This Haunted House

Last night I told a friend that I was haunted and maybe that truly is the best way to describe it.

I don’t think I ever came out. To be fair I was forced out in an effort to force me back in but at that point the damage had been done. I spent another year in denial until I moved to Germany where I found the space to reinvent myself. I found the space to figure out how to be myself.

In college my life was a limbo. My entire life up until that point felt that way but college is where it all came to a head. Back then I referred to my sexuality as a spiritual stronghold, my battle with the flesh. People who knew were proud of me, proud that I boldly took a stand in the face of the devil for the cause of Christ. Proud, whether they knew it (whether I knew it) or not, that I hated myself. What they didn’t know was how often I cried. Every night. Not for days, not for months, but for years. I prayed God would make me different. And I did all I could to prove to him that I wanted to be different. There’s a joke among my friends about how many life groups I was a part of back then. Tuesdays, every other Wednesday, Thursdays and a few Sundays out of the month. I was a youth group leader, a small group leader for my campus ministry, I had an accountability partner and a mentor, I volunteered for the church nursery and babysat for a military family in the church whose husband was away in Afghanistan I believe. And of course, I read my bible. Morning, day, and night I read my bible. I even kept one of those pocket sized New Testaments in my backpack to read in between classes. I was giving, I was kind, and I was faithful. And with every life group, every moment I spent giving time to someone else, every scripture I recited, with every single day I had the audacity to inhale God’s clean holy air I wondered, “will this make me whole?”

It didn’t. And I did what every Christian does and I chastised myself. It had to be because I was self seeking, only looking to God for one thing, or my prayers weren’t genuine enough, or I didn’t truly accept Christ into my heart when I said that prayer, I wasn’t bearing my cross. Something, I don’t know what but something went wrong along the way cause you should be fixed by now. That’s what I told myself, you should be fixed by now because it’s been over fifteen years.

I’ve known since I was five. Grasped that it was an abomination or at least a really really bad thing God didn’t want you to be around six. And I lived the rest of my life to uproot the terrible thing deep down inside me that I’d found one day playing boyfriend and girlfriend on the school playground. Sometimes I wish I’d left it there, buried in the sand for someone else to find.

Caribbean families, I won’t say they mean well, I’ll just say they repeat what they are taught and act on what they believe. Needless to say, there were things said to me, around me and about me that informed my self perception. Made me afraid of myself, of the opinions of others what they would do to me if they found out. There was a constant nitpicking of the way I dressed and carried myself, reminders that I was too masculine in my appearance and way of being that always made me feel there was an ideal type of woman out there and I just didn’t make the cut.

So growing up was hard. Honestly, I don’t think I grew up. I just spread and dripped all over hoping I was the spilled milk God felt was worth crying over. Maybe he would clean me up, pour me into a cup where at least I’d have a shape. I’d have lines that went someplace, and a form that wasn’t a shapeless void.

College is where I thought that would happen but things weren’t always so cut and dry. Although I was a hero of some sort for denying my sexual desires, it still put Christian people off to even know the desires were there. I remember opening up to a friend and later that day she requested I stop hugging her since she felt it would be a temptation for me (it wasn’t). Others would find a way to add it into unrelated conversations to ‘see if I was still dealing with it’. I once applied to be a counselor at a christian summer camp, and after a horribly invasive interview in which the male interviewer kept asking sexaully inappropriate questions he decided I wasn’t fit to serve at the camp because I needed to wait until God totally healed me. I’d like to add that he accessed my contact information from my application to send me a Hallmark card with his cell phone number in it to call him ‘if I needed prayer’. And things like that happened often. You could sense there were people around you ready to exploit you because there was this ultimate sin you had looming over your head and it was far worse than anything that they could ever do to you.

And that feeling of exploitation wasn’t just with Christians.

As I said, college was a limbo. The world really is your oyster on those campuses. You can be anything you want to be.

But then again you can’t be.

Christian students were mostly popular among themselves in a world growing ever more liberal. I can remember getting into debates with professors, classmates and friends about my faith and the audacity I had to be open with it, share it even. That came with the territory and I was proud of myself. I still am even now as someone who doesn’t identify with any faith at the moment. I’m proud that I was willing to stand up for anything and be hated for it. But there was a weird aspect to it when it came to being christian around queer and LGBTQ+. Especially those who could tell I was struggling with my sexuality without me saying it.

