lessons learned.

this is my truth. life, art, and a cozy hoodie inside 🌀🧸

Oct 27, 2024

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if i had to guess what it felt like to follow your purpose, this year would indicate that i’m on the right path. i’ve been on a constant search of self for many years, decades even, and this year is the first year i truly feel like my life is clicking into place. unemployment and all [but don’t get crazy, hire me if you got the budget], this is the happiest i’ve ever been in my nearly 33 years.

i’m creating work i’m proud of. i have an amazing partner with an incredible kid that we’re excited to raise together [in my parent era, my god, i’m actually an adult]. i’m growing and becoming more active in the communities that feed my soul and am finding my footing in this ✨artrepreneur✨ arena.

with all that, while beautiful and exciting, none of the calm nor the [at times painful] patience i have was unearned. i fought, to near death many times, to keep my sanity intact and keep myself alive. i’m at a point where i’m ready to share my story, raw and unfiltered because to be quite honest: i didn’t suffer a gemini mother, a violent alcoholic step-father, psych hospitalizations, stalkers in multiple states, being homeless twice, sexual assault, emotional and psychological abuse, mental instability, crippling loneliness, being laced, and memory holes in my brain from gaslighting, drugs, depression, and psychological trauma for no reason. i simply will not believe that.

i’m currently working on my debut art collection and since it’s a retrospective of my life and a portal into my next phase, i am proud to say that i have lived—many lives, many timelines.

with each timeline, i’ve learned lessons that i carry with me into each stage of life, until it’s no longer necessary. with each phase comes new challenges and new challenges come with more learnings. i want to share those lessons as i go so you can have a slightly clearer vision of who i am and maybe my mirror will give you a clearer vision of yourself. so, here are a few things i’ve learned this year that i’ll be carrying with me through my next portal.

i am an artist, first and foremost.

this should not come as a surprise to me, since i’ve been in love with poetry since i was about 9 years old, but what a revelation it’s been to own this truth as an adult. being laid off at the top of this year shattered my soul and made me want to scramble to pick up the pieces of a career that had seemingly just begun. from marketing to journalism to advertising; it felt like a natural progression as a writer who wanted a fuller creative process. but what this year of unemployment gave me was time. time to think about what i want to do, who i want to be, and what i want to contribute to this dystopian-leaning world landscape.

after long conversations with cook, what we came up with is archival. i am an archivist and have been so in all versions of who i am. i’ve filled notebooks with poetry about my feelings when i was child, i blogged about life as a depressed teenager obsessed with the concept of love, i wrote articles on the pop cultural zeitgeist throughout my career, and now, coming into my visual artistry, i’m diving into a familiar love: collaging.

as i work on my visual manifesto [one of the pieces for my solo debut exhibition, tyfrm], i realize i look at my life in this vessel as a pieced-together collage of experiences, both beautiful and tragic, all deeply nostalgic and bittersweet.

my art focuses on intentional self-discovery, radical self-acceptance, and, maybe most importantly, self-preservation. my experiences have brought me to this point of accepting this very daunting path of living in my truth, but as i create, i am coming closer to understanding my purpose. i write and create to connect with others and in this new era, connecting for me means showing up as my whole self, embracing the collaged masterpiece i’ve become, and encouraging others to do the same.

i am a good person.

i didn’t know i cared about this until i said it to myself in my apartment aloud, and for the first time, it didn’t feel like a lie. i wish i could remember the original spark that prompted this thought [apologies, this post has been weeks in the making], but i can share why i feel this way.

during a phone call with one of my close friends, i said something along the lines of “i never mean anyone harm, ever. and if i do hurt someone without knowing, i would prefer they tell me because i am capable of listening and growing. i never want anyone to feel uncomfortable.” this made a lightbulb go off in this guy’s head because he goes, “wow, after all these years, hearing you say that, i finally understand you,” and then we went into an onslaught of laughter and screaming, “we’re really friends!” [a side effect of doing deep shadow work with the homies for years: breakthroughs and realizations hit hard].

but it’s true, i never want to hurt anyone. i know what it feels like to live with a pain that feels unreachable. i know the feeling of being a burden, unwanted, uncared for, abandoned, ignored, and i never want anyone to feel that way. i can say this now, but believe me when i say i have had terrible years. as someone who worked through my struggles with anger, toxic masculinity, arrogance, and more, i would be lying if i said that it didn’t come without causalities. i’m not proud to say that there are people [particularly women] in this world who have suffered great emotional pain from my trauma. i used to call my hard times karma for all the fucked up things i’ve done to people, and maybe that’s true in some context, but as i got older, that rational felt like some sort of lack of accountability that just didn’t feel righteous going forward.

