All Night

Hello and Welcome to another Blog Post!
This time I'm posting on the actual day, WOW even if it is late.

I think this post is going to be a little longer than the usual length of my posts, but I'm not sure if it's going to be any longer than the last one I had. Obviously the "lot [that] had been happening in my life" and the "lot of feelings" I have aren't just going to go away in one month, but I'm definitely feeling a lot more stable than where I was a month ago.



Just a warning about this post- Jupiter (the ruling planet of Sagittarius) is in Sagittarius right now, and Mercury is in retrograde- so you know I'm feeling POWERFUL and BOLD and I'm here to snatch all the wigs of those who have EVER wronged me. ;)

Anyway...

First, as is the norm, a life update (longer than usual):

• My birthday is two days away and I'm extremely exciting for that! I'm so excited to turn 21 and I'm going to speak on that a little bit more later in my post! My birthday week has been busy, but rewarding. 
• I've started going to the gym a little less- averaging around twice a week minus the week that I was in Harvard (where I didn't go at all), but at least I'm going. I've also starting doing cardio EVERY time I go to the gym instead of every other time, so the quality of my work outs are a little bit more strenuous. I'm excited to continue working out when I come home for winter break in two weeks. (I found that around-Thanksgiving deal to capitalize on)
• I want to get a little bit more serious with this to fulfill goals of mine, so here's to hoping that happens!
• School and grades have been okay. I don't think this semester is going to be as good as Junior Year, but it's definitely going to be better than Freshman and Sophomore years, so I'm not too worried about that. I'm hoping to finish out college strong next semester!
• Speaking of next semester- the classes I'm taking are 
• Speech & Hearing Science Online (4 credits)
• Human Neuroanatomy w/Lab (3 Credits) 
• Foundations of Social Work (3 Credits) &
• Islam & Race (3 Credits)
• I'm excited to take these classes (totaling 13 credits, Godbless) to finish out my collegiate career at UVM! Islam & Race will finish out my religion minor with such a great, powerful, and thought-provoking topic taught by a fantastic professor. S&H Science and Human Neuroanatomy are definitely classes that I'm most nervous for, but I'm excited to be done with my Neuroscience major with these classes, and the Social Work class will definitely give me a great introduction to what Social Work is and if it is indeed a field I should go into (I'm thinking that it will be very affirming)
• UPB is going to start #RecruitmentSZN and I'm SO excited for that, but also it means next semester will be busy! More details to come soon!
• I applied and got accepted to be an Undergraduate Diversity Fellow within the College of Arts & Sciences. This position fills a lot of goals of the protests on campus last semester, and I'm excited to work with such powerful student activists. We start on December 4th. 
• The 2019 Next Step Social Justice Retreat is going to be SUCH a good space for me. I met all the facilitators a few weeks ago, and they are just such graceful and passionate people and I'm in LOVE. Can't wait for our second round of training tomorrow morning!
• The Harvard Divinity School Diversity and Explorations Program was definitely one that I wouldn't trade for many things, but it definitely showed me a space where I knew I didn't belong and didn't hold the vision I have for myself. Some of that is associated with the brand that is Harvard, some of it is associated with the general atmosphere of the campus, it's location in the Northeast (that I'm lowkey trying to pursue OUT of for graduate education), the still oppressing number of white people that are there, and the quality of the program- which seemed more intellectually theologically based than something that I'm looking for. I met a lot of cool marginalized people who I hope to hold in my life for a long time, and hope they make a positive impact on the academic world of religious studies,like they plan on doing,  but I'm just not sure that is where I would want to pursue an education, and I'm okay with holding that knowledge. I also learned a lot of cool tips & tricks on how to apply to graduate school, so I'm very thankful for that as well.
• Lastly, Thanksgiving was a good time to be home. I spent time with family and friends, but didn't spend necessarily enough time with my mom or with myself, which I really want to focus on when I'm home for winter break. I also had discussions and interactions with my family that led to a lot of internal dialogue and a lot of things to unpack. I'm hoping to do some of that unpacking in this blog post. 

• I got to spend a lot of MUCH needed time with my little cousins as well. I try my hardest to be a light in my life, and their presence, although annoying at times, helps me to shine brighter. I want to live a great life to be an example for them, what they are capable of, how this family can negatively impact them, and their INNATE ability to be so much better than me in their future lives and careers. 
• Oh, also, my longest Facebook Album "Post-Teen Pop" finally ended after approximately a half a year's worth of content. I'm excited for this Next Chapter. 

