Life's Journey

Hi. Whoever you are. My name is Journey, and well life, it has not been an easy one. Have you ever opened your eyes in the morning and wished that you had not? Wishing that somehow, some way this weight on your chest could be lifted. Nothing against God or the beauty in this world, but how torturous it is to walk by beauty every day and feel so disconnected from it. Why did God place me in a world so beautiful only to make me a spectator? Sometimes I wonder if God even knows me. If at some point, there was no point in believing in me. I know that sometimes I would do nothing but lay under the covers for days straight or be incapable of stopping these ridiculous tears that just stream with no history. I could go days without bathing. I would want to be clean, but would be so tired, it would take hours just to get up. Tired from the soul out. I wonder if that is why God may have grown tired of me? I hate to burden you with my endless pool of misery. It is my own and everyone has a story. I am inviting you to mine. How I ended up here writing in this journal that Miss Johnnie gave me. She calls them letters to your future self. Self? I do not even know who I am anymore.

My world ended October 15, 2016. The world I knew through my mother’s eyes went black when her body turned cold. The world is so cold now. It never was really a warm place, but I was safe in her arms. Even as a grown woman I could melt into her heart with no worry. She was love. She saved me from myself. She saw beauty when I hated my entire being and she saw God. Art and God. Her creation through her creator. She saw me fit to be a blessing, this broken vessel. That is why I stayed another day. Selfishly relishing in the beauty of her smile approving of my possibilities. She saw hope. She was hope. In those darkened spaces where my heart once resided, she saw a beat and she embraced it. She poured life into these festering wounds laced across my scarred spirit and brought warmth. All I had to do was look in her eyes and I could catch a glimpse of God and his hope for me. Maybe.

I was such a mischievous child it took a patient heart to handle me. I was branded this mean, incorrigible being, always angry, and always fighting. No one knew the thorned root that wove the mask that I wore. I remember laughing and being vulnerable to the mysteries of the world. An adventurous child able to breathe in the warmth of summer and savor the sweet taste of red candy apples. I was five years old when I learned that monsters existed. I asked God where he was, but he did not answer. Maybe he was hidden in the dark spaces of my mind as I escaped the dismantled piece of myself the monster left behind. When I came to, I was alive, but my heart could no longer beat. My voice was trapped in an iron cage, and my soul was void. The world moved so fast around me and I hated it. How dare the world go on like nothing happened? My tongue was a dagger and my demeanor foreign to myself. Who am I? I had no idea anymore. This anger spewed from within burning me from the inside out like a sacred poison. I was lost, but she, my beautiful angel, embraced me even still.

She saw something divinely made. A gift with soiled wrapping, her love would mend the pieces. I was so lost that I ran from that peaceful place searching for peace. I ran into the world face first immersing myself in danger seeking the means to an end. I wanted it to end. I needed an escape, but there was no way out. Learning would be my escape. I could not focus my attention to meet my full potential, but I could glide through. Those years that shape our existence were so empty, but she was there, molding memories of holidays, warm sweet potato pies, and a gentle touch. Every hand in my world had a clenched fist, but her touch so sweet. Maybe this would bring me to my identity.

Blurry nights drunk with pain, regurgitating regrets. No love lost because no love found. My college days were high on life. I studied art because it was what I could do without thought. It came naturally. Naming my pain through perfect strokes of the paint brush I found my release. While passion was hard to find it found me through truth and discovery on canvas. As I attacked each creative inkling my body was ravaged by assault after assault. While I tried to escape the world, the world found me, breaking me even more. I lost the ability to connect. My pearls splayed for strangers; I could feel no more. Numbness showered over me. I fell into the poisonous embrace of vexed lovers and my soul grew even more weary. The silence grew too loud and one day as I pressed the gas and crashed into a pole, momentarily, I felt joy anticipating another existence that did not come. Instead, twisted metal, a high repair bill and me unscathed emerged from the wreckage. Why am I surviving merely to exist?