i’ve given many apologies over the years, the ones that would be accepted anyway, but i never actually felt i deserved happiness because of who i was. i didn’t realize i never forgave myself, and in a way have been atoning for that version of me. coupling that with my deep appreciation and knowledge for theology and a wide range of practices and spiritual faiths, i’ve come to accept that as long as i walk with compassion and an open heart, i am doing what needs to be done as a human being.

my life is guided by my lived experience.

as every election year, like clockwork, there are heated conversations on political stances. we are also a full year into palestinians in the gaza strip being bombed endlessly by the isreali military. i’m not here to debate either of those facts. i’m more interested in how people choose their opinions on the issues, specifically those that impact their vote. on a broader scope, these topics define where folks stand in the ethics and value system.

while i consider myself a very open-minded person and willing to hear all sides of most things—see my video on building a better frame of reference—there are some non-negotiable truths i will always live by.

here’s how i built my value system when i started digging into my personhood and what it meant to be in this world, in this body.

1. when i was born to my Black mother and Black father, it was a fact that i was going to be a Black child. therefore, my allegiance is to Black people.
2. i just happened to come out of my Black mother in a female body. therefore, my allegiance is to women.
3. as i got older, i discovered i was attracted to the same sex and learned what it meant to be bisexual [heard the word for the first time in 7th grade from a very punk rock 8th grader], lesbian, pansexual, and now simply queer. therefore, my allegiance is to the lgbtqia+ community.

any further considerations i have about my ethics or how i move in this world stem and expand from these three truths.

1a. i am Black, therefore i am for the liberation of all oppressed people of color from systemic racism and white supremacy
2a. i am a Black woman, therefore i am in support of equal rights for all those who identify as women
3a. i am queer, therefore i am in support of equal rights for all those included in the lgbtqia+ community

sometime last year i came across a talk with ta-nehisi coates at the union theological seminary in new york where he discussed what he experienced when he visited east jerusalem and the discrimination idf soldiers inflicted on palestinians in the area. he connected his experience to being Black in america and how familiar the energy felt. i linked the panel above, but something he says stuck with me and i find myself quoting often still: “my lens is my lens, this is all i have.”

i experience the world through the lens this life has given me, and i purposely expand my knowledge through other people’s lens i don’t personally experience by communicating and learning from them.

1b. i am Black, therefore i learn about other communities of color by understanding their histories, triumphs, and struggles
2b. i am a Black woman, therefore i listen and communicate with men [specifically Black men] to understand their unique plight in their lived experience as a targeted demographic in this country
3b. i am queer, therefore i listen to others in the lgbtqia+ community whose walk of life i do not walk, particularly trans people, especially Black trans women

i find it to be a cognitive disconnect for people to intentionally stand against their best interest, rights, and safety when given the choice. people of color who choose to ignore the injustices they face while criticizing those who stand up for them are cowards.

it’s not everyone’s path to be a revolutionary nor does everyone need to have a PhD in anthropology, however, it is your responsibility as a member of any marginalized group to stand against injustices that continue to harm and eradicate your own people. at best, show support through funding or spreading of messages, at worst, move out of the way and do so in silence, because you are doing more harm than you can comprehend.

to purposely avoid the work of understanding your personhood while existing amongst others who have to confront your skewed ethics and values, or lack thereof, shows an absence of self-worth and accountability to your fellow human. we can get into the conversations of collective and individualistic thinking another day.

but as i begin my journey as a community builder focused on intentional living through collective consciousness work, i want to make it painfully clear that 1. i am not arguing my values with anyone nor will i allow my very existence to be disrespected or threatened, and 2. i have zero respect for individuals who move with disregard in the above way i described—dare i say, i find them dangerous to my reality.

and so as we move into a value-based society [pluto in aquarius actuality] where lines inevitably will be drawn in the sand, i will be using my years of self-preservation skills to keep the queer, Black family i am raising safe and sound, by any means imaginable.

— m.

from my other little blogs around the internet:

more rambles about the memefication about astrology

art updates, part one part two part three [the latest is my favorite tbh]

debates on adult female friendships going on in the comments

crashing out over being in instagram jail

trust i will always take time to gush over my partner

queers love different, because we had to love ourselves first

for bgg: transformers one nyc premiere red carpet + movie review

Black + brown folks in nyc: go get a FREE color test

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the lazy capricorn

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