This is 50
I’ve been going through my things, paring down, and throwing away as much as I can. I am anticipating having to move everything into storage and sleep in the back seat of my car. I don’t have a gym membership, but I am preparing for the worst because my hope is minimal—barely enough to get by. For the past six months, every attack and weapon formed has prospered. I sit every day with a smile as if everything is okay when it is not. Still, I remember the seasons when I helped others, and now, not one of those people can help me. I am tired, exhausted, and angry that my rent is going to be late again. That the wicked are thriving and that I wake up every day and go into a building to teach students a discipline and subject that I love, and I don’t make enough money to live.
I no longer believe that good things happen to good people because my lived experience has taught me that being good keeps me at the bottom. I always thought by now I’d be well off, living in a remote town overseas, traveling, giving weekly lectures at colleges and universities, and then returning home—far away from the chaos of America, my past, drama, unhealed trauma, and all the other nonsense. Yet here I am, crying on my Earthday because I don’t have two nickels to rub together or any prospects for financial help.
And yet, I still have a word. My family has never supported me, so I will never allow them into my heart to know what GOD has shared. I entered this way of being on October 1, 1975. I don’t count the years because the GODDESS already told me she would restore what the locusts ate. So, no, I don’t look my age, and I definitely don’t look like what I’ve been through. I anticipate being evicted this month. It’s the 1st, and I don’t have $700 for Flex or $450 to repay what I borrowed last month. Someone once said GOD was using me, that I wouldn’t have nice things or a loving, safe relationship because I was already pretty, and GOD needed to show people that even pretty people have hard lives. As ugly as that was, it’s no worse than what my mother or family has said to or about me. The pain of being the black sheep is being born different, questioning things when everyone else is just following, never living what they preach. I’ve been evicted before, had my car repossessed, never married, never in a relationship where I was taken seriously. I went to school, dropped out, worked in corporate America, gained insight and money, then went back into the academy to start what I finished. This morning, I realized I’m just like everyone else. I’ve set my life and finances on fire for others and never had that help returned. If I could, I’d tell my younger self: run. Run from those who don’t support you—family or not. Their proximity may help them, but it’s never honored or supported you. If it had, you’d be celebrated, not demeaned, because of your age and the items from the social contract you never signed, not being checked off.
I am calling people into my life who honor my ways of being, doing, and knowing. NO NUANCE, NO RESPONSE, JUST REMOVAL. I am choosing to protect my spirit, to surround myself with those who see and value me, and to forge ahead—resolved, unbroken, and ready for whatever comes next.