As we’re learning, the queer community is becoming a more inclusive environment in the way that it recognizes the plight of certain individuals over others. For instance, the push now to protect and advocate for black trans lives who are brutalized and murdered every day. Causes that were still swept under the rug a few years ago by the very community that owes much of it’s liberation to Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rivera, two trans women of color. But like I said we’re learning, and there are actions of love I’m privileged to see now that I wasn’t privy to then.

Queer people/allies weren’t as kind to the closeted folks, especially the religious ones. There was almost this infatuation with calling them out, bullying them into admitting something even they couldn’t understand. There wasn’t much patience or love, no genuine understanding that we’d gone years believing something about ourselves is deplorable and our opinion wasn’t going to change over night. It wasn’t going to change by them hurling backhanded words of sympathy like ‘You’re suppressed’. There was one young lady in particular who had a crush on me back in college. One night in my car she opened up about it and I naturally rejected her and it turned into a barrage of words exclaiming why my religion was a farce and it was the only reason I continued to live a lie. I realized then that all she wanted was my affection. She didn’t care about me or what it might cost if I were to come out. She just wanted to be right.

A lot of people at that time did. And I’m sure a lot of people who knew me back then look at me now and think ‘told you so’. And you did. You were right. All the berating and closet shaming all for the benefit to say you were right. It’s bittersweet to watch the love poured out to those questioning and afraid to come out because I wish I’d received that.

I wish the queer community knew back then that I felt like a monster. That it wasn’t as simple as letting myself explore my sexuality. And it didn’t feel simple with people bashing you for not being ‘proud of who you are’. Insulting you and grouping you with those who persecute the lgbtq+ plus community, not because you did, but because you dared not validate them or yourself. Which yes, is its own form of persecution, and the language of the bible has been used to justify deplorable acts against queer people no matter how softly its been recited but not everyone who’s a Christian is a persecutor. And not every restless growling thing locked away in a closet is a monster. I had reason to be afraid, to hide. There were costs to it. Traumas I’d inflicted on myself that couldn’t easily be solved by coming out. The amount of times I slept with a man to see if he could fix me. Laying there disgusted and disassociated from my body. And after several attempts and still feeling nothing going to the gynecologist and telling her ‘I don’t know, I just think there’s something wrong with it’. At 20 something years old, laying spread eagle on a cold surface thinking a gynecologist could fix my vagina. Coming out wasn’t going to make things easier, it made things harder. After a church and community I’d loved and considered my family disowned me, let me know I was no longer welcome and took it upon themselves to make and spread a church wide email about it so that I was shamed by handfuls of people until I finally just skipped town, after all this there was no comforting hug awaiting on the other end.

Just an ‘I told you so’. Just the vindication that you were right. I’m still wary of these people. People who are so overjoyed to see ‘how open minded I am now’, who could care less the hurt it took to even reach this place. People who knew what happened, but never asked if I was okay. You were just satisfied in being right.

I wish christians knew back then that I felt like a monster. There was so much vehemence towards sexuality, the posts about how gay people bring are the cause of just about every calamitous event in the world (Sandy Hook massacre or 9/11). I remember the Sunday service I attended after gay marriage had been legalized and for nearly two hours the pastor lamented on how the hearts of men were waning cold, how we needed to protect children from homosexuals and use the church to uproot their evils from the world. I remember going to the bathroom because I was so afraid for anyone to watch me cry. Watch the guilt that washed over me even though I’d yet to act on a single desire. The same guilt that washed over me everytime one of my friends got married and I knew deep down that would never happen for me.

I wish I could have articulated back then what it felt like to be a monster. What it felt like to always be somebody’s monster. The internal isolation, constant lingering of feeling alone was nearly unbearable. I lost myself. I lost myself trying to please Christians, my family and even God. To quote ‘Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice.’ I did that. Played so many versions of myself that as an adult woman I spend more time trying to unpick the parts of me that are real and the parts I fabricated in order to protect myself.

So when I say I am haunted, I don’t think it’s just the pains and traumas of my past that follow me, it’s these versions of myself. 5 year old me, 12 year old me, college me crying at the altar for the fifth time that week. The me who stood up to an entire congregation but fell apart the second she got home. The me who blamed herself for a whole year after and continued to believe I was the cause of their hatred. The me barricading herself in a closet, and the me clawing at the door to pull her out. The me who just wanted someone, anyone to listen. The me who wanted someone to tell me that I wasn’t a monster. I’m haunted by every part of me that yearns for love I didn’t know to give because I had no clue where to find it.

