Nothing, everything

Today is my third day out of psychiaric hospital. For obvious purposes I cannot say where I was but I can say what got me there. I had lost parts of myself along with losing my past relationship and I underestimated how much I needed to grieve. I became depressed and suicidal, but I did not really want to die. I wanted to stop feeling everything that I was feeling. I did not know how to handle the pain of abandonment. So, I got help. Well, I was partly forced to get help by my mother. I would like to share some of the things I learned and will probably need a lifetime to master.   Being kind to yourself is really difficult! I struggled with being kind to myself because of my deep rooted feeling of unworthiness. Once my psychologist and I started unpacking this we realised that I take on way too much energy that is not mine, and feel deep sense of failure and defeat when I do not rise up to other people's standards, having severely neglected my own wants and needs. I have lear...

I can't remember the first time I became aware of my blackness. I'm sure it happened as early as primary school though. One particular experience that I remember is how the word "ghetto" would be used to describe mannerisms like being loud, or having a heavy African accent, or certain words or phrases that are used by black people. Obviously then, this would automatically mean that black people were "ghetto". So my black friends would be described as "ghetto" while my white friends would be described as "cool" or "part black" with it being a compliment rather than a critique. Of course, there were some of us that figured this out and decided to try and bypass this critique by forcing ourselves to behave differently. To be reserved and quiet, which in my case eventually led to becoming afraid who we are and denying our true selves. To make matters worse, there are, to this day, environments that either accept or quietly deny bl...