of morality. Damn it, I am doing my part. It is so fucked up and utterly frustrating that I cannot rely on the society within which I live to do its.

No matter how  hard we as black moms of black sons try it seems we’re still behind the eight-ball. It’s the reality of our situation, but it is by no means a reason to sit in victimhood.  We have to continue, along side our men and any others who would chose to be a part of the solution, to engage and empower our boys. We can only hope and pray that one day society will catch on.

During our ride to school chat yesterday I asked my son how he felt about it all. Unfortunately this type of racism did not shock him. What did bother him, and me for that matter, is the rising level of “anger” and threatened violence surrounding the situation.  To use his words, “What is fighting gonna do? If they wanna get angry and do something there are plenty of other things they could do besides fight somebody.” So true.  I cannot begin to fathom life without my son. Today, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin have to.  They have my deepest sympathies.

Rosie.

 

T’was a necessary day.

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

I’m not even sure what I want to write here, but here goes.   In recovery I’ve heard it said that we have good days and we have “necessary” days. Necessary days are days where the not-so-great things come up that challenge all that good shit you think you believe. Today was “necessary”.  I took a verbal battering from someone very near and dear to me simply because we disagree on something. Something that in the end is my business.  I listened to a barrage of insults, accusations, and ill premonitions while saying little or nothing. I was called a “monster”. I was told that I needed to pray and rely on God in the same breath.

The entire time I felt like I was physically being slashed to pieces. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth went dry, but I continued to listen and actually maintained my decorum. I casually began to pack up my things, all while continuing to listen. That was my mistake.  I continued to listen. I knew that what was being said about me was in no way true, but I continued to listen.  I took on this person’s shit.  It danced with every bit of self doubt, shame and  guilt I ever had.  It rented property in my head, and affected my mood all day.

By 4pm (this happened at 11am) I wanted a drink in a way in which I hadn’t in a very long time. Me drinking doesn’t equal going to a bar, having a cocktail and taking it to the house.  Me drinking means me finishing a fifth of whatever, asking where the party’s at, getting in my car to drive to it, and blacking out.  Even though I had no intention of going out and getting a drink, this is a dangerous head space for someone like me to be in, or anyone for that matter. There is nothing a drink or drug can do for anyone (much less an addict) to solve a problem or fix a feeling. After today, I know I believe that at my core and I’m grateful.

I did all the healthy things I could to take care of myself like: talking to folks, making a meeting, praying, cleaning my space,  taking a shower, and writing about it. It’s 9:19pm, and I’ve officially gotten through this very necessary day with the bonus of seeing where its lessons fit in my life. Going forward, I know I must work on certain things so as not to continue to have the same “necessary day”. The main thing is developing the ability to give people their shit back.  Yelling, accusations, insults, and ill premonitions are sure fire guarantees that somebody is trying to give you some shit that ain’t yours. Run like your life depends on it.  It just might.

Rosie.