Earning my Stripes

I can’t write. I would love to write. All I want is to write. I can’t write. I’m afraid. There are so many things I’m trying to keep from saying. Like, this isn’t the way I imagined my life. None of this was part of the plan. Sitting at a desk in a state office, 5 stories up, 5 miles away from the closest institution of higher learning, 50 miles away from completing my degree, spending 5 days a week doing work that is meaningless, buried under 500 times the amount of paper that I generate alone, getting paid 5 times less than what I should. Hair short, waist thick. Nope. None of this was part of my plan.
What happened to my figure? What happened to the jet-setting, play date planning, patience having, degree holding woman I was supposed to be?
No. I can’t write that. I can’t write the pain that I keep in my heart and head. I can’t write that I’m frustrated with where I am and what I’m doing; that I’d like to take the time to write, to work on what I love, to finish what I started but I spend so much time doing inconsequential stuff for people who don’t matter that, by the end of the day, I’m too tired to think. I can’t write how much pain it causes me to not be able to focus enough to read. I can’t write that. I can’t write that my frustrations increase when my son won’t go to sleep on schedule. Go to sleep EARLY, so I can do something for me. Attention grabbing. Needy. Toddler. I can’t write that. I can’t write that I want to cry because I’m so far away from revealing the truth about Black theology’s lack of revelation that I can’t remember what it was. I can’t write that my baby isn’t the center of my universe, that my books were and that, without them, I don’t know who I am.
I can’t write that.
I can’t write that I created the icon of Self-Reliant Amazon to make sense of my Being only to be left without being, without the Courage to Be because I’m so focused on giving Being.
No.
Not when I said the point of Being is to share the Self with the Other, to empty yourself of the Self so that the Other can be a self. I can’t complain that I’ve lost myself.
Apparently, Kenosis isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Apparently, Kenosis is better left to those who can maintain their selves even in the midst of losing their Self. Apparently, Kenosis is saved for the Divine.
Yet, here I sit: too big for my britches, too many feet off the ground, too far away from every where I want to be; looking at files that aren’t mine, full of data that I don’t understand. I can pretend to be happy.
But I can’t write. Writing requires a connection with your own reality. It mandates the truth. And, to tell the truth, I’m miserable.
But I can’t write that.

I just want my Self back: That Self-Reliant self who stood apart and stood out, whose words carried meaning because she understood the value of words because, to her, words were everything. Yeah, I want that ME back. That Amazon who loved her fullness and her roundness and didn’t care who saw her or how they perceived her because all that she could be was precisely who she was. That Self-Reliant Amazon had so much to say, so much to pass on, so much to share. So full – of ideas, of hope, of dreams, of plans – that the fullness of her waist was irrelevant and the heaviness of her load immaterial. Yeah. That chick. I miss her. I miss me.

Truth, she said, is what writing requires. Words that carry honesty carry meaning. She didn’t say, though, that words full of falseness are toxic. She didn’t say that there’s no point to writing if you won’t write the truth – that it’s self-defeating, self-impeding to self-mislead. She didn’t mention that to the tens of listeners that hung off her every word wondering what they must do to write words for a living. She certainly didn’t respond that writing is a burden when they asked her if it is a gift or a skill. She failed to mention that writing means revealing, that it’s all consuming, self-divulging and selfishly so. No. She said that writing requires commitment. She forgot to say that words are jealous, commanding full attention, holding the pen hostage until they’ve had their say. Just write. And write with intention and strategy! That was her advice. And it was good advice, too, to those whose hearts aren’t bound by words, whose mind can force the words to take whatever form they desire. But for those of us who are captivated by capitals and punctuation, letter forms and sentence structure, whose pages seem to fill themselves because the words effortlessly ease from our fingers – out of our control, without our permission – intention and strategy are impossibilities. Write. Right.

Le mot. Dabar. Wort. The thing itself. The word. Il n’y a pas de chose autre. There is only the word. The word and nothing else. “In the beginning was the word,” he wrote, “the word and nothing else.” All being comes from the word. There is no meaning without it. The word is powerful; more mighty, it seems, than the sword. That’s the word. It’s all consuming, all powerful. It is. It is all that is. This word. The word. The thing itself.

Two days ago, two blocks away, two people lost their lives to two bullets and my pastor has yet to say two words about it. The earth shook and rumbled. The buildings fell. The mountains were tossed into the sea. All around, the earth gave way. The people cried out for help, they screamed for mercy. 40+ thousand lost their lives. My pastor spent his 400+ words describing his mood changes. He won’t ask for money for aid. But he will ask for help to get his name on the front page. Burn the mortgage, cut through the crisis so that the world will know his name. His fame is certainly his claim of service but for the publicity not for the needy. Surely, his glory will be cut as short as his stature. And the imagination of the nation held by someone more deserving whose need to be seen is less pressing than his ability to see those in need.

The lady in the cube next to me, in this suite of state employees, is racist. I wish I could say it better. I hate having to play the race card. But it is what it is. I hear her talking about her boss, a man of color. Wish he’d stay away. Wish he’d be more like me. Wish he’d lose that accent. And to her children: you’re pure. No mixing in our family. Your grandmother’s grandmother came over the same way you are today. You’re pure. So I really don’t mind that she doesn’t speak to me, it causes me no angst. I’ve heard how she thinks of me: young, Black, single mother, me. And I’m sure that it vexes her that I know what she does not. And I laugh as she and her sidekick try to figure out how to be where I already am. I could help. And I have offered. But I am, afterall, a woman of color. Impure.

Stripes. Tiger stripes. Zebra stripes. I can’t make up my mind which they resemble more. I do know, though, that my belly is covered in stripes. Stretch marks, technically. But they look like stripes to me. They’re evidence that my body stretched beyond its limits, into a strange shape and foreign form. They’re evidence that I carried a child – a big child, a strong child. That same child sees my belly and roars. Stripes. Tiger stripes, he thinks. My self has been bent out of form, stretched so far beyond its abilities, shifted, transformed, lost. Perhaps my soul bears the marks of this stretching. Perhaps, when my Self returns, my mind will be striped. Not plain, not solid. Stripes. But for now, I look for long shirts, high waisted pants. My stripes must stay hidden. Dark stripes on a round belly are hardly a sign of beauty. They are indicative of a choice, a child, a long hard 38 weeks and thin skin. When I see my stripes, I wish I could roar. I wish I saw them as a symbol of strength, a tigress, and hold myself in the same esteem. But I see only what used to be: skin that used to be tight, a belly that used to be flat, a navel that used to be pierced. Nostalgia. Is it possible to regain what you had and keep what you have? 9.5lbs of person lived and grew beneath these stripes, within these rolls. Can I keep him and be rid of the stripes? Or is there strength in admitting that, by these stripes, he is here? I’m unclear. Part of me sees the need to adjust to my reality as it is given. The rest of me longs for a me that ceased to be long ago. Stripes are evidence that change is constant. Too tight pants are evidence of resistance to change.
In a perfect world, with perfectly happy endings, I would raise up my hip-length sweater – too short to effectively cover my stripped gut – and marvel in awe and appreciation. Instead, I pull the tail of my sweater, hoping that it will stretch out of shape, become just a little longer, stretch over my greatly exaggerated hips and hide my stripes.
I tell my son, “You’re wonderful just the way you are.” But I can’t accept that for my self. If children learn what they live and I can’t live with my stripes, my child won’t learn to love himself – striped or plain. Perhaps, I’ll just buy longer shirts.