We crashed into each other at high speed, two open wounds bleeding on one another. Dysfunction draped in camaraderie guided our love. What we labeled as love, was really an expectation of it. Have you ever started something, and it develops a life of its own? No matter how hard you try to stop it, your intuition warning you of the dangers ahead, but a force outside of yourself presses forward? We married detesting one another but feeling obligated to see this story through to the end. Forced engagements and like making never creating love, the passion grew angry and the air grew horns. My best friend in misery found out the truth in my lies and the devil was in his eyes. The day that our masquerading ended in this marriage play I was completing my master’s degree. Laying in my own blood, the world around me black from blindness, and my jaw crunching as I tasted the metallic blood nourishing the dryness of my raw bruised throat, I called to him.

That familiar stranger, that new me better than anyone. That one who sat with me in the dark spaces and offered escape. I prayed the first prayer I had uttered in years. Dear God, please let me live or let me die. I cannot exist in the in between anymore. I had laid there feeling life drifting. The pain was so bad it no longer existed. I could only hear out of one ear, but the noise of anger and rage had waned and there was silence. My vision was so blurry, but I did not see him. I turned my head slowly and could see the door. I pulled myself up and stumbled to the chest. I could feel my car keys there and grabbed them. I ran, it hurt so bad, but I ran. This was my last chance to see if there was a reason. A reason to live through all the pain and sadness. I got in the car and drove as far as I could.

In the hospital I was provided a list of resources for safe spaces that would help me process my experiences. I found one quaint place that was willing to take me in. They required nothing and I had nothing to offer, but this broken, bruised body and confusion. Why did I make it? I made it. That is all I knew, and I wanted to take advantage of what was before me. Miss Johnnie was over intakes. She was a scruffy, heavy set older woman who wore life like a battle beaten soldier wrapped in diamonds. She had experienced so much but did not look like what she had gone through. She was so full of wisdom and nurturing from the start.

Whenever a person entered this safe house, she gifted them this small black notebook. That first night I laid in my twin bed feeling like a queen. I was finally feeling free after years of torment and abuse at the hands of myself…at the hands of another. I put my face in the book and smelled the crisp pages and sank into its’ meaning and hope for my life. Miss Johnnie told me to write and not skip one single page. She calls them letters to your future self. For the first time in a long time, I listened to something other than the voice in my head that saw no worth. I took her words wrapped in wisdom and I wrote. Everyday.

Some time passed and I reached out to my mother. My light that I had left for the darkness. She heard my voice and said, “come home Journey.” For the first time in a long time, I listened and said, “ok mama.” Everyday I saw my mother’s face, her smile so beautiful. Her presence brought the calm I needed to rebuild. My divorce was finalized and like a cold breeze my other half had gone away. Just as suddenly as we had crashed into one another, the memory of us drifted away. I talked with my mother as often as I could. I spoke of a dream of starting my own business to help people who had been in situations like me. In true form, my mother said, “DO IT!” I felt like a new woman. I felt so connected, and everything was as it had been before. Until…

I came home from running errands and almost a year to the day that I returned home, I was told that she was in the hospital. They believed a stroke…before my sister and father could finish the sentence I was at the hospital. She was not able to get the proper care that she needed and there was a mix up in her transport to a better equipped hospital. Just like that she drifted away. They said that her brain bled, and she was now brain dead. October 15, 2016 my world ended. She was gone.

I have been writing in this notebook since she has been gone. I had stopped for a while but wanted to keep my promise to Miss Johnnie. I made it to the last page and there was a note saying to pick up an envelope at the safe house since I have completed my task. I arrived and there were 2 envelopes waiting. One said, “OPEN FIRST.” There was a letter from Miss Johnnie that said: You are a fighter! While the pain of life has bruised, invalidated, and attempted to overcome you, you have overcome it. I am so proud of you. Your very being is a gift to the world. I have a gift and directions for you in the second envelope. I hope it will help you achieve your dreams that you dared to continue to dream in the face of obstacles. I know you have made your mother proud! As tears from that 5-year-old girl began to fall from this 40-year-old woman’s face, I got the other envelope. In the second envelope was check made out to me for $20,000 and a note that said, “DO IT!” For the first time in a long time, I listened!

Goodnight future self!