I’m haunted and that’s the best way to describe it.

But I’m okay. Really I am, despite how all this may sound, I really am okay and being haunted isn’t inherently negative. I’m dealing with it all, expressing as opposed to suppressing. Loving each phantom as she appears, loving her until she finds rest. Growing. Actually growing into something with shape and form.

I’m okay, I just wanted to get it all out there. Say it and be heard.

P.S., please do me one this one favor today;

Love Yourself.

Some Place Like Nowhere

I’m supposed to be moving sometime next week but I suddenly feel incredibly unsteady about the whole thing.

Like the city I meant to be heading to isn’t really where I want to be.

Ideally, I’d like someplace quiet. With a lake and trees. Some place quiet where one could be alone. Some place like Montana, or a small island out in the French Polynesia, or Mars a couple hundred million years ago. I keep imagining myself walking out to a front yard with a few houses scattered down the street. Maybe there’s a pond not too far down, fifteen minutes on a bike give or take. My neighbors busy themselves with mindless tasks common to towns of the sleepy type. There’s not much to do here and that’s the way its been. Thats the way it’s always been is what we’d say to passerbys taking the scenic route.

Wouldn’t be too far fetched to say there’s only one stop light in town. It’s one of those towns where in the time it takes to inhale and exhale you’d be in and out. Might seem small but just beyond the city lines is an expanse of land so vast it’d almost feel like the rest of the world was an acre in our backyard. We’re only small because we don’t believe in taking up too much.

I used to dream of towns like these when I was young. Its a mystery as to why that was because I’d never been to one growing up in bustling south Florida. It’s probably why The Sound of Music became my favorite movie as I got older. All those rolling hills. And it’s probably why I felt a pang of nostalgia watching What’s Eating Gilbert Grape a few days ago.

Nostalgia of all things.

What’s funny is Gilbert hated his hometown and the way he felt trapped by it. Like he had nowhere to go.

That’s how I feel, but not in relation to this town but in relation to the world as whole. Like we’ve got nowhere to go. But nowhere is exactly where I want to be. My own private slice of nowhere far from anywhere and everywhere. I think people who think this way are cast off into a group of those who are either too overwhelmed by the pressures of life or too simple to want anything more. I’m neither of those, and I don’t think its simple. Its kind of extraordinary really. To want to leave everything behind and freefall into nowhere. Takes more guts given most of life we do things out of fear. Work for fear of financial ruin, love for fear of loneliness, and live for fear of death.

I want to be nowhere and make a folktale out of things remembered but might soon be forgotten. Stories we’d pass down orally until they became tradtion etched into stones we skip down the river. Some place I’d see my refelction in snow covered hills, some place that would make even Michael start a war so that he might be cast out from Heaven to take a walk down below.

Some place.

Some place that isn’t any place.

Some place like nowhere.

Have You Ever Considered That Maybe Negative Nancy Was Bored?

You know what I wish?

I wish that when the mind was left idol, it didn’t immediately wander to negative thoughts.

Or is that just me?

Today I had a mental decompression of sorts where I just recounted the memories and thought patterns that have passed through my mind in the last five days. These past five days happen to be days where I have very little to do.

And you know what I realized?

Got damn I’m negative. I mean really negative. And if I don’t have any immediate unfortuante happenings to ponder on I just conjure one up from the good ole depths of memory. It half way convinces me that I’m still harboring bitterness towards these situations even though I know I’m not. I just like to grumble and be a pain in my own not as firm and thick as it used to be ass.

My grandpa is like this. My grandpa lives with my parents, has all his financial and medical needs taken care of, he’s going blind so most physically laborious tasks are taken care of for him, his family is always around him and those that live in the area come to visit. He can still see enough to walk down the street and stand on the corner as he likes to do, and most of the neighbors know him so if he gets lost they gently walk him back to my parents house. Pops has nothing to worry about, but guess what?

Homeboy still complains. He’s a massive complainer at that.

My mom always says it’s probably because he doesn’t have much else to do. Which in its own right is a bit sad. I’m persuaded that humans were made for some form of productivity and creativity and it’s when we’re unable to do that that we lose ourselves. Or we never get the opportunity to find ourselves in the first place.

