Is this thing on? It’s certainly been a while, but I feel like the time has come to put something out there. Can’t believe it’s been 2 years since I’ve posted on this blog, and 11 years that it’s been in existence. There’s a lot that’s happened, but obviously I’m not gonna go into full detail. I was listening to Tyler The Creator’s most recent album (lol @ 2021 being recent), Call Me If You Get Lost, as I was at the gym, and on my walk home. One of the standouts from the album is on the deluxe edition, and it’s called Sorry Not Sorry. The soulful sample provides an ethereal experience for Tyler to vent off the changes in his life, while addressing the people put those changes against him. It’s not a new trope for artists to highlight detractors within their music, but it’s great to hear when it’s from a vulnerable space, because the reality is that we all change, for all reasons.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry I don’t see you more
I’m sorry that the four minutes where you see your son could feel like a chore
Sis’, I’m sorry I’m your kin
Sorry we ain’t close as we should’ve been
Sorry to my old friends
The stories we coulda wrote if our egos didn’t take the pen

Tyler, The Creator – Sorry Not Sorry

When the Pandemic hit, many of us were still our pre-Covid selves trying to figure out what’s next. What we didn’t predict, or expect, was that many of us would go through dramatic changes in our personal lives, and have to rediscover who we are in an unfamiliar space, and I’m certainly not exempt from that. As I stand here, today, in the year 2023, as it inches its way closer to the end of it, there are a lot of realizations about myself that I’ve had to confront not only in the past few months, but in the past couple of years. I’ve been going to therapy since 2019, and there’s a benefit to it that helps everyone in a capacity that they may not have experienced before. It has certainly been an outlet for me to be an additional mirror to look at myself and understand who I am, and who I want to be. I’m a work in progress. I’m not without my flaws, but to quote Randell Adjei, “I am not my struggles.” The opportunity to be honest about who I am has come up in a myriad of ways, and when you suffer a big loss, oftentimes you have to go back to the basics; study the fundamentals, and rework from the ground up to figure out how to become better from that experience. It’s a common expression used in sports, but it’s true in life. Tear down to build back up, right? And that’s really what I’ve had to do for the past couple of years.

Loss is a big theme over the past 3-4 years, because of the collective loss we’ve all experienced. Losing friends, losing lovers, losing family, losing careers, homes, etc. It weighs heavy on everyone, and we’ve been conditioned to move in auto-pilot; doom-scrolling and immersing ourselves in escapism because of the dystopian world we live in. There’s a heightened sense of angst, worry, fear, and we all feel it. But oftentimes, it’s not expressed in the healthiest ways, or expressed at all. Part of the reason why I created this blog was to not only highlight the interests that I have in the arts, but it served as an outlet for my own self-expression, where speaking to people one-on-one wasn’t something that I reached out for. I’m not gonna say that it’s gotten that much better, but I’ve allowed myself to at least be honest with how I’m feeling, and expressing those feelings, as they happen. It’s just attaching more words to it, that’s where improvement is needed, but again, work in progress.

I have to thank the important people who have been in my corner, to remind me that I don’t need to be too hard on myself, when I feel like I’m not the best at showing up for others, considering the ways in which I used to show up for many (Mom, Baby Sis, Charm, to highlight). That generosity took a toll, and I certainly stepped back. You can call it ghosting, you can call it alienation, you can call it selfishness, and you can call it prioritizing, but it’s something that you have to own. Everybody has their own problems – it’s regurgitated rhetoric that excuses us for not reaching out to people, or giving us a reason why we turn into a shell of ourselves to focus on our wants and needs. The matter of perspective determines who sees it as nothing being wrong with it, versus those who see it as people just doing their thing. We all have our reasons for why we move how we move, and in this decade, given how it started off, it’s been nothing short of constant transformation. It’s exhausting, but there are great things that bring us to the other side of evolution.

With the loss, always comes an opportunity to gain. You can’t always lose. When you hit rock bottom, the only direction is up; cliché, but the truth. I’ve gained more meaningful friendships, meaningful love, more life experiences to come with that, and more opportunities for constant growth. But I also have to acknowledge where anxiety and fear has held me back some. I recently binged a show called UnPrisioned, starring Kerry Washington & Delroy Lindo, and it’s a dramedy that highlights family trauma from the POV of a relationship therapist (Washington). She drops a lot of gems when she’s doing her livestreams, and one thing that she mentioned was that trauma is something that we don’t necessarily move on from, but it’s inward; it’s a ring. I’m paraphrasing because I forgot which episode it happened in, and I didn’t write it down at the time, but the point was that we never fully get over our trauma, because it pops up in so many ways that we don’t realize. It shows up during intimacy, it shows up during arguments, or it can show up in random conversations and something just triggers you. Talking about it, and working to heal our inner child, is a lifelong journey. You’re never going to show up completely healed from all of your traumas, because there will always be a reminder to pop up. The goal is to navigate through them with honesty and proceed to figure out how you can make alternate decisions when you’re faced with those familiar situations. I’m not gonna get all deep, but UnPrisioned is a great show if you ever want to watch it (Hulu/Disney+).

I’ve been disappointed, and have been the one to disappoint. Understanding that in life, you’re going to be on either side, and accepting it, is a tough pill to swallow. I’ve certainly had a hard time dealing with that, but it’s something that I had to be more cognizant of. The difference is that standing in those feelings, and making the commitment to grow, is what will allow you to see the results that you want in life. There are absolutely many things that I want to improve, because I know that there are parts of me that are submerged in the depths of my anxiety. When I was in Jamaica in early 2023, it was my first time being there, and I was in awe that I had finally set foot in the land of my heritage. There was one excursion where we visited the Blue Hole in Ocho Rios. Trekking through the woods, and jumping into the river while waterfalls were crashing down – it’s a riveting experience. I jumped in a smaller portion, and I had an opportunity to jump from a higher distance, but fear struck me. I had started & stopped a couple of times, tried to psych myself up to make it happen, but I froze. I felt bad about it, because I had not only let down myself, but I had let down those who were (patiently, thankfully) waiting on me and supporting me to make the jump. The adrenaline I was feeling had washed away, and that feeling has really stuck with me since.

I’m not the biggest thrill-seeker, but I’ve been known to get up and go; to be spontaneous. Somewhere in the past couple of years, I went from being spontaneous, to conservative and cautious, to the point where I was too cautious, and too safe. Blame it on the angst from the pandemic, blame it on previous trauma, but I know that something had & has been off, and working to put the pieces back together to show up in a better way for myself and others, starts there. I’ve gone out a lot less, I’ve backed out of opportunities for new experiences, and it’s because I’ve been living in a cautious space, and not as spontaneous. But if you’re not growing, you’re dying. If you’re not living, you’re dying. You can be responsible, but you don’t have to play it safe all the time. These are things that I have to remind myself, and they come up when it needs to be heard & felt. I’m 34 years old. I really don’t have much to complain about, and there are goals in which I’d like to achieve. That requires taking more leaps. I took one in 2012 when I quit the safe space of retail to jump into television; that decision defined an important journey in my life. Taking the metaphorical leaps and the physical leaps, both come with their own sets of adrenaline, and that’s a feeling of discomfort that at one point, I had welcomed in a way that opened up many doors for life. So, more of that. Time waits for no one, and with the state of the world in the shape it’s in, we have to take advantage of a life worth living.

“Fuck being normal, I want to be free”

Paige (Kerry Washington), UnPrisioned

That’s My Word & It STiXX