Tag: Black women

With What Time…

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Photo by Ian Lai on Unsplash

And so I break my silence. It’s been more than a year since I posted. In the interim, I have been on a new journey in Japan. I moved to a new city, am trying new things, and learning more about the world in which I live. Life, with all of its many intricacies, is wonderfully fascinating–when we slow ourselves down enough to appreciate the ease and challenge of it all.

まだ静かなりたくないです。声まだがりますだから。命は本当に面白いですね。。。でもよく私たちは気に付きません。毎日働きまして心配して食べすぎる飲みすぎる「これは命です」と言います。そして。。。

Ich wünsche mir, dass wir einen anderen Weg finden können. Jeden Tag versuche ich zu verstehen, was eigentlich der Sinn meines Lebens ist. Ich habe noch keine Antwort. Jedoch bin ich glücklich.

A volte mi chiedo dove dovrei andare. Dove potrei trovare la mia casa, la mia famiglia, me stessa? Dove sarò domani o dopodomani? A volte sembra che qualsiasi cosa facciamo e chiunque siamo o scegliamo di diventare non sia mai abbastanza per gli altri.

Still, I am enjoying the process of it all. As such, I have decided to begin writing again. I am still working on teaching myself Japanese, trying my best to keep Italian and German.

Also, every now and again, I remind myself that my thoughts exist in English, too.

With What Time I Have

let the snowflakes fall,
turn my hair from black to white,
smiling, I drink tea.

Con il tempo che ho a disposizione

I fiocchi di neve cadono, trasformando i miei capelli da neri a bianchi –
sorridendo, bevo il tè.

Mit der Zeit, die ich habe

Schneeflocken fallen und färben mein Haar von schwarz zu weiß –
Lächelnd trinke ich meinen Tee.

この命の時間に

雪が降って、私の髪を黒から白に染める -。
微笑みながら、お茶を飲む。

Sometimes we cannot understand our paths as we walk. Sometimes we are judged, rightly or wrongly, for what we choose. What I have come to understand is that the most important thing that any of us can do is live…and live now.

So, with what time you have, how shall you spend it?

As for me, I am enjoying my tea and watching the seasons and myself change.

Until next time…

Life in Japan | It’s Okay to Cry… Really.

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Hitachinaka, Ibaraki, Japan. I cried today. It’s my way of coping with difficult situations, especially those in which I have limited freedom to speak my thoughts.

Surely, we can say whatever we want to whomever whenever…as long as we are willing to deal with the consequences. I prefer to let my tears speak rather than my mouth because I would rather the judgment of my tears than the recklessness of my words.

For many years, I felt ashamed of my tears. I thought crying made me inherently wrong and weak. I wanted to be stoic because that symbolized emotional strength, the ability to “endure pain and hardship without showing [one’s] feelings or complaining.”

In my experience of living in Japan, being stoic has been elevated to an art form. It seems to be the preferred business stance. It can make showing emotions seem not only embarrassing but potentially job threatening.

Still, I am learning that it is far more important to me to be myself, whatever and however that self is. I cried today at work and will likely cry again in the future. Expressing my emotions through tears is just the way I am. I cry when I happy, sad, angry, and fearful.

And nowadays, when I finish crying, I feel a profound sense of relief and release. I can breathe and move freely once again.

Life in Japan| Envy & Other Uncomfortable Emotions

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Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Pexels.com

Hitachinaka, Ibaraki, Japan. It’s been a long day, and I’d like nothing better than to go to bed. However, I want to spend a little time discussing a topic that has been on my mind: envy.

The American Psychological Association defines envy as “a negative emotion of discontent and resentment generated by desire for the possessions, attributes, qualities, or achievements of another.” It can often be confused with jealousy, which requires a third party to be involved. And it can be very challenging when you experience both simultaneously.

There are various reasons why one might feel envious and/or jealous. At the core of these feelings, however, lies insecurity, which brings me to the main point of this post: difficult feelings (negative emotions), like envy, are just an indicator that you need to stabilize your sense of self.

Your foundation, for whatever reason, has become shaky, weakened and in need of repair.

