Month: March 2016

a love letter to madrid.

inspiration, life, madrid, spain, travel

A mi Madrid, mi corazón,

Seems nonsensical to have such a deeply intimate relationship with a city. You are not a person. You are not in human form, with a body. And yet, who you are, the beauty of you, has changed me forever.

My journey with you, my relationship with you, began when I was in middle school. I was told I had to pick a language to start earning foreign language elective credits. I picked Spanish because French seemed too hoity toity and German — well the sound of it I liken it to an angry making, impassioned squabble. I wanted to learn a language which, in some way sounded magical to my ears and sounded marvelous leaving my lips.

Learning Spanish was easy, almost too easy. And perhaps this points to my destiny, my fate and how I would ultimately meet you, how I would ultimately decide to change the course of my life, and move halfway across the world.

It was fated from the beginning. We were fated from the beginning. It was kismet.

You, in all your splendor and glory, were like the most compassionate of teachers, forgiving, always sending reminders that life could be life-ing but that I’d be okay. Like, how when I had the shittiest of days, walking from teaching an English class, missing home (and all the familiarity it entailed) and I’d look up and see an awestruck cathedral and be moved to tears.

That’s just who you are.

But also, you’re firm, you’re a bit rough. You had hard lessons to teach me, too, on the importance of being almost deathly observant and detail oriented. Remember the time when I went to get my formal Spanish identification card and on my paperwork confirming my appointment there was the phrase billete de avión, scrawled in barely legible handwriting with a permanent marker? And remember how time I sat down to that appointment, the phrase, scrawled in barely legible handwriting, was pointed to? I was supposed to bring my plane ticket with me. I had to come all the way back on another day, and I left crying and cried all the way home and took the wrong Metro home three times.

You taught me about perseverance, to an upteenth degree I never knew was possible. From you, I learned sometimes things are not easy to adjust to, sometimes we have to suffer until we can grasp and hold the beauty for ourselves. Sometimes things are just bad. Sometimes we can’t prettify them or reframe or be optimistic. Sometimes the gift we must cling to is the gift of acceptance, of accepting our now so that our future, a better, brighter future, can be had.

The value of a dollar — or should I say Euro — is something else you gently showed me. I learned from you, while living in a city not making a lot of money, I really don’t need a lot to thrive. I learned a full refrigerator often equals a full heart, too, because cooking and nourishing my body is connected to nourishing my soul.

Timing is everything you taught me, and often, the things we want most need a little more time to manifest and enter into our lives. And that time is not on our time or within the realm of our (limited human) understanding of all the things which need to slide perfectly together for the right things to come into being. You taught me that as things not happening or moving oft inspires a rage within me, that fighting what is beyond me, what is not yet ready, benefits me none. That resistance actually stalls the goodness more from being apart of my life. And well, what sense does it make to block my blessings?

People and some friendships and relationships are temporal, you taught me as well. I learned I’m so hungry for people to stay, for as long as possible, because I know in too familiar of a sense the emptiness that people leaving, being abandoned, feels like. I want so badly to prevent myself from experiencing that despair that often I fight like hell for people who have imparted their lessons, wisdoms and love and are slated to leave and move on to what’s next, for them, for the next person they’ll help inspire and heal. And you taught that sometimes, the shortest, most random, most intense people and relationships, have the power to shake us up and change us the most. And that’s certainly no coincidence.

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Outside the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, where I spent time with a friend who, in many ways, changed my life.

You taught me, chiefly, that following my heart has to be a way of life, without compromise, if I want to feel free and come into more and all of who I am. You stressed to me on several occasions the reason I often feel the propensity to take huge leaps and scare the shit out of everyone around me is that I ignore the smaller callings of my heart, those moment to moment, day to day minuscule heart stirrings. Those minutiae decisions which seem ordinary but instead if overlooked mount and build into a massive snowball I have no choice but to take a grandiose leap to surmount it. You taught me life can be different, that life can be filled with ease, if I always listen and trust I will be taken care of when it’s hardest to listen and obey.

Missing you seems like too trite of a sentiment to express. You are etched and embedded into chambers of my heart and the fiber of who I am. When I left almost two years ago, I mourned you for quite a long time. It’s why adjusting to Washington, DC was such a struggle initially. I didn’t want to let you go. I wasn’t ready to.

