As a kid, I always had stuffed pockets, an overstuffed backpack, and things jammed inside drawers somewhere. I’d collect things and keep them just because. I carried everything I could find in my backpack because I felt you never know what the day would bring. Extra books, markers, lotion, 30 writing utensils, journals, binders, composition tablets, and textbooks all weighed me down. The Boy Scout in me lived their motto to core. Be prepared. I’m still this way today. I overpack for trips. My work bag is filled with just in case items, then I wonder why I have back issues. I carry so much. We also carry things in our hearts and spirits for years, whether it be love, memories, or trauma. Trauma seems like the heaviest lift because often times it’s the hardest to release, which makes it easier to own and keep. Lately, I’ve felt so heavy and I couldn’t understand why, and when I finally did, I realized that I’d been carrying things I didn’t have to. Last week, I told some truths that were really hard to release because I was fearful of the consequences, but I’ve made the choice to be radically honest in the name of healing, in hopes that I can release the weight I’ve been carrying since childhood. I talked about being molested at a very young age, but the story continues down a more dangerous and detrimental path. To move forward in life, I have to be willing to release and tell it all. Trying to lighten the load was helpful, but there are a few more things I needed to release to actually feel relief.. So…. Here goes….

By the time I was nine, I had gained weight, so I was no longer a skinny child. My abuser would grab my chest and kiss my neck when we would be alone. He’d make me sit on his lap, and I’d always have to sleep in the bed with him when we slept over. At 10, I experienced the pain of him inserting his penis inside my anus. It hurt so bad and I bled for a few days after that. I hid my underwear from my parents so they wouldn’t find them. I threw them away behind the dumpster at school. I was too afraid to tell anyone. This would continue to happen till I was about 13. Before going to college, I made my first attempt to talk about the abuse, and people were extremely dismissive. I became the topic of conversations. I was accused of being “a little faggot” for trying to say that this had happened to me. Church was a terrible place for my self-esteem and my identity as a person. It made me feel inferior to others because I had these urges and desires, so there must be an evil spirit living within me that was trying to destroy my family. I was depressed all the time and threw myself into school and my studies. I worked part-time after school as soon as I was old enough to, so I could escape. I felt I was carrying this stain and needed to be washed cleaned, but nobody would understand me because I’d been so secretive and distant. No one noticed any changes in me. No one seemed to care. I drifted further and further into depression and wanted to get as far away from home as I possibly could. I ran from this for years until it caught up with me.

There’s a feeling you get when something so detrimental has occurred and no one believes you. It’s a betrayal. I felt uncovered and ashamed. I blamed my parents for not being there. I blamed the ones who touched me. I still have abandonment issues, and I’ve tried to take my life 5 other times since then, the most recent being in 2017. My parents and I did not speak for years and I refused to go home to visit because being there was so triggering. I also recognized that I’ve been carrying a lot of guilt for what happened to me as a child for not speaking up, which ultimately allowed this to happen to other family. My voice has been the voice that was brave enough to speak up for an entire generation of people in my family who have been hurt in similar ways. I blame myself for allowing this to continue because speaking up could have stopped it from happening to others. I’ve carried their burdens, failures, lives, and a responsibility for their futures so long that everything around me feels heavy. It feels heavy.

I attempted suicide for the first time at 19. I was a sophomore in college in a small Indiana town and tried to take my life with pills. I ended up blacking out in a Wal-Mart bathroom and coming to on the floor. I literally got up and walked out of the store and went to my vehicle to drive back to campus. I tried my best to deal with my trauma, and with being a black gay man in a very heteronormative community. Marriage ended in divorce, and after that, there was real fear that being my open and honest self would put a stain on the reputation of my family. When I finally did come out a year or so later, it strained so many relationships. I had to escape my home and find a place to settle myself. It took me almost four years to do that, but being out of the environment helped me to learn myself so much more.

I cried this week, mostly because I was forced to release emotions that had been pinned up for so long that it came out in tears. I’m still the seven year old boy sometimes who remembers that big boys don’t cry because crying meant you were weak, and it allows people to take advantage of your vulnerabilities. I’m laying here in my bed writing this, feeling myself literally exhale. I don’t have to carry this anymore. I don’t need to give these skeletons room to reside in my heart, and I don’t have to allow myself to be weighed down by carrying so many things. So, today as I clean out my work bag in preparation for a new week, it’ll have a whole new meaning because my spirit is also lighter. Still healing, bitches. All 2019.