Watching Sadness.....

Written on 8/21/09

I am watching the emotion of sadness. It is living somewhere around my heart center. Not radiating a huge area, spreading down to my appendages and through my toes but it is pulsing, faintly like the lifeline of someone just coming back from the dead. Its’ color is gray or dark purple, maybe about the size of a mouse. That’s it, my sadness is a small purple mouse with a slow pulse. But I can feel it there. Like something I ate that got stuck in my teeth. It’s funny because when I have expressed to my friends that I was feeling down or cried they look at me like really? I did not know you were…… sad. I am always surprised by that, that others seems me as stoic, strong, stone -- some mythical Amazonian Black woman who sheds no tears. I guess I am somewhat to blame for my own stereotype. I present myself as strong, intelligent and very, very Black. Original Black Afrikan Woman. Black Afrikan women cry indigo tears but only during childbirth—maybe. 

Or ghetto Black women get to cry blood red tears when they are panthers raging at baby fathers or no good niggas. White women get to cry silver tears. Everyone gathers by to cup them in their hands and sing to them like precious jewels. White women are the best criers, everyone expects them to cry and trips over their feet to let them see a rainbow again. But Black women—be they Queens or Bitches or both only get to shed tears of hysteria. And when she lets it out no one wants to touch her to tell her it will be okay for they fear drowning in the monsoon. They fear she can no longer carry their weight for them and their backbones will break. They fear the end of civilization. So no one encourages her to let it all out, