As always thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! For those of you that know me this is the day I recount, relive, and reflect on the year since my last b-day. As always it can be long and there are a few people who will get to the end (a few I hope will) but I realize I’m not writing this for them because it’s my BIRTHDAY!
It looks like I may have skipped a few years since I posted one of these publicly, but I have them written down. Based on the turmoil the world has gone through in the last few years, it seems getting hit with haymaker after haymaker, that those writings became more opinionated about the status of the world and less about me.
So, sixty, here we go!
Also, again here is the place you can tap out, I appreciate you getting this far – love ya, mean it, bye bye.
For those still here. Now I often ask people, “How’s your head, how’s your heart?” As I reflect today, I realize that I not only don’t ask myself those questions but more importantly, think about what the real answer is for me.
So, for my birthday I’m going to answer both publicly, think of it as a gift to myself that I want/need to share with you (the ones that have read past the natural break).
Starting with my head and…shit there’s a lot of stuff up here! It’s kind of like that attic that you dare not go into in every scary movie. There are very dark corners and boxes that I know I should look in, but not today…
Those boxes are not unique categorically, old trauma, memories good, bad, and ugly. Boxes with heavy padlocks, the things you’ve suppressed, that even if you knew where the keys are you would not even think about getting them and triggering the locks on your birthday or any other day. There’s the “If I had a chance to do it over (do over)” box and “If I’d gone left instead of right” box.
There is one box I’ve recently opened and really started to unpack, the PTSD box, mine specifically labeled – Black Man PTSD. I didn’t make it up and honestly until very recently didn’t know it existed, but it has been there all my life. As the world becomes more keenly aware for the importance of mental health and the very real struggles associated with mental illness, most Black men ignore that this box or any that affects our mental wellbeing even exists.
The last couple of years has made me understand that the solutions to mental well being are for Black men are not, “rub some dirt on it…” and “man up”. My mental health is probably a 5-6. Am I getting help from a professional? No. The why, it’s the same why that is part of the problem, I (we) don’t believe that talking about it (laying on someone’s couch) works. We are taught to literally keep that shit to yourself, we all got problems.
Ok, I’m getting out of my head now (shiver)…
Suffice it to say that I’m learning and growing, being more aware that part of the process of healing is help outside of my own head.
My heart, I could say the same thing as my head, there’s a lot of stuff in here, it’s full! Love, joy, fulfillment, and gratitude. I’ve learned that love is easy…relationships are hard AF. I love Michelle, I don’t say that out loud enough. Everybody knows how much I love my sons Marcus & Max, just writing their names makes me beam and smile. Proud is such a small word that doesn’t begin to capture how I feel about the men they are today. I love my closest friends; I am grateful to have a bond that has lasted for fifty years and know that not many people can say that. I am truly grateful to have had this life for sixty years so far!
I wrote somewhere that everyone should write their own story, at this age I’ve read enough obits (and wrote my dad’s) to know they are written by somebody that is not you. They write the public facts about your existence. Birth, education/work, something related to church and God (don’t get me started on that), marriage, children, and finally close relatives both in the ancestral plane and among the living. I want to write/reflect on my dash, you know, the one between 11/17/62 and today 11/17/22. If you are reading this today, I hope my dash is still going, extending. The vast majority of us don’t get to pick when that dash ends in a month, day, and year.
Food for thought, this dash is not linear, there are peaks and valleys, maybe a few loops. My rollercoaster.
Wow 60! Looking back, remember when you were ten? When you are ten everybody else is old, teenagers because they got to do stuff you couldn’t, people in their twenties living what they believe is the best time of their lives, and yes, the old people. Everybody over forty was old, when I was ten my dad was forty-six and mom was forty-two. At ten I couldn’t imagine being 60, for that matter 20, 30, 40, or 50.
Finally, the combo platter if you will, head and heart. Two of my favorite descriptors I use now for me are “Unapologetically Black” and “My full Black self”. I was guilty of, I hate to say most of my life, tamping down my blackness. I was guilty of accepting and not challenging the stereotypes, tropes, and sometimes perpetuating the myths about some of my people. The biggest benefit for me of the pandemic (and trump) years, gave me something I didn’t know needed, knowledge. Knowledge of who WE are, knowledge that our history predates race, knowledge that our history in America is limited by the eyes of colonizers and oppressors. I’m done using the word minority because I’ve learned we are the Global Majority.
The answer to my initial question to myself: My head is bloody but unbowed and my heart is so full that it helps to clear the clutter in the attic.
I think that is enough for this year, if you are at this sentence yes, I love you! If you understand it all I know you love me and always will.
As always, if you got to the end of this don’t worry about getting me a gift…you just did!