I'm ready for these next two weeks to go by productively, as well as swiftly, and I'm ready for my 21st year to be great. 

Anyway, onto this blogpost. This post I think I'm going to be going back and forth between Beyoncè lyrics and quotes from LEMONADE and my own life experience. 

The theme of this chapter of LEMONADE is Redemption. Redemption, meaning, salvation, reclamation, and absolution. 

Beyoncè starts this part with her Grandmother's recipe for Lemonade and continues with: "Grandmother, the alchemist. You spun gold out of this hard life. Conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kitchen. Broke the curse with your own two hands."

I, unfortunately, don't think my grandmother broke the curse that plagues our family. She definitely spun gold out of this hard life by having a family that is capable of loving. She has definitely conjured beauty, but I'm not sure if she found healing or discovered an antidote. 

I realized recently, that the real deep reason why I want to be a minister is because I want to cultivate my love for God, love for love, and love for life, and be able to shine it onto other people. I want to be able to take people's pain away through the salvific sacrifice of Christ as a redemption for our souls. I want to be a licensed clinical social work to not only work in the religious aspect, but to help people therapeutically as well- to help them work through their own traumas and to help make their homes really feel like homes. 

I want to help people heal. And part of that is because of the many different revelations I found about myself through the healing that I've done and will continue to do. 

I've touched on this some in my last post and I'm #sorrynotsorry if it sounds a little repetitive. But I'm angry all the time and sad all the time at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely led a successful, positive, and passionate life, but there are so many deep seeded traumas that I hold within myself that I really need to unpack in order to be a truly emotionally healthy person. 

I'm not going to go into deep details, just because I'm still working to figure all that out for myself, but basically part of it is from never being accepted in the black community, and also, OBVIOUSLY not being completely accepted in white spaces. At home, I always had a passion for knowledge that just wasn't encouraged in the home or academic lives of some other black people (I was afforded the privilege of my grandmother being a teacher, so everyone knew of her and her brilliance and expected nothing less from me throughout my early educational experiences- or were afraid by what a loud black woman would do if they accosted her grandson's education; I'm not sure of which, but I'm leaning on the former since my teachers seemed to like me), and so, naturally, I outcast myself (by avoiding talking to people that just weren't as motivated as I was) as well as was outcasted. I was accused of acting, being, talking "too white" throughout my whole life and that isn't something that should be equated to education. 

Whiteness should not be equated to educational experience, yet, in this country, it is. White people are given privileges that people of color simply do not have, and some of that is the assumption of education and knowledge, some of it is an assumption of power and the ability use it morally and ethically, or naturally, and some of it is natural assimilation into a multitude of different communities, just because being white is a dominant identity, and therefore, most communities have a dominant amount of white people. 

Not only did I not feel like I could be accepted in the black community, but it seemed as if academic excellence was the only way to feel true acceptance from my family. They wanted so badly for me to succeed, that my emotional and psychological well-being was never a priority, as I wish it had been. For example, when I did poorly in my first two years of college- questions weren't asked such as "Oh, do you think this major is right for you?" (It wasn't) "Are you sure you want to do Pre-Med?" (No.) "Is UVM right for you?" (I'm not sure.) Granted, I'm not sure how I would've received these questions, however the phrase "Oh, well, you can do better. I know you can" is not acceptable, but was the motivation that drove me to stubbornly keep grinding for a degree that I no longer want, but have come to accept because it will provide me with some psychological educational structure. 

I don't want to provide any of this information with the assumption that I'm full of regret, or that I'm ungrateful for the experiences that I've had, but there are many things that I wish I could change about my collegiate experience that I'm simply just going to have to keep adapting to get to where I believe I belong and where I want to be. I also don't want to deny the fact that I have been afforded a lot of privilege, even if it's not as much as other people have. 

I think it's natural that I chose UVM, even if I chose it for the wrong reasons- getting into the Honors College (a toxic environment, especially for people of color), relative cost of attendance (Um- did I REALLY know how money worked for college when I was 17 lol), relative location, and the advertising of the tragically biologically, and not cognitively or psychologically based, neuroscience program. What I didn't look at was demographics or clubs and activities that they offered. I ended up lucking out in one of these arenas (UPB), and the other provided me with a lot of pain. 

