Fresh Start

As most are laser focused on their “New Year, New Me” motivational daily words of aspirations, I am still mourning the death of all that I love that has been lost in wave of 2020. Some through the COVID-19, others through divorce and separation. Most of all, I have been mourning the death of the little girl that I held locked away deep within for so many years prior to the pandemic of 2020. A little girl that has been so battered, abused and broken, left behind and only remembered when someone needed a punching bag to pacify their time. A New Year’s Resolution has never been a belief I have maintained, empty promises of all the weight that I would lose or the bad habits that I would break, only to fall short just a few weeks in because my brain still struggled as a result of all the inherited toxic traits I absorbed along the way. Haunting flashbacks of the misters that momma allowed in each night, the mean girls growing up that always made sure to let me know I had no click to call my own or the guys along the way who found no value in me beyond what was either in my bank account or between my legs... No New Year’s Resolution for me. Instead, I have made a commitment to that little girl trapped inside the nightmares in my head, me and her, we are breaking free this year; mind, body and soul, we are breaking free of the oppressive hold and every negative word ever thrown our way. Growing up, Grandma use to say, “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you!” That is when I realized she had not ever actually read the very Bible she had beat me over the head with. Words can cause Life or Death, at least that is always what her Pastor had said, but let her tell it and it is just mind over matter and I am too sensitive, and I should just get over it because there are plenty more worse off than me so my little problems did not actually matter. So, this year, I am not losing the weight because I am ashamed of the judgmental stares and the jokes made at my expense. I am dropping the weight because I no longer need the shielding of this body armor that I perfected so many years ago, all the fat I built up in order to keep people at bay and to be able to hide in plain sight because no one cares about the fat girl on the side. No, I am dropping the weight because I have learned to love myself in ways no one ever felt I was worthy enough of before. See, in 2020 I was ghosted by a guy that I gave all that I had left of my heart and soul; thinking that all his plans and promises made with me was just as true as the shattered pieces I had left to give as my proof that I once was human too. I cannot blame him to be completely honest, I co-created the toxic situation because I was too afraid of my past to give him the unedited version of me for him to see, so when he started to see threw my truth coded in lies and the strength that I was barely holding together, he used them against me as an easy way out. I failed to protect that little girl that I had sheltered for so long. I promised her with my life that I would make sure she had never gotten harmed once I was all grown up. I allowed her to get really close to a man that we hardly even knew and before either of us knew it, we were both shot in the heart with the humiliation as he used it as a play on my mental health on public display. The bullet was so lethal that it hit to the core of our soul. June 19, 2020; that little girl, me, or maybe it was we; died in the pandemic and the light of our horrible truth spilled out like an unstoppable blood flow. I could not save her, no matter how hard I tried, she was gone just like that night back in 2009 when my brother took his own life. I let that little girl down and now I have no choice but to make sure that shit was not all in vain. I had no choice but to lay her to rest, there was no funeral with her in a beautiful dress, with a wonderful display of flowers as I lowered her in the ground, or a farewell surrounded by all who loved her. No, it was more like a cremation because the burn of the bullet left nothing behind but her ashes, they were all that I had left of her. So, I released her into the Ocean where she could now rest peaceful at the bottom of its floor, with my promise to rise like the Phoenix in her memory and shine her light of truth for the world to see. The truth that the only man this country ever convicted for any of her childhood rapes, beatings and molestations was the black man that momma brought in because the social workers, police officers and her white family members said, it would be wrong to disrupt the happy homes of all the white men before him. Plus, momma made the most money from the white Misters that came in the night, so it is best I kept my mouth shut if I knew what was good for me, was the warning I was given all the way through. So, for 2021, I am on my journey of Divine Purpose after surviving another predator in the White House, a pandemic that helped me break free of the most abusive marriage I had become trapped in; where food, money and transportation was withheld from me when my PTSD would flair and he said I was not acting right. I survived the ghosting of a man that I thought was the King that was going to rescue me, not knowing I was just an easy financial hustle because he saw my vulnerability in my lies with sprinkles of truth behind closed doors as I began to trust him a little more. I’ve promised that little girl’s spirit that never again will I live in fear, never again will I allow our trauma to be my oppressive hold and never again will I allow our truth never to be told because there are still children missing from the boarders and she and I already know how justice is truly blind in this great country of ours and how the children who get lost in the cracks grow in the night and later become the monsters that they made us, if they even survive. So 2021... here I come, the Wounded Warrior with a purpose and promise to be in the best health of my life, mind, body and soul.