That’s probably why our 20’s is so shit cause most of us are out trying to find our purpose but in the short run of it we’re actually just trying to find something to do. Which is about where I am right now.

I worked on Fashion Week (shout out Chloe Rosolek Casting) I’ve been able to accompany Miss Jason on some of the filming nights for the upcoming Season 2 (YouTube Jason’s Closet, it’s really quite lovely) and here and there I go out to read poetry. Other than that I’m home unless I make a trip to Trafalgar to scope out museums or take a walk to Waterloo bridge. And that gets boring to be honest. Taking a walk through the park, cooking a new recipe, reading a book, painting (although that’s currently my favorite thing to do), and even, dare I say it? Writing.

It all gets boring. Honestly I just want something to do. And yes, get paid for it.

But that’s besides the point.

My real question is why do we (or maybe just I) resort to mumbling about nonsense when our minds are idol. It literally takes more effort to think positive or neutral thoughts and I just don’t get that. I don’t get that its a reality we’re all aware of because how often, especially in bad times have you heard, ‘I know it’s hard and a bit cliche to say but look on the bright side. Or at least try to.’ We suck so hard at being positive that even our advice about being positive sucks. Honestly, I hate when people tell me that.

Mostly cause it doesn’t help. If I knew where the bright side was my pupils would be glued on it.

But you know what did help, decompressing. So without further ado here are just a few of the useless thoughts I’ve been having lately

5 years ago a tow truck driver made an illegal turn and almost hit my car. I tried to move out of the way but it didn’t help. He managed to move the truck without harm but perceived my moving as trying to get him to bump my car for insurance money. Before speeding off he said ‘I know you want a new one, but you ain’t gettin one on me bitch’. Petty, but I went to dinner and had a great evening that night.

I paid 50 pence extra last week because I was too lazy to walk to the neighboring store that I was convinced was cheaper. They are. On everything.

My flatmate mixed peanut butter in my Nutella jar. The nutella has been done for weeks.

There was a small error with a magazine that published a poem for me and the artwork I submitted with it. They very graciously rectified it and apologized. So tell me why was I being salty all by myself? I think I was expecting them to be difficult and they weren’t so I didn’t get to sprinkle my salt anywhere. Moving on to number

Any issues I’ve had with people I’ve lived with in the past, definitely turned those over

An email I needed to send on time that never went through even though the receiver said it was fine.

Forgetting to turn the lights off

A girl I was seeing in the past who blocked me. Granted I ignored her for months because she was toxic.

None of this stuff is relevant, some of it may hold a few residual bumps I need to examine further, but only examine. Not dwell on until my neck gets stiff. In the end it’s all meaningless and has no effect on my day to day unless I allow it to, which I do for no other reason than being bored.

If you find yourself in this space, write it down. Write these crummy little thoughts down and take a second to reflect on whether or not they’re worth your mental investment. Then write down some things you’d like to get done, maybe it is finishing a book, doing laundry or taking a walk in the park. Write those things down and check them off as you get them done, or maybe at the end week write down what you got done. And when you finish that list title it ‘Accomplishments’, because that’s what they are.

I know I said they’re boring and its valid to feel that way but in the back of my mind I know I’m intertwining my worth with my work (one of capitalism’s greatest tricks). If something I do isn’t leading to what I perceive as a big achievement than its meaningless busy work and I’m useless. I slow down on doing anything, in that way making myself bored, sit on the couch and end up entertaining myself with any minute mishap that’s ever happened to me.

It’s a cycle. One easily caught in. I’m not going to tell you to think positive or even avoid thinking negative, because like I said, there may be something that needs a closer look. All I’ll say is be conscious of where you allow your mind to roam. It’s not a thing that should be left to wander on its own. And for my babies in the 20’s with me, don’t be afraid if you’re in the stage where not much work is coming your way. This period will probably benefit you in the long run as a time of self discovery, learning new skills blah blah blah, you know what I’m going to say. Its redundant to hear but it’s true.

I’m here with you friends. Cheers to less negative thoughts and more being proud of every accomplishment.

That’s it for now, as they say, but before I go just do me one favor,

Love Yourself,

AFS

Life Update

I write this blog the same way I lead conversations: I always forget to introduce myself.