Yesterday, while roaming the streets of Tokyo, I spent time talking with my friend about her experiences with envy and jealousy. It gave me pause for thought about my journey over the recent years. To say that I felt insecure would be an understatement. I lived with a number of uncomfortable emotions, including envy and jealousy.

Photo by Jacob Prose on Pexels.com

Instead of denying these emotions, pulling away because they were undesirable (negative) emotions, I chose to be curious about them. I leaned into them. I wanted to understand why they existed within me. Why did I feel envious? Why did I feel jealous?

Surely, there were external factors and a childhood history that created the perfect breeding ground for such emotions to thrive. Furthermore, I understood my experience of jealousy better than envy because I had encounter this feeling in an early relationship. Being envious of someone was new and, to be quite frank, nonsensical–I had no reason to feel envious. Thinking about it with a rational mind, I could see that there was nothing about which I needed feel envy. Still, I did feel envious…and so I tackled it head on.

Overcoming uncomfortable emotions takes a willingness to self-confront, nonjudgmentally and with grasp on the concept of taking ownership of your feelings. Regardless of what has been outside of your control, you always have the choice to take control of you, of your mind, body, and emotions. By taking control, by understanding that your next step forward is in your hands, your feelings of insecurity can begin diminishing.

Of course, it’s easy to write the above. It’s far harder to live it. Still, one has to decide what is more important: living with the burden of these uncomfortable emotions or living freely and comfortably as who you are.

One key tip: it is far easier to stabilize your foundation and heal when you remove/separate yourself from the toxic relationships in which you have chosen to engage. Do that, and a great deal of change is awaiting you.

Poetry| This face.

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Self-portrait, 2020
This face.
You don’t want to see my face.  This face.  
This face that I wear in delight, in sadness, in fear, and in madness.
This face that speaks of African roots so deep that the depth leaves you shaking.
This face that will not and cannot apologize for not blending in with your expectations.
  
You don’t want to see my face. This face.
This face that stares at you in bewilderment when you reach out to touch my hair,
when you reach out to share your advice of how to get rid of my unproductive nappy care. 
This face that wonders who the hell and where the hell you think you are, trying to trample on my space,
  
acting like I’m part of some petting zoo 
or some wild animal to tame and, of course, then later temporarily woo.
  
You don’t want to see my face. This face.
This face that has learned how to smile after years of shaming:
big lips, five-finger forehead, high cheek bones, and broad nose, but no collarbones.
Too thick, too thin, too dark, too light, sounds too white, but never too white enough, for whom?
  
Too aggressive, too talkative, too loud, 
too strong, too proud, too much, but not enough, but again for whom?
  
For whom? This face
  
is a reminder of historical shame, yours not mine. 
Be you White or Black, curious or well-meaning, ignorant or misguided,
Privileged or desiring to be, above the glass ceiling or below it, 
jumping on the diversity bandwagon or barely hanging off of it…
  
This face that is mine 
that wears upon its crown a halo of my ancestry, 
this face that is mine 
that wears upon its lines the wisdom of my struggle,
 
neither seeks nor needs approval, 
neither recognizes nor considers status,
neither looks to nor looks from behind you, 
neither looks up to nor even beside you.

Life in Japan: In Visible Silence

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Self-portrait, 2020

December 1999, Berlin. It’s too cold, dark, and lonely. The high rise buildings of Potsdamer Platz have trapped me in their wind tunnel. My eyes tear up from the bitterness and spite of an early winter. My body isn’t built for this, I think, shoving my hands deeper into the pockets of a winter coat that wasn’t designed for this type of winter. I’m too far away from everything and everyone, yet not far away enough…perhaps never far away enough. Do you know this feeling? A life lived at arm’s length?

Berlin felt monochrome, then, as a I stood alone, the only dark face amidst a swirl of the curious, the fearful, the indifferent, and the obvious skinheads. My darkness, penchant for wearing men’s clothing, dreadlocks, all marked me for what I was and am: a foreigner in a sometimes unwelcoming space. Let’s go back.