Being in a place that is so dangerously white as the University of Vermont has been an experience that I would trade for many other things. During my first two years, I didn't know how insidious my lack of racial awareness was. Of course I felt black, in that I grew up in a black family and I was myself black, but I don't think I fully was taught what it really meant to be black in America until people that look like me in different parts of the country were being killed by Police, or until I realized that the nagging feeling I felt when I was walking to classes alone was the isolation I felt by being surrounded by the color and the presence of whiteness- people, the institution that is collegiate education, and snow- that litters the ground for more than half of my time here. There's still MUCH that I need to learn about my racial identity, but this has been a very rough, but informative beginning. 

Along with this, I've also felt a lot of pain and trauma within my family. There's just a lot of anger and I'm not exactly sure what to make of this yet, just because I don't think I've unpacked it enough with my uncles or my mom, but I'm hoping to continue to do that as I'm home. I know that some of this is because of intergenerational trauma- post traumatic stress that is passed down through generations from having an entire culture stripped away from us, from being forced to work as slaves, from being taken from our homeland and put in a land where our Master was not a God, but white men. The pain that is felt through this continues to be pervasive as people continue to fail to protect and facilitate good emotional growth and development through therapeutic practices and self-reflection. Some of this anger within my family is also just due to the lack of priority for emotional healthiness, something that I am thankful that I developed despite a deficit for it. Also, money, power, success, and motivation play into this as well, but I don't really want to continue analyzing my family in this way because it's both not productive for me to write it here, it's also not the point of this post. 

And don't get me wrong, I feel extremely loved, cared for, and valued by my family. There are just so many things deeper than these feelings that provide true stability; a stability I am recognizing that I do not possess. 

There's also pain associated with my sexuality and body image. The reason I group these is because they have to do with a lack of relationships that I've had. I'm really struggling with my sexuality and coming to grips with the fact that I have not explored it enough because I've still never really had a real relationship. Is this because I'm not straight enough? I'm not gay enough? I'm not thin enough? I'm not muscular enough? I'm not ___ enough? I'm not enough. I get really deep in self doubt and beating myself up because of the many insecurities that I have about my body and how that may have affected people being attracted to me, or my queerness, which was apparently obvious to everyone except myself while I was growing up (which is a whole other story about repressed emotions and lack of love for myself and the realization that I'm a beautiful creation of God no matter what shape, size, or sexuality I have). I feel like I've never been loved (in a romantic, attraction-based way). I cried to my mom about this before I left to come back to school after break. Sometimes I don't feel normal. Sometimes I don't feel like I belong in my skin. And maybe I just need to find the right person. Maybe I need to come out again. Maybe I need to get laid. I won't know until I know. 

Which kills me, because- if you know me, you would know how much I love the pursuit of knowledge for things that I care about, things that I'm passionate about. I love just randomly going on Google when I ask a question that can easily be answered. I have a sort of obsessional neurosis when it comes to finding out more information about literally anything that I want to know and so not knowing about my own self is really driving me crazy. 

Yet another pain that I've felt, which I've unpacked a lot of, especially in my CAPS appointments last year, was feeling like I've been given up on. Throughout relationships with people, throughout organizations and things that I've been apart of, etc. From these things, and my family interactions, and my temperament, and just the general nature of who I am, I've become a strong person; strong-willed, strong-hearted, and well-guarded. Being strong has led to me being a support for others that needed someone else to be strong for them. That's something that I'm trying to transition out of being for people as I work on the things that make me feel weak. I need people to understand that I cannot be their primary support system because I can barely stand on my own two feet sometimes. 

But, since I've been a support for many others and not for myself, the people that I have eventually leaned on, the people in my life who are loyal, patient, kind, gentle, and loving. Who challenge me, who drive me crazy, who really make an effort to be in my life- it hurts to love them and to be loved by them. It hurts to give people the power of my trust, my love, and to be able to lean on them because I've been betrayed in the past. I'm working on feeling less of this pain, and having freer relationships with people, and really, truly, developing more self-love so that I can allow myself to be loved and lifted up by others. 

I'm providing you with all this information to show that I have felt pain and this pain is deep and that it hurts a lot. 

"Well what does this have to do with Beyoncè? What does this have to do with LEMONADE? What does this have to do with Redemption or All Night?"

I'm getting to that part, just be patient!

This pain has not been solved for me. It has been very much inherited. Through all of it, I want to be the alchemist for my family; for my cousins, for my offspring. 