But as in every relationship, in every bond and every connection — body, spirit and mind — made, there’s an art to honoring the lessons, beauty, the laughter, the growth and transformation offered and parting ways. Honoring what was had enough to create distance. Honoring what was to let go.

I can let go now.

I can let go while reflecting back, seeing the woman I now am because of you, with unceasing gratitude for how the shifts and growths you started, the things you taught me, the love and beauty you never failed to show.

And I can rest the aching, the dull ache, I’ve somehow tried to quiet all these years, with a knowing, a deep knowing, that I ever where to return, if I ever longed to be in your presence one more in the future, you’ll be there to welcome me with open arms.

Besitos,

Nneka

writing as joy.

Joy, Writing

Joy has always seemed to be an elusive concept to me. Like a mystical state of being I’d never be able to reach. Joy wasn’t for me. Happiness wasn’t for me either. Perpetually just being on the precipice of something greater, that next big thing, just the right circumstance which would make me, or life, better or fulfilling has been the existence I lived. And wanting to rise beyond waiting for life to affirm my joy and my happiness was where my desire to be in touch with my joy and joyfulness was borne from.

Two years ago after a whirlwind nine months in Madrid filled with ups and downs, I moved to Maryland. My father had moved to Maryland, right outside of DC, for a new opportunity the year before, and because I knew moving back to Atlanta would be akin to starting over, I figured it made the most sense to start over in a new city versus an old city. I was also taking a huge chance on love and hoping a new relationship would blossom as a result of me relocating.

My relationship with my father at that time was distanced as best. We were complete strangers to one another although I’d lived with him my entire life. My father has always seemed ambivalent about parenting and me specifically, other than when he felt I needed a lecture or any other instance when he could put me in my place. He was a disciplinarian and a rule enforcer. He was not someone I could trust to care about my heart, my feelings, my happiness, my joy. Instead he was a wielder of inadequacy, criticism and shame. And living with him, one-on-one, without my mother, his workaholic tendencies, CNN marathons and my sisters to act as a bridge and distractions between us only magnified who he was and what he thought of me.

And also what I thought of myself.

I didn’t intend to live with my father long. Before I left Madrid, I’d made a semblance of plans to get a job within the media and resume being a journalist once again. I’d even started applying to a few jobs and letting friends and other people know I’d be relocating to the area and to keep their eyes out for opportunities I’d be great for. My first few weeks, I had several interviews and my plan to only temporarily share the same space with my father seemed to be on the up and up.

Until it wasn’t anymore. The job interviews stopped rolling in. And the heaviness of depression took its place. The new relationship had fizzled at this point. The little amount of money I’d saved from my last teaching check from Madrid was dwindling. I had no friends and no new connections nor did I have any interest in meeting new people. I started to spend an inordinate amount of time — from my bed — ruminating over my joblessness, lack of money and lack of friends and discontent over how this new beginning was shifting into a period of bleak hopelessness.

The conversations with my father certainly didn’t help. A year later when my mother moved into the apartment with us, things only worsened. Not only was I steamrolled with constant criticism about the state of my life in terms of career with repetitive lectures from my father, but I was also receiving the criticism about my appearance, my mannerisms and everything in between from my mother. The areas where my father didn’t touch, my mother seamlessly picked up the slack.

I was being triggered on a daily basis at this point, sometimes multiple times a day, by people who claimed, almost ritualistically they loved me, and wanted the best for me yet the vitriol spewed at me proved otherwise. I was a full-fledged adult but it felt like I’d stepped back into the throes of my childhood which had been much the same, navigating emotional grenades lest they blow up and obliterate my emotional reserves. To make matters worse, because I couldn’t find a job, I was stuck with having to accept their financial help, including for my bi-weekly therapy sessions which were the only thing keeping me afloat. I needed their help but resented it at the same time. And there seemed like no way out for me. I was tired and struggling and suffering.

Last fall, I took a job at a coffee shop. It was a dream of mine to be a barista, and I was excited about the chance, but not really. A few weeks before I’d been ceremoniously threatened by my father to be kicked out of the apartment I was living in with them and the financial help they’d been providing me with was revoked. This declaration followed a huge blow-out between the three of us, and honestly now I can’t remember because I blocked it out of my memory.