December 1994, Florida. I’m sixteen and in the 11th grade. It’s a curious time, to say the least. I listen to Metallica and play guitar with my friend, Danny. I dress in all black, wear combat boots, and have a girlfriend, who’s a grade behind me. I’m nicknamed “Oreo,” by some Black students for not complying with unspoken racial expectations. You see, to them, I don’t sound or act Jamaican enough. I’m not sitting with the other Black kids in the cafeteria. I’m outside playing guitar, singing, figuring out my sexuality, and trying to wrap my mind around receiving phone calls threatening me that I’ll be raped. I’m busy trying to find a way out, to go somewhere, where there are people like me.

Back then, whatever I was, it threatened others: a foreigner in a sometimes unwelcoming space. Of course, to me, I was just living or trying to. Let’s fast-forward.

December 2020, northeastern Japan. It’s nighttime. The frost on my window reminds me that I won’t want to leave the warmth of my bed in the early morning to exercise. I’m listening to 30 Seconds to Mars’ “The Kill (Bury Me),” although I’m more of a metalcore fan these days. Also, I am alone. It’s my first Christmas Eve alone in many years. However, I don’t feel lonely, just reflective and a little tired.

The one rule I’ve learned living as a perpetual foreigner is: conform or depart.

Being all of who I am, the queerness, the not-enough-Blackness, the tattoo- and rock-loving, social activist, etc., can create a challenge in remaining in any space that demands homogeneity. Inevitably, whatever image others have created of me for me will be shattered as I fail to adequately fit their mold.

The sameness of life in Japan seems to be a part of the air. Everyone appears to breathe in the same experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There is an expectation to simply understand and not question the circumstances of life. You are expected to know and respond to the unstated feelings and needs of others. This is “場の空気を読む” (ba no kuuki wo yomu). This is high-context living. Additionally, for those who bear the title sensei/teacher, there is the expectation to be role-models 24/7.

As one of the most visible types of foreigners (read: Black female) in Japan, I have learned the importance of becoming less visible through adaptation of certain cultural norms, removing my headscarf, hiding my tattoos and sexuality, silencing my voice, and eventually my thoughts. Even writing this post feels problematic because it isn’t seemingly extolling the positive aspects of living in Japan.

Certainly, I wouldn’t trade this experience. Still, conform or depart can be a hard rule to live by, especially when seeking stability. Living invisibly and silently won’t do either, especially when seeking holistic self-acceptance and self-healing. Thus, another path must be found to move forward, fostering the dialectic of being exactly who I am and respecting where I am.

I am learning to bend without breaking.

Image from Creative Resilience

Until…

Self-Care| Letting Go of Promises & Finding Peace of Mind

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Untitled. D. Blake, 2017

It’s a grey day, I’m at Starbucks, eating a strawberry cheesecake scone and drinking iced tea, and I feel a little tired. I started my morning by taking a long walk, looking at flowers, and listening to The Tao of Fully Feeling by Pete Walker. Yesterday, I finished Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. On a daily basis, I consume books, articles and videos on childhood and adult trauma, self-care, fibromyalgia, personality disorders, and how to keep it together when you’re broken and involved. It’s a healthy diet of I’m ready to change.

This year marks a decade since I received my diagnosis of fibromyalgia. However, it’s been a life marked by a host of diagnoses: depression, SAD, OCD, PCOS, IBS, Raynaud’s syndrome, overweight, underweight, high blood pressure, etc.; and I was a walking pharmacy–there always seemed to be some new and improved medication to fix whatever was broken inside me.

All the while, I was doing the arduous work of unpacking my childhood, being therapized and therapizing myself, while codependently trying to fix everyone else’s problems, whether they wanted me to or not. I was without clear boundaries in my personal life, struggling with a compulsion to solve sadness, my own and others.

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Places to go. D. Blake, 2017.

Letting Go of Promises

You see, I made two promises a long time ago–not to myself, but to my family. I can’t recall my exact age, but I remember the moment with clarity. An incredible argument took place between one of my older siblings and my parents. Without going into the details, that moment represented the totality of my family’s dynamics: unbounded dysfunction.

Nothing was ever a discussion, always a war zone…and the children were used as  landmines against each other and seen as acceptable collateral damage. I made a promise aloud to my mother on that day. I told her that I would 1) become a therapist and 2) fix my family.

