Recovering

It’s almost four in the morning and I have to be awake for work in two and a half hours. It’s that time of night when one debates whether or not to even try to sleep.  My ex called our wedding off over four months ago, almost five months now actually, and I’m awake at four in the morning.  I’m awake at four in the morning recovering from an anxiety attack, tears still in my eyes.  I’m awake at four in the morning and I’m furious.  I rarely discuss the breakup; I walk around work busy, cheery, and peppy. I walk around smiling and ok, but I’m not. It’s four in the morning and I’m weeping and furious.  My chest hurts, my head hurts, my heart hurts, and I’M AWAKE AT FOUR IN THE MORNING!

I’m awake at four in the morning and I wonder why the burden of heartache falls on the woman. Why, although he broke up with me, I am expected to still be there for him.  I remember when I finally broke up with Tsy, my ex before the ex-fiancé, and one day he asked, “why are you being so mean?” What is mean to a man who ruined you? Is mean refusing mistreatment?  I don’t know anymore.  My heart doesn’t still hurt from Tsy. I vaguely remember the pain and completely forgot the decent memories.  I was once told love is the best remedy for a broken heart, but I now think that another broken heart is the remedy.  Another good heartbreak completely erases old pain.  It’s like when someone jokingly offers to punch you in the arm in order to distract you from another pain.  Although no one ever takes up that offer, there’s truth to it.  There’s a reality that the heart has muscle memory.  It becomes a pro at being broken, pained, and ruined.  You look forward to the numbness that eventually comes.  It’s really sad that feeling nothing becomes the only alternative to pain.  When the pain is this bad, this constantly fighting the desire to die pain, happiness isn’t even an option, so you settle for feeling nothing.  The problem is when the pain starts to subside, even slightly, the numbness wears off, and then you’re awake at four in the morning recovering from a panic attack, recovering from anxiety, recovering from pain, but not really recovering at all, just waiting until it’s bad enough for the numbness to kick back in. Unfortunately the heart isn’t a broken bone, it beats blood to the entire body, and when it’s damaged, when trauma accompanies those beats, shards of glass pump through your veins and you sit awake at four in the morning looking at a computer screen because the numbness that would allow sleep won’t set in until you’re supposed to be awake and it starts all over again.

It’s four in the morning and I’m finally ready to talk about my latest failed relationship.  I’m finally able to process, through the tears, all of the mistakes I made and continue to make. It’s four in the morning and I’m alone and I need to get out of here. My last relationship became a cycle of pain and the expectation of things returning to “normal” no matter what hurtful and hateful words were said.  The expectation that it’s normal to yell at the one you claim to love.  The expectation that love is supposed to be painful.  I remember him telling me that I need to love myself. Asking how I could love someone else without loving myself.  However, when I think of the situation, it was a conundrum really.  I couldn’t love myself when I was with him, because he made me hate myself.  I hated who I was with him.  I convinced myself it was normal.  It’s funny how we can justify anything if we try hard enough, but at the end of the day I hated myself.   I hated that I allowed life to just happen to me, that I became a passive observer to my life.  I’m not trying to demonize my ex because, truth is, people only do what you allow and I allowed myself to become someone I hated.  I allowed myself to become someone who normalized toxicity. I became someone who went into a coma instead of waking up to realize what was happening.  When I finally woke up, over four months later, I’m still awake at four in the morning.

He ruined me.  He controlled me.  He manipulated me and I let him. He thinks he still can but he can’t.  Things aren’t normal anymore.  This isn’t normal anymore.  I don’t want to have small talk with him. I don’t care about his life and I don’t want his favors.  He ruined me and I am getting far far away.  Although he ruined me, I’m no longer a passive observer in my life. I’m not allowing that.  Instead, I am going to become someone I love again and I can’t do that with him in my life.  We’re not friends.  I’m ruined, but not destroyed.  To a certain extent, I embrace the pain because it means that I’m awake, I’m not numb.  I’m not finished, there’s still so much I need to do without him.  I want to make a clean break; I need to make a clean break. In the meantime, I’m awake at four in the morning recovering. I’m recovering.

Dissertating While Black: The Racial Divide in Writer's Block

     I recently started writing my dissertation and all I hear in my head is “finally,” “took you long enough,”and “what’s the point, it’ll be wrong anyway.”  Hence, writing physically and emotionally hurts. Many days I stare at my computer screen and question myself, everything I’ve produced, and everything I have yet to produce. Did I research correctly; have I been in the field too long, did I ask the right questions? But the main question that continues to haunt me is, why do I think I belong here?  That’s the one that replays over and over, and no, this isn’t some elaborate self-pitying party I’ve created in my mind. This is based on a graduate career marked by racism, blatant and subtle, attacks on my credential, and being accused of being spoon-fed, all of which insinuate that 1) I don’t belong here and 2) the only reason I am here is because I got way more help than my white counterparts. 

     I’m still the lone Black graduate student in the department.  Well, as far as I know because, as I said earlier, I’ve been in the field for over a year now. These years of being questioned in more ways than I can list, led to self-isolation from everything graduate school represented while in the field. I contacted my adviser maybe once every other month, sharing the very least with her as possible. By doing this I subconsciously hoped when I start sending chapters the accusation of being spoon-fed would have no basis. Unfortunately, I realize an additional basis for those who constantly question my place in academia is not necessary because the basis is my melanin. Either way, I felt that I had to show I could do this on my own. Forget having a chronic illness and being in a life changing car accident, I had to do it alone, while carrying the expectations of other Black graduate students and the doubts of my white counterparts.

     I’m sure many have written me off as another phantom Black graduate student who leaves for fieldwork and drops off the face of the earth. They wouldn’t be wrong, except to the fact that I dropped off the face of the earth when I went to the field.  The truth is, I dropped off the face of the earth my fourth year of graduate school. I was tired; tired of constantly defending my existence and research, tired of hearing racist comments exemplified by people thinking I was too stupid to realize how racist the comments were and that they were directed at me, tired of the  expectation that I would never finish my degree, tired of being the only one,tired of biting my tongue. Biting my tongue became a ritual: in meetings with committee members, in the student lounge, and in conversations with other students.

     My tongue was swollen, bloody, and hanging from a thread before I decided to just stop. I only stepped on campus when I absolutely necessary, for years my office mate probably thought I didn’t exist. I didn’t go to any “diversity” activities, because I was always the token,the evidence that the department was diverse, at the expense of that lone student who became more of a symbol than a person. I just stopped. Slowly my tongue healed, but the scar is there and that scar continues to haunt my writing. It throbs when I get ready to write and replays all of my fears. It’s hard to write in extreme pain and one hundred pound weights on your shoulders.Often I may force out a paragraph or more on good days, but I always have to stop because the voices of those who disapprove have become my own.  I’m telling myself, “you’re not good enough, why are you writing, Black people aren’t smart enough and you’re at the bottom of that barrel.” Feeling self-dejected, I stop. How can I write about a Black community empowering themselves in the midst of disaster when I feel so dis-empowered? Nothing will be authentic.  My words will be exactly what they expect, not worthy of this cannon they guard so fiercely. Even 700miles away I’m still that shy little black girl with blood dripping out the corner of her mouth.

     I recently started writing my dissertation and all I hear in my head is “finally,” “took you long enough,”Writing is increasingly physically and emotionally painful. Many days I stare at my computer screen while questioning myself, everything I’ve produced, and everything I have yet to produce until the tears distort the screen too much. Why does it feel like I don’t belong here? The answer is, because I don’t.  Realizing this, I get back to writing and the process starts all over.