I want to spin gold out of this hard life. 

I want to conjure beauty, introduce healing where it doesn't live, but make it it's home. I want to discover the antidote in my kitchen and I want to break this curse with my own two hands.

I want to keep growing. I want to keep developing. I want to keep loving. 

There's another song that comes to mind when I think about this, and the reason why I am satisfied with enduring through this pain- my journey with God will bring me to the end-goal that is redemption, salvation, and absolution. 

It's called "Keep Making Me" by Sidewalk Prophets. 

"Make me broken, so I can be healed. 'Cause I'm so calloused and now I can't feel. I want to run to You with heart wide open. Make me broken." 

I have been in so much pain and I have neglected to feel love for myself in the way God intended me to.

"Make me empty, so I can be filled. 'Cause I'm still holding onto my will, and I'm completed when you are with me- make me empty. 'Til you are my own desire. 'Til you are my one true love. 'Til you are my breath, my everything. Lord, please keep making me."

I need to let go of the things that I think are right for the sake of myself. I need to truly think to myself: "What would Jesus do?"- he would challenge others to grow, he would love unconditionally. Am I doing this? Am I letting God shine through everything that I'm doing? Are all my intentions through godliness or through materiality?

"Make me lonely. So I can be yours. 'Til I want no one, more than you, Lord. 'Cause in the darkness- I  know you will hold me. Make me lonely."

Am I letting God carry me or am I relying on my ideas of a future where I will be loved by others? I have done a lot of sitting in this darkness in order to feel truly lonely- until I want no one more than God. 

I know my end goal is oneness with God- or something equivalent to that in the afterlife. I know that I need to align my life, my desires, my reason for living, creating, shining, and breathing in order to be a beacon for God's love. It's going to take a lot to get there, like letting myself feel that love, but I believe I will do it in order to be complete one day. 

I also think this song really challenges me to think about what I'm doing. Am I continually growing? Am I continually striving to be a better person each and every day? I know that sometimes I don't try that hard, but I swear that I am trying my hardest overall. 

Beyoncè states: "They say true love's the greatest weapon, to win the war caused by pain. But every diamond has imperfections, my love's too pure to watch it chip away." 

For her, she means she's not going to let infidelity ruin the powerful relationship she has with her husband, but for me, it means that I'm going to use the true Godly love as my greatest weapon against this war of pain and trauma. My love, this unconditional love I need to continue to inherit from God, will continue to be my guide and my tool toward redemption.

Beyoncè says that her grandmother taught her that "nothing real can be threatened." I hope to keep being my most authentic self and to become more and more that as I discover more and more about myself. "True love breathes salvation back into me- with every tear came redemption and my torturer became my remedy."

True love, being God, is my salvation. My tears; my want and yearning to be made broken, empty, and lonely to feel more and more of his Presence in my life will introduce redemption to me. My torturer, myself, my method of torture- self-doubt, complacency, ego- I will, through God, remedy and heal myself through an explorative and understanding and loving process. 

I have a lot more growing to do-I'll never ever stop growing. I have a lot of self-exploration to do. I have a lot of conversations to have and I have a lot love to give to myself. I have so many experience to still live, and I'm glad I'm not taking all of these emotions and wallowing in self-hate and depression, but, rather, attempting to make myself better.

One of my supervisors on my RA staff, Rachel, is so filled with wisdom at such a young age and I have a lot to learn about blackness from them. Ironically, I'm not going to talk about something super deep that I've learned from them, rather, I'm going to talk about the other day- when discussing my upcoming birthday, they talked about how 21 is a pivotal year, not just because it's the year that you're an "adult" or that you can drink or stuff like that, but rather in a sacred way- it is 7, 3 times. 7 and 3 are both extremely spiritual numbers and they hold a lot of power. They encouraged this by stating "this upcoming year is your year." and I'm going to make sure they're right. Over the past years, especially 2017, I made it an effort to care for myself more. In 2017 I got rid of toxic people. In 2018 I started finding myself. In 2019 I hope to grow spiritually. I'm going to make my 21st year mean something because there is so much life ahead of me that I need to live and I am so excited for what my life will continue to hold. 

I'm on the path to Redemption and I can't wait to taste the sweetness that I believe will come with true self-love and recognized self-worth. 

Thank you for being apart of my journey thus far. 

And as always, 

Thank you for Reading.