I had forgotten about those promises for two decades. Unearthing them again in a therapy session, back in December 2014, shook my world. I had to face the fact that I had been unconsciously living a life based on these promises…

In 2006, I became an art therapist and mental health counselor. I spent years, prior to and thereafter, confronting my parents on their unacceptable behaviors towards my siblings and me. I tried to create dialogue. I tried to be a bridge. I tried…until I realized, in 2016, that I couldn’t do that anymore.

I can’t keep these promises that my younger self made. I can’t undo what was done to my siblings and me. I can’t fix my parents, nor do I wish to anymore.

Still, I was raised to cater to others. I was raised to take the blame for others. I was raised to disregard myself and defer to others. It’s no simple task living within and for myself.

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Self-portrait, D. Blake, 2017

Peace of Mind

So, I’ve been reading, watching, confronting and comforting myself. I take daily walks, I remind myself that change is a moment by moment act of meeting yourself wherever you are. I can’t walk back my childhood nor the harrowing moments of my adulthood. However, I can walk toward the type of future I would like to have and the future self I would like to be.

In the past, fixating on the emotions of others and even myself, and trying to control the outcome of everything was what brought me a sense of fragile peace–as long as I knew what someone was going to do or what was going to happen next, then everything was okay.

Now, it’s the simple things that give me peace of mind: flowers, stones, water, changes in the weather, the sound of laughter, singing, and dancing–flowing with what is rather than what I would like to be.

Change seems to happen with the smallest and simplest of actions…at least, this is what trying to live within myself has been showing me lately.  If you’re on a similar journey, then I hope it’s the same for you.

Until Next Time,
D

Reconnecting

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own-sunshine

Another grey summer day in Japan and life continues on. I wake up to a wall of clouds outside my window, the sounds of money being earned with each passing car, and the hazy whispers of my partner. It’s barely 6 AM.

I consider 24 hours earlier: I was standing in her apartment, face unwashed, clothes disheveled, emergency backpack straddling one shoulder, and wondering if this was our last moment together–North Korea had launched a missile towards the north of Japan.

A few months earlier, I arrived in Japan with a baseline plan of refocusing myself, laying the groundwork for accomplishing future goals, surviving earthquakes, and embracing the unknown.

This morning I am content with waking to a winter-like sky, watching my partner eat leftovers for breakfast while taking pleasurable sips of a Starbucks’ soy green tea (matcha) latte, smelling burning sandalwood incense, listening to passing cars and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on YouTube, and wondering and planning what else the future holds.

I am moving forward with writing, with loving, with being loved, with enjoying the simplest aspects of life while appreciating how complex life can be. For now, I’ll return to daily blogging, sharing my thoughts about life in Japan, how I’m managing my fibromyalgia, and whatever else that comes my way.

Until Next Time,

D.

 

 

Poetry: Black Drops

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water_drop_black_imgpreview

 

Black drops

Cold black drops, rain now,

cry now, then sleep, dream not, cold

black drops, cold black drops.

-db

 

 

Fibromyalgia & Being a Social Pariah: Reinventing Yourself After Losing Everything (Part 1)

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Image linked from WordPress.com gallery.

There is nothing more sobering than experiencing significant loss, especially when that loss hits very close to home.  At those times, knowing what to do can be challenging, and finding support may prove difficult.  These are the moments that can have the greatest impact on how you define yourself and your relationships with those around you and the world as a whole.  More importantly, significant loss forces you to realize that you may be, after all, alone in this world.

There are some who will disagree with the following statement: when you experience significant loss, the likelihood of becoming a social pariah increases dramatically.  You don’t have to look very far to see the truth of it. Just look at the rise and fall of celebrities.

The fact is that when you have everything or are seemingly rising to the top of the social strata, you will find yourself surrounded by more people, for good or ill. Conversely, when you lose everything or are seemingly hitting rock bottom, there will be fewer people remaining by your side. It’s a harsh reality, but a truth that each person going through or who has been through significant loss has to face: you might just be very much on your own.

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I decided to write about this because of my observations and personal experiences since becoming ill with fibromyalgia.  As I have written many times, having fibromyalgia means experiencing significant loss, especially of self. However, you gain a great deal alongside that loss. You find out, for example, who your true supports are and what really matters to you in life.

