Cycles
What do you get from planting seeds, expecting gardens in the Sahara desert?
What do you get from pouring out what you don’t have, just to still not have her?
What do you get from cooking for a Black woman’s daughter who couldn’t even hold your heart if you asked her ?
I think it’s time you be loved
I think it’s time you accept reality
I think it’s time you let the feeling go
I think it’s time you stop betraying yourself.
Because love doesn’t betray
And you say you love you…
~Betrayal, BrittanyKW, October 10, 2024
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Hey Beloved. I hope you are doing well. I hope that you have been grounded in peace. I hope you have been grounding yourself in love. I hope that you have been submerging yourself in your passions. I hope that you have been honoring yourself by being mindful of the things you say, the things you do, the things you accept, and the ways you give of yourself unto others.
A few weeks ago, my sister convinced me to sign up for the weekly news letter of my favorite poet, as a source of inspiration and accountability. When it comes to my gifts, including writing, I'm good for procrastinating or feeling like the absence thereof has little impact. Ironically, the first week's topic for the newsletter: betrayal-- specifically, self-betrayal. I was floored, and my mind went everywhere, thinking of all the ways I've betrayed myself and have continued to do so. Whether it be laying my gifts down to collect dust or re-engaging with people I once loved up-close out of familiarity or a desire for closure (wtf is that anyways), I've betrayed myself without even having a name to call it.
The opening excerpt of this blog is from the poem I wrote for that week's assignment, and weeks later, I hope these words find room in your heart. May we never betray ourselves just to say we loved.
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November, 2024
Imani was in the kitchen browning the roux for the pot of gumbo she was making for dinner. She was using Grandma Grace's recipe, and to emerge herself in her spirit, she wore the apron her favorite girl left behind when she last came up from New Orleans. With Imani being her youngest grandchild, and the one whom she spent the most time with, Grandma Grace made it a thing to come back to New York every summer to spend time with her "Brown Suga."
"That's what GG named me at birth," Imani told Che`, who trickled her way into the apartment, having smelled the aroma of the homemade seafood stock that Imani was cooking down, while simultaneously stirring the thickening roux. "She said I was a milk chocolate colored brown with almond shaped eyes, and she loves her some chocolate covered almonds and roasted almonds in a brown sugar glaze-- so, she called me Brown Suga-- no /r/ at the end.
"That is so precious," Che` said, grabbing a mango from the fruit basket that was in the vintage wooden bowl that sat atop the marble counter of the kitchen island. "If I know another thing else about GG, I know if she were in this kitchen right now she'd be proud. Look at that roux girl!"
Che` stood over Imani's shoulder looking into the pot, before completing her journey to the knife holder in the corner.
"GG doesn't play about her gumbo," Imani said, flipping the sausage that was sauteeing in a separate skillet. "Another thing she doesn't play about is me."
"Ya damn right!"
Che` was forced to be a woman of little words in the moment, with her mango being the center of her attention.
As moments of silence passed by, with Imani intentionally seasoning and adding GG's required ingredients to her gumbo, Che` recalled the final moments of Grandma Grace's last visit.
"The last time she came up here, her and I had a good little talk about you."
"Excuse me?"
Che` laughed at Imani's reaction-- her lower jaw traveling down south with a dramatic hand resting at the center of your chest.
"You know good and well I sit under your GG when she's making her pound cake so I can memorize her recipe," Che began saying without shame. "But she wonders about you-- feeling like you've been holding back some when you talk to her about what's been bothering you these days."
"I just can't fathom telling her about another heartbreak when she's given me every instruction on how to get out of the cycle I've been journeying in."
Imani unintentionally began stirring her shame into the circular motions of her arms as she stirred the holy trinity into the pot with the roux.
"It's embarrassing telling the people closest to you that you still can't get it right in love," Imani began, trying not to mess up the thickness of her roux by letting her tears fall into the pot.
Love was Imani's favorite thing to exude, to be, to receive, to experience, but love was the very thing that kept putting her in positions to get her heart broken. And she was learning that loving somebody does not mean you are meant to be with them. But there was still grief.
"I just want someone to come around here and be sure," she continued as Che` listened, in a way only a community auntie could. "I want somebody to arrive here on purpose, on time, without an ex their healing from, or mommy issues. I want somebody who did the fucking work. Shit!"
She'd forgot she was preheating the oil for the okra-- being reminded once the oil to started popping and stinging her arm the way love had stung her heart.
Che` had slid off the velvet emerald bar stool that was a bit too narrow for the curve of her hips, but sturdy enough to hold the weight of such a knowledgable, wise and loving woman.
She was wetting the kitchen towel she grabbed from the wall hook when she asked permission to begin her auntie intervention.
