Boundary =/= Control

I have said it many times before, I truly believe everyone should go to therapy, but in the past few years with the undeniable influx in people wanting to cope with the anxiety and depression this pandemic has produced or exacerbated, the amount of clinical jargon being thrown around has reached a critical mass. People are starting to weaponize therapy as a means of control or explaining away shitty behavior. Of course, I’m referring to the recently leaked texts of one Jonah Hill, a celebrity who once played a teenager obsessed with drawing elaborate, beautiful pics of male genitalia. I’m sorry, I literally cannot see him without replaying that scene from Super Bad. I digress…

I won’t add all the texts here, but here’s a link where you can read them. It’s appalling how he used therapy buzzwords to justify controlling his then gf and the situation. However, what really FLOORED me was the repulsive response in the aftermath of those texts being shared.

Juneteenth: More than a day off

Today is Juneteenth, a holiday steeped in a painful history, but has grown to be beautiful celebration of life. I’ve written about the holiday since it became more visible to the rest of the country in 2020. I’ll list out the links to those posts below:
Juneteenth 2020
Juneteenth 2021
Juneteenth 2022

The Artist Within

I went to a party last month and some guy insisted I just start reciting a story on the spot to prove I was a writer. In the moment, with a number of eyes on me I failed to come up with a story that placated him. There’s a scenario I think about often and have been meaning to write about where a brave balloon forges a thorny forest to make it to the other side. It’s not super well thought out, but it’s something I plan to expand upon maybe and genuinely felt like it would be an interesting story. This is what I was trying to explain when I was abruptly cut off by this dude and told I wasn’t really a writer because I couldn’t tell a story at the drop of a hat. He then proceeded to string together the most nonsensical sentences, finished, and looked around proudly at everyone who looked just as confused as me. Even with his embarrassing display, his words still got under my skin. I keep revisiting this incident because it made me feel like a fraud and so small.

BHM: Looking into the past and facing the future

Being black in this country can be taxing and exhausting- sometimes deadly. We are confronted with how much society refuses to accept its past mistakes and even embrace inequality to avoid facing reality or responsibility. Seeing video after video, witnessing the severe lack of change over decades, watching books being burned that celebrate our history and explain our traumas, being subjected to the entire spectrum of racism from microagressions to shootings. We are oftentimes inundated with negativity, but we seem to find a way to carry a on. We find a way to cope, to sit with the onslaught of transgressions and move through the world with the weight of this pain, in spite of it, oftentimes with grace. Sometimes not, but that is not without warrant. And it’s not about being strong, because that is not always the case. Strength isn’t something innate in us all, we are human. There are times when this world certainly does consume us. I can’t speak for every black experience and I shouldn’t have to. We all have different ways we deal with the past and understand who we are and our identities. However, we are still here and that does mean there is a perseverance and persistence that cannot be ignored.

How Much More Can We Take?

Here we are again talking about another young man taken away by police. Unfair. That word seems to be going around a lot lately with good reason. What happened to Tyre Nichols was just that. Unfair, unjustifiable, unhinged. These are all words that describe the brutality shown towards 29 year old Tyre, the young man killed in Memphis earlier this year by police officers who were also black. I’m not going to link to an article, because the video was just released of the way they tortured him, and I don’t want to link that traumatic event here. I will, however, share this video I saw on Twitter of Tyre skateboarding, because that is just a much better representation of who he was-