by @afrofreyjan

I need love and support to counteract the shame; I need love and belonging to have the moral strength of character I seek to embody. I am weakest when isolated, shamed, and separated.

All the tears I cry for the harm I’ve done don’t equip me with the fortitude to do better, or to let myself learn how.

A broken me isn’t a better me; shame & guilt don’t improve upon the trauma that’s been done to me, or by me.

Whatever pain and suffering I keep shouting at myself saying I deserve, won’t solve anything, won’t aid anyone, can’t heal anything.

When did I stop caring about the pain, wounds, scars done to me? When did I accept this brokenness as a way of being, as if others had no hand in this?

When am I allowed to break the things that have wounded me? Am I the only one that’s not allowed to be angry at how I’ve been treated?

I prayed for so long to stop hurting that I didn’t realize I was calling numbness a blessing. That if I couldn’t remember all the agony, I could shape and become a new me.

I’m at an airport with no luggage; the wisdom in this statement is that I’m the baggage—and the fool.

Meditating on goodness didn’t undo the abuse or unpack the trauma that makes me feel so morally inadequate. When the comrades I want to support are harmed by my privilege, my body, my traumatized being, I dig the sword deeper.

Who taught me that hurting myself was an act of love, or atonement? Who taught me that remorse meant hating myself?

Who deceived me into believing that destroying myself for others was a righteous or holy thing?

Do I not matter?

Who taught me to withhold love from myself and call that a virtue?

I have all this wisdom and it amounts to nothing, because I’ve been starved of love.

I keep thinking if I knew better, I’d do better. But I’ve swallowed texts whole and still don’t know how to stop the bad things or being the problem.

I am wise and blind; determined but chaotic. My greatest strength is my fatal flaw and I feel to shattered to be stainglass.

Who taught me to hate my own emotions? That wisdom or maturity is carving them out of me? That feeling less was the solution to feeling bad; that the proper response to my own pain was to turn down the volume and keep on moving forward?

As if anywhere I’d end up would be good...