"Do you want me to be your pillow right now or do you want me to be Auntie Che` who learned some things about love along the way," she asked, wiping the remnants of oil off of Imani's arm before finding a comfortable spot on the wall to lean on.
"Go on," Imani responded with a spirit of defeat, stirring the okra as the heat suppressed it's slimy nature.
"Well first, I'll need you to take a deep breath. Put them shoulders back and lift that head of yours," Che` began, holding Imani's chin between her right thumb and index finger, the way only an auntie can. "I don't eat my gumbo with a side of defeat-- only rice. Thank you very much!"
A subtle laugh escaped Imani's vessel, but it didn't rid her of the shame she felt, nor the defeat she's wallowed in silently for the last few months.
"More than your landlord, I'm your 45 year-old, single BedStuy auntie, who is going to hold you up and together," Che` started, as she walked back to her stool that was now her soap box. "Imani-- you are good. Too damn good for the people you hold space for in love.
"I know that because I see myself in you. I know that because I pursued love the same way you do. I would hold onto the people I felt I could save-- even if it was at my expense-- because I loved them. But I loved them in spite of knowing how I wanted to be loved. I had done the work in between lovers, but none of the lovers I laid with had done the work before they came to me. Yet, I still kept them."
I still kept them.
Those four words were repeating in Imani's head when she'd turned around to face Che`. She'd just mixed the sausage, okra, and herbs into the large gumbo pot with GG's seasoning mix.
"Why do we always lean into keeping?"
"Because we feel some type of honor thinking we can save everybody," Che` responded with surety. "Our egos deem our love and ways of being to be just that good to heal and save people, only, then, to end up back at square one trying to heal from them. We cannot submerge people into healing by loving them. We can't force the timing to be right because we feel like we are right for them."
"But..."
"No ma'am," Che` cut her off. "When people tell you where they are, when they come with confusion about an ex, when they tell you they are not ready, believe them. To be honest, you had no business trying to love that girl up close, but I commend your bravery for trying and for still choosing love every rising."
You had no business trying to love that girl up close.
Imani wiped away her tears with GG's apron and remnants of her Chanel Coco Noir took precedence over the moment. That was the hug she needed, though just her scent and not her arms.
All she aimed to do was prove to people that they were worth of good love-- even if the past had hurt them. Even if they couldn't make room for her love. She'd spill it out just to seep through the cracks.
"You're thinking of all the ways you've tried to love them well, aren't you?"
Che's question took her out of her trance.
"No."
Che` stared her down the way only an auntie who knows you well can.
"Okay, okay. Yes, but it's just like why is love never enough for people?"
"Your love will never make somebody capable of loving you," Che` responded, taking a sip of her coconut water that she tends to sip out of a wine glass. "If anything, it'll have them put you up on shelf until they're ready to love you back in full-- in the meantime, taking you down, periodically, just to get your hopes up, only to put you back on the shelf. You're not meant to fit up there, babygirl. And making yourself small to be palatable and fit on somebody's miniature "Save for Later" shelf is betraying you."
Imani stirred in the shrimp and crabmeat, digesting every word in her heart.
"Stop giving your pieces away, Mani," Che` said walking up to the niece she had taken on as her own, without knowing she was a mirror of self. "It's time that somebody pursue and love you. It's time that you be watered. It's time that somebody welcome you into their kitchen with a pot of gumbo and rice waiting for you on the stove. Imagine that, somebody cooking for you for once-- a miracle."
The auntie-niece duo erupted into laughter.
"You know I don't trust people's cooking like that."
"Girl, you don't trust it because them scraps you keep picking up don't even give you the opportunity to try someone else's cooking out."
"You right!"
"Speaking of trying things out..."
Che` grabbed a spoon from the utensil drawer and helped herself to a tasting of the gumbo.
"Whoa!!!"
She took a step back to admire the chef at a distance.
"For one, GG would be so proud, but two, them heffas ain't never deserve the blessing of your cooking," Che` said, grabbing another spoon for a second tasting. "Stop cooking for people's grown ass kids before they can show up in full for you. Let them, and that feeling you keep chasing from them, go."
She soaked it all in-- the aroma of GG's gumbo that she had turned into her own, the remnant scent of GG's perfume, and Aunt Che's wisdom on love. If anybody knew something about it, it was her.
This time next year-- matter of fact, after today, I'm no longer betraying myself. I'm hanging everybody else up the way they've hung me up, but contrary to them, I'm not taking them down from the shelf. They can stay up there as trophies of lessons I've learned over time. I still love them, but not in the ways I once wished I could. I owe that to myself.
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So Beloved, simply put... stop choosing people who don't choose you. Stop over-loving people in hopes they will love you back. Stop betraying yourself trying to save someone else, in the name of love. Love would never ask you to betray yourself just to be able to say you loved someone. Discernment baby.
Talk to you soon. xo- BrittanyK.W.🌹