Or give an update on how I’m doing. I talk in circles about random topics, ask loads of questions about how everyone else is doing then at the very end someone, or a few someones really, always come up to me and say,

You know I didn’t actually get your name.

Then they mention how they have no clue who I am or what I do. It’s kind of my thing. I’m reluctant to small talking about myself but good for relaying all the heavy stuff if you ever make the mistake of asking me how I’m doing on one of my low days.

So in keeping with that tradition, this blog is full of traumas, sad days, confusing periods, rants and the likes, but there’s little about me. If I’m being honest it’ll probably remain that way but I figure for now it wouldn’t be too out of character to let you in on the small happenings of my life.

First things first, I’ve moved. I left Germany and now live in London.

Quite a shift I know, and honestly I didn’t see it coming. I imagined myself staying in Germany for at least a few years, but hey, that’s life for you.

To be frank, I left because of the increasing hostility towards minorities in Germany. There’s only so many times you can be spit on and called a nigger before you decide to call it quits.

So I did. I ended my relationship, quit my job, packed my bags and took a 13€ flight to London (yes you read that correctly). The relationship had soured for me long before it ended, I was growing tired of the 9-5, and as I said, Germany just wasn’t the place for me anymore.

Why I chose London brings me to my next update: I’m pursuing modeling, acting, writing, and creative direction full time.

Yes all at once.

I’m more so hoping that one opportunity leads to the next. Though as I’ve seen in London, it’s not uncommon for the local hit DJ to be simultaneously modeling for Vogue while preparing for a photography project of theirs to be showcased at Art Basel after having just released a music video they directed for Blood Orange.

That’s quite literally the life of one of the friends I’ve made here.

Needless to say, if there’s anywhere to pursue becoming a rocket scientist and a horse surgeon at the same time, London is the place to do it. But really I wouldn’t have come had it not been for a series of opportunities that miraculously lined up for me. I’ll say more about what those are once they’ve come to completion, just know good things are on the horizon.

But even as good things are within my reach I won’t sugar coat the toll this sudden shift in location and occupation (or lack thereof) has had on me.

I’m afraid. I worry. I doubt. I look back even though that’s not the direction I’m going in. I’m trying to turn all my hobbies into a career while having no formal training on how to go about that and that scares the shit out of me, as in I frequently take shits because of how anxious I get thinking about the logistics of it all. I’m still battling depression, making amends with my past and how dramatically my life has changed. I still question and over think every set before I even take them. Travelling doesn’t change your circumstances, just your scenery.

Top it all off I’m the new girl all over again.

In a bigger city where the hustle and bustle easily turns into stabbing your best mate in the neck to stay ahead of the curve. London is a beast, don’t let anyone tell you different.

Despite this, despite the dark days, I’m happy here. I love it here. I’m stationed in the south in a high rise that over looks what seems like the entire world. I’m writing everyday, meeting someone new every other day and trying to stay on top of my budget in between. I’m afraid yes, but hopeful. Very hopeful…at least I try to be.

That’s all for now, as they say, but if you could just do me one favor

Love Yourself

AFS

Birthday Boys and Birthday Girls

Its 5am and I’m walking home with a stranger whom I’ll soon call a friend.

I’m told to talk and mingle with different types of people but I don’t have much to say, other than,

Hi, I’m Jai.

I’ve kissed so many cheeks tonight.

Flirted with so many uninterested women tonight.

Rode in so many UBERS I didn’t pay for tonight.

Went along with every next move made for the night while pretending to be interested in plans made for tomorrow.

I took a walk on my own to a park around the corner and fell asleep on a bench. Made my way back about half an hour later to a crowd that seemed unphased by my arrival so probably hadn’t noticed that I had left.

It is better to be a fly on the wall than a wallflower because at least the fly can fly away.

But I am on my way to the next venue without the person I came with to the first. No one seems to know whose house this is but I manage to find the bathroom on my own.

There’s a comfortable chair here so I sit and decide to enjoy the show. A few conversations I might remember later and a few one liners I might turn into a poem.

Thank you to the ones who made sure the new girl didn’t get left behind, next time the UBER will be on me.

It won’t be. I never know where we’re going.

I never know who I’m talking to but he’s just said his birthday is tomorrow and she’s just blown out 21 or 24 candles.

Happy Birthday. I guess this whole night is for them.