Fibromyalgia forces a mental housecleaning (if you allow it) and life cleaning. It forces you to question the reality that you have chosen to live and then asks you to prove the worth of that reality, i.e. is your reality one that is worth enough for you to fight for it?

While you attempt to answer that question, those around you will have to answer this one: is this person worthwhile to keep in my life? Of course, the question may not be so direct in nature, but that is what it comes down to: your worth = potential benefit in their lives. If you worth is diminished, so is the benefit that they experience.

Whether or not anyone wants to agree, the fact is that, for some people, relationships are based on benefits. There are relatively few relationships that I have observed that function solely on selflessness.  Some people care as long as there is something to benefit from giving that care.  However they define benefit doesn’t matter.  The key thing is whether or not they are still capable of receiving that benefit if they maintain a relationship with you.

I have found that having fibromyalgia or any chronic illness can make you become completely self-focused because you are having to, maybe for the first time, expend a lot of mental energy on understanding how to improve your health and how to survive on a daily basis. During that period, your ability to care for your relationships, work, and other commitments declines.  However long you spend during that period of uncertainty has a direct impact on your relationships, work and other commitments.  Given the recurrent and potentially severe nature of fibromyalgia symptoms, you may will find yourself repeatedly going through this experience.

After some time, you may find yourself friendless, jobless and uncertain of what to do next. Perhaps you are already at that point.

Keep faith and do not despair.

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There is a flip side to losing everything, to hitting rock bottom, and to being utterly uncertain. Beyond choosing to remain where you are, there is the other option: gaining everything, reaching for the sky, and becoming driven. 

All it takes is deciding to see yourself in a new person.

Too often we get bogged down in the identity that we have created or accepted for ourselves.  To truly move forward after losing everything means accepting that you are no longer who you used to be.  It means shedding your old identity.

It doesn’t matter what age you are when fibromyalgia entered your life, you can still reinvent yourself. In fact, I think the older you are, the more important it is to choose to reinvent yourself. No matter how difficult it may seem.

Reinventing yourself is what I call a process-decision. It’s an ongoing experience of deciding and allowing for various internal and external processes to occur to manifest change.  It begins with simply stating to yourself that you are have already changed and are constantly changing.

Of course, there are many practical steps that you can take to begin that process now.

Look out for Part 2

Until then,

D.

Check out my latest Vlog post on dealing with depression and anxiety. 

 

 

 

May 12 is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, But I’m 10 Years In.

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This Thursday, May 12th, will be a quiet day for me. It’s Fibromyalgia Awareness Day.  I’ll do what I usually do: strive to thrive, make it through another day, try to find ways to make a living, find balance, take better care of myself, wonder what the rest of the world is doing beyond my computer screen, etc.  Still, this year’s theme is “Your Voice Matters”, so I am writing today because I will likely not remember to do so on Thursday, whether by natural absent-mindedness or fibrofog.

However, there isn’t really much that I have to write about fibromyalgia today beyond the fact that it annoys me that WordPress’ word processor does not recognize the words fibromyalgia and fibrofog. Then again, it doesn’t even recognize the name WordPress, so perhaps I ought not to complain.

Well, I am ten years (by my symptoms) or eight years (by diagnosis) into this illness. Because of fibromyalgia, each day presents unique opportunities for me to learn more about myself, particularly my level of tolerance for the world around me and my position in it.  Even though I have had to make unexpected changes in my life and goals for my life, I am a far better human being because of it.

I cannot stress it enough: my illness has made me more human.

When you are usually on top, it is easy to spend your time looking down on others without ever realizing that you are doing it.  When you always have, you don’t understand the perspectives of those who do not.  When you only know yourself as competent, you cannot fathom the handicaps of others. When overachieving is all you ever do, you can never understand the satisfaction of mediocrity.

Fibromyalgia has taught me about my blind arrogance. It has shoved me off a very high platform and asked me to find my way back up.

I have accepted that challenge.

The challenge is neither to become blind once more nor to fight against fibromyalgia.  The challenge is to love, learn and live, embracing who you are, who others are, and especially who you decide to be.

On may 12th, if you have fibromyalgia or know someone who does, take a moment in your day to pause and appreciate what you have, who you are, and what you can do to make a difference in the lives around you.

Until Next Time,

D.