Everything To Me

"No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley

My birthday is coming up soon.  I'm not going to say how old I am turning because I think this age is a cumbersome, useless number.  I have passed the big milestones of early life (turning 18 and being able to buy alcohol) so this is really, plainly just me getting older.

For that reason,  I have decided I am turning 21...again (don't judge me).

But every year that I have had a birthday since I turned 20, I have been ecstatic.  I cannot explain to you why.  It's between me and my God.  God has seen me go through a looooooooooooooot, things that, quite honestly, I should not have survived.

I know it sounds cliché but God pulled me through.

for that reason alone, I don't need any gifts,
I don't need any money, I don't need any alcohol,
I don't need a party, I don't even need a cake.
The greatest gift I get everyday is the moment I awake.

My God is good.  Things have changed so much in the last two years.  They have gone down, up, down, and up again.  This time, however, I believe that things will stay up.  Things will stay good and "normal".  The sorrows that I will encounter from here on out are unavoidable human experiences and will not be the result of the soul eating disease called depression.

I will never be normal.  Depression is like terrible leprosy for your soul.  The scars will remain and my visceral flesh will always look different from everyone else's.  However, the disease is under control and I'm not in so much pain that I cannot pay attention to how the "normals" behave and cope.

Oh but I am so different.  I am so different.  The things I thought I needed -- I don't.  The people I thought I couldn't live without -- I survived.  The things I thought I would never get over -- I'm over it.  The things I thought I'd never get -- I got.  The people I loved that I thought would never understand me -- they get it.  Everything I gave up on, washed my hands of, lost hope in, deflated in my mind has been revived by my God.

I remember all the reminders from people around me that would try to remind me that trouble don't last always.  I know they meant well but that shit used to irritate me so bad.  Because when you're in that kind of pain, it isn't that you're "pessimistic" or that you have even given up.  It's just that the pain is so enormous, so indigestible, so distracting that optimism doesn't occur to you, let alone being able to muster the energy to ignore optimism.

Even now when I run into someone being very pessimistic, I bring it to their attention that they are being pessimistic, might nudge them to look at optimism, but completely understand if they can't.  Pain creates tunnel vision.  You can't see anything but the pain, even when you want to.  There were times I wanted to be optimistic and I would pray to God just for the energy to stop looking through the tunnel and consider something else.  I would genuinely pray to God for just one moment's peace, freedom from pain, the ability to look at something other than my pain.

But that is how comprehensive pain is.

However, it is a tunnel.  I did come out on the other side.  And eventually, you will too, whether you run through the tunnel, or crawl at snail's pace.

Happy Birthday Zainab...Doin' it for Afraka since nineteen eighty sev...I mean eighty nine.