London nights come in a drunken haze and my exes jacket keeps me warm as night turns into day.

You’ve got a lovely voice and lovely eyes too. You know where I live better than I do, you walk me home even though I tell you you don’t have to. My buildings just there, I don’t have your number but maybe I’ll text you.

I lay down in bed, I close my eyes too.

I know tomorrow is coming, even though I don’t want it too.

AFS

Starbuck’s at St. Pancras

Strawberry donut is a terrible flavor for a frappuccino.

And Starbucks is a lovely place to be when you’re being stood up. Probably should have seen it coming with all the dodginess about time.

Time zones are funny when you’re unemployed. The friends in my zone are at work so I can’t call them when I’m bored, and the friends back home are asleep so I can’t call them when I’m lonely.

Why am I surprised? Time travel has always been a solo mission.

No one comes in holding hands with a companion and no one goes out kissing lips with a lover.

The cue is getting longer and the coffee caller (I assume that’s the name of that position) is showing signs of acute anxiety. Mixing up names and hot beverages. Was it a grande latte macchiato low fat milk no sugar for James or was it for Kiera?

Better question, who thought it a grand idea to name all drink sizes with a word synonymous to big in the first place? The only person they’ve fooled is me as I don’t frequent this place often enough to know that my tall tea meant small tea.

Took everything in me not to tell Susan they spelled small wrong. But no one else seemed bothered which has always been a clear sign that I’m currently in a ‘It’s just you’ scenario.

And it is just me. Just me and my three pound tea I would trade for a meal deal at Sainsbury’s right about now. But mint is soothing. So soothing I tell myself that it could be worse.

I could be the guy that ordered the Strawberry Donut frappuccino.

All written in good spirit guys,

Love Yourself,

AFS

‘Hair’itage

My last name is Stephenson.

It’s probably a slave name. Or the name my ancestors adopted in order to adapt to their surroundings. I don’t hate my last name, I question it. Who is it? Who am I, really?

I remember back in Uni a black girl sitting next to me in class and becoming excited. Attending a predominantly white institution, women like us were far and few in between. So in an attempt to establish comradery, I complimented the name I saw printed on her student ID tag.

“Ngozi, that’s a beautiful name.”

She looked at me, her eyes exasperated, her lips curled only to a half smile but still patiently replied, “Not Nuh-gozi but Nnn-gozi, nnn, from Nigeria.”

That ‘Nnnn’ being unfamiliar to me began the introspective dissection of my past and present.

After that encounter, I coudln’t shake the slight notion of shame that shrouded me. I, being raised in America, could recite the English, the French, the Italian and even the German alphabet, but I had not the slightest clue of how to phonetically pronounce and recite the Igbo alphabet, or any alphabet belonging to an African country for that matter. And there were people, black people all around me who knew their names. Their real names. They knew where they’d come from. Yet I had this name, this name I knew was not my own. A name that fooled most white employers into thinking I was white until I walked in for the interview. A White washed privilege.

And I had something else.

This hair. My hair.
My hair that my mother kept relaxed up until I was eighteen and moved out on my own. Before then it was long and reached well past my shoulders. People, especially black people, rarely complimented my dark complexion, truthfully they taunted me for it. And they rarely said much about my facial features except for “You look like a man.” But my hair, oh my hair to them was my saving grace. It was my glory.

“You’ve got pretty hair,” they’d say.

Never that my hair was ‘good’ because despite its length, it was coarse and dense unlike the silky strands that flowed from the scalps of women who claimed to have Indian in them. Nevertheless, my hair was pretty and I learned early on that is was one of my better traits.

Still, I was curious. Every month just before I was due a fresh relaxer, I wondered about the kinky new growth sprouting from the root like weeds in a manicured garden. I wondered what would happen if less effort was made to them but instead they were permitted to thrive in their natural habitat?

My counterparts were less enthused by this concept. Whenever this tiny fro made a guest appearance I was met with, “Oh yea, you need to keep that mess permed, you got that real nigga naps grade of hair.”

No one was calling it 4c back then.

Even so, in spite of my mother’s disapproval and right in swing with the wave of black hair naturalism that swept across black America, I cut my hair. I remember that first rendezvous between myself and my new reflection. How long I lingered in the mirror, gazing at the foreign woman who had what seemed only to be half a millimeter of curls jutting from her scalp. I remember thinking,

Oh. How ugly.

Quickly I tried anything to alter my current state of ‘hairs’. Dr. Miracle’s Gro Oil, Wonder Gro, Doo Gro, hell if they sold something called Please Gro I would’ve bought it. But of course, in due time I learned. In due time I loved.

So let me take you back to the beginning.

My last name is Stephenson. It’s a patronymic form of the name Stephen derived from the Ancient Greek word ‘stephanus’ meaning, crown. I don’t know specifically who they were, my ancestors, but I like to believe there was intention in the choosing of that name. Royalty.

They passed down to me this melanin, this nose, these hands, this face, all of these like precious relics reassuring me that yes, my body is indeed a temple. And they gave me something else.

This hair. Their hair. My hair.

Like a signature, a beautiful marking that adorns my head saying,

“We were here. We are here.
So anoint your head with oils of castor, coconut and jojoba. And do this in remembrance of us. When you comb your coils be gentle, always be tender with your hands because life was not always so tender with ours. Wash, rinse, moisturize. Baptize yourself in all that is required to maintain your Garden of Eden. Honor it. Offer it, like a sacrifice of praise upon the altar. An outward expression of gratitude. This is true and proper worship.

And as you reach back… we will reach forward”.

As always, do me this one favor today.

Love Yourself.

AFS

I Almost Cancelled Christmas

Maybe it was depression. Maybe its the fact that I’m halfway across the world and away from family. Maybe its that its been a tough few months in Berlin. Maybe I just wasn’t in the festive mood. Whatever it was… I almost cancelled Christmas.

My roommate and I planned to be with her family for the holidays, thats what we did for Thanksgiving even though that’s not a holiday here. But days before we were set to leave to Hannover, the idea of being surrounded by people and having to talk and keep conversation, smile and laugh exhausted the hell out of me. I just wanted to be alone. I’ve spent the last few months in fear and panic trying to secure a work visa to stay in Germany, I worked as an Au pair for a shitty family for months before I decided to leave, moved around the city more than I would have liked, watched my savings dwindle, and the impending winter has brought on long nights and shorter days with a side of perpetual cold, rain, and seasonal depression. Above all I miss home. Everyday I miss home. Or at least the comfortability of it

The answer seems as simple as go back, but I know I can’t. I know I’m going to accomplish incredible things here, I’ve already started to despite the setbacks. I know there’s nothing for me back home except every regret I’ll feel if I leave without having given it my all.

So going back is not an option and even though I have confidence in whats to come, it doesn’t mean my days are without sadness and disappointment. Days like today.

Yesterday, we should have left together for Hannover but I asked her to go without me. I was honest about why and luckily she understood. Thus began my stance to cancel Christmas and spend the holidays alone. It almost worked. I did just as I planned and sat alone with only my sadness as company. I didn’t read much, write, or even eat much although I cooked a whole chicken that currently remains nearly untouched. I cried some, thought about the past as usual, and downloaded Tinder which I’ve come to recognize I only do in deep periods of loneliness.

Crazy thing is, as rough as its been, virtually everything has worked out. I got a new job that is sponsoring my visa, I live in an amazing apartment on the beautiful side of town and I won’t have to leave for a while, every need I’ve had has been miraculously met, and even though its cold I got to see snow fall for the first time. I miss home but my family and friends randomly call when I need them most to remind me that they believe in me. So I couldn’t tell you why days like this come as I stare every blessing that has come my way square in the face. The only thing I can tell you is this:

Absolutely no one should be alone for the holidays.

It hit me as I lay with a tub of melted ice cream and German television blared in the background. The show happened to be set on Thanksgiving day but a series of unfortunate events left the group having a pretty lousy Thanksgiving dinner. But then one character noted how the usually lonely neighbor finally had a guest. I managed to translate her saying “That’s nice that he has someone”, or something to that affect.

I have someone. A few someones all the around the world, but especially a kind family waiting for me in Hannover to share this holiday with them. So I got off the couch, cleaned the house, did some reading, a bit of writing, and a packed a bag. I may be making it just in time for dinner but better late than never.

I wrote this to anyone feeling the holiday blues and to my future self who will look back and see success came with many bumps. I hope to write more and tell you my story, how I got to where I am and where I’m going.

But that’s all for now as they say. Happy holidays, and please do me this one favor today:

Love Yourself.

Signed,

ASF