I had less than $100 dollars to my name.

I was scheduled to see my therapist a few days later but could no longer afford it. I canceled my appointment and cried for hours. My lifeline had been taken from under my feet.

But taking that job — despite how much I hated it and drained me — put me touch with a sensation I hadn’t ever felt before: joy. It was just a little sprinkling of it but it felt good. Money is control and I’d been controlled, my strings pulled like a puppet, so to take the control back and to not feel so powerless as I had felt for years felt like breathing again. I was no longer being held against my will underwater by the heaviness of suffering and lack of joy.

The month of December last year was spent resting from all the drain and chaos I dealt with for two months as a pseudo barista. I spent Christmas alone as I chose no to go home to spend the holiday with my family for the second year in a row. I  spent the morning meditating and soaking in a bath by candle light and for dinner, made a pot of spaghetti and drank glass after glass of merlot while watching Christmas movies on the couch. The quiet was overwhelmingly needed and nourishing to my spirit and led me to a greater truth — I had to prioritize my joy. Going back home — to Atlanta — to stay in the family house which would soon be empty was an option.

And the morning after picking up my parents from the airport at the conclusion of a quiet few weeks for Christmas, I booked a one way ticket home  leaving in two weeks and told no one.

Once again, I had less than $100 to my name.

The criticism I faced from my parents had relented since I’d started working at the coffeeshop. But it dawned on me, when I announced to my parents I was leaving and going to stay in the house, and they responded with sordid expressions on their face and asking what they would do without me there, it became clear to me.

I’d unknowingly shouldered the suffering and stress and miseries of my parents when I moved back home and started living with them again. I’d made all their suffering, their health issues, their discontent with the state of their lives, facing their mortality, coping with their roles as parents changing as their children grew older, my own. I’d created a space so huge for sorting their own “stuff” and unconsciously enabling them, I’d forgotten that there was a space for my joy, my happiness, my peace, my self-care, my self-preservation.

I forgot about me. I forgot I mattered. And because of this it made damn near hard for me to write, to create, to be the fullest version of myself. To live in my truth. My parents— and being so physically close to them — were a huge creative block for me. They represented everything I negatively thought about myself.

Being back home in the house I grew up in, alone, without my mother and father, without the noise that comes from living with a huge family has been odd but at the same time freeing. I’ve been on a creative high for the past few months I know I wouldn’t have reached without taking a leap for myself, a leap for my joy. Writing feels good again. Writing feels like a high. Writing feels like ease. Writing feels like…joy.

Joy and joyfulness are slowly shifting from being abstract, unfamiliar concepts to me yet the newness and fragility of infusing them into my life are felt. The shakiness of accepting that suffering and struggle don’t have to coexist with joy and happiness is something I toy with almost every day.

I’m acquainting myself with a deep truth which is daily transforming the fabric of my life. I hope if I keep remembering how deeply I matter and how deeply I am needed in this world, creating an altar for joy along with writing, artistry and creation will become a central pillar to my being.

writing as wholeness.

wholeness, Writing

I was born into brokenness, a generational pattern on both sides of my family of people not believing in being whole or even chasing after wholeness. No one in my family, on either side was familiar with what being and living as a whole person meant, what it looked like. My example, my life example, was brokenness. The type of brokenness which on surface appeared like I had it all together, that I was a mass of perfection and knew what I was doing and who I was. But beneath the surface I was a mass of insecurity, doubt, fear and negativity; I was the sum of all those things for myself and all the insecurity, doubt, fear and negativity of generations before me.

Brokenness became like a curse.

Reflecting upon my childhood, I can’t think of one period where I thought highly of myself. Low self-esteem and sense of self has been my default for as long as I can remember. As a child, when I wasn’t hiding away from the world reading or writing, I was crouching from the world because I didn’t feel good enough, worthy of being loved or that I mattered. And the messaging I received from nearly everyone I interacted with reinforced my core beliefs.

When I was nine years old, my father took a trip to Lagos, Nigeria, his hometown. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Standing at the airport gate. Giving hugs. Being reassured he’d be back before I knew it. Being told to help my mother and that my role as the oldest all of a sudden was super important. I remember the car ride back home after the airport.

And I remember not seeing my father again until four years later.

I remember the silence that followed all those years, not knowing what was going on. I remember the many questions I had which were always silenced or ignored or slyly given a non-answer. I remember the many letters I sent my father and how those letters made me realize how much I loved writing. I remember the routine phone calls early in the morning before school. I remember being nine years old and shouldering the not knowing, the stress, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the inner turmoil my mother felt those four years. I remember feeling unloved, forgotten and discarded. I remember not being treated like a person, my childhood being prematurely snatched away from me, and being angry I wasn’t given the consideration of knowing. I remember being too in touch with my mother and her narcissistic tendencies and having no choice but to remain close by, to be her narcissistic supply, because she needed me. I remember the heavy weight of abandonment.

This was my version of brokenness. And this is the brokenness I’ve carried with me closely on my person, all these years. I carry a brokenness which is riddled with deep regret and a longing to understand why, why I wasn’t told then and why, still to this day, I’ve been offered no explanation for my father’s absence. How do you forgive and move forward when you have no understanding whatsoever? It’s no wonder why I struggled to see and love myself all this time. And it’s no wonder not seeing or loving myself translated to attracting people who didn’t see or love me either.

I often feel like a failure in terms of love and relationships because I am a massive failure in that regard. Almost all the relationships I’ve been in have been abusive, not physically, but in every other way imaginable otherwise — manipulation, gaslighting, stonewalling, verbal insults, nasty put downs, cheating, dishonesty. I was trying to fill a giant sized hole in my heart my father created when he left when I was a child. And because the feeling of abandonment made me feel unloved, unwanted and unimportant I only loved men who made me feel those exact emotions.

But at a certain point, brokenness became trite. Four years ago, six months away from graduating with my Masters degree, it was if something clicked or shifted within me. My awakening began at that point. I became acutely aware I didn’t know myself on any level. I knew intimately at that time, for the first time in my life, that who I was and who I had became was just a shell of the person I was. Instead I’d grown and matured to be the sum of the projections and indoctrination I’d been fed. Realizing I didn’t know myself was scary.

My awakening coincided with my first international trip to Spain in September. The same trip where everyone in my life, including my mother and father, thought I was crazy as hell.  But I felt called to go on that trip. My spirit called out to me and I answered. I don’t know that I wouldn’t be where I am now — in a place where I truly love and cherish myself, see myself as being wondrous, valuable, enough and mattering — had I not taken that trip.

And writing about my experience in Spain alone (I wrote about it here if you want to read) became the space where I began to heal a childhood and life as I’d come to know it as filled with brokenness. I wrote my way through healing. I wrote all the things. The things I was too ashamed to say out loud. The things I knew would sound bad if I said them out loud. So I wrote them instead.

I wrote while crying. I wrote while seething in anger. I wrote while depressed. I wrote while anxious. I wrote while suicidal.

Writing breathed new life into my despair and translated my despair into a hope I had not ever experienced. I’d become accustomed to only living expecting the other shoe to drop and expected to be left and expected to not be good enough and expected to being shitted on. To actually see life as being filled with opportunity for unlimited things to go right and well was a huge leap.

Brokenness used to be a generational curse, on both sides of my family, but I decided four years ago, inadvertently, it would stop with me. And nearly a year ago when I started therapy to begin my healing journey with a companion, it was another nod to saying it stopped with me as well. I’ve learned what it means to care for myself. I’ve learned that it’s okay to be selfish, to say no, to enact boundaries, to cherish myself by frequently and consistently checking-in on myself — psychologically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I’ve also learned how integral writing has been and will continue to be as I heal from all I’ve endured and all the wounds I’ve gathered, all the emotional trauma I’ve normalized but must, in some way, begin to make peace with. I see how writing has contributed directly to knowing my intrinsic value and seeing myself as beautiful and a valid and a needed contribution to this world.

It’s no mistake I was created to create and write. Our gifts breathe life into both ourselves and others. As I continue to heal, I hope to inspire others to heal, too. To step out on faith when it’s scariest, to confront the shadows of your soul. And to write. Write your entire way through it. Write your way through inching towards being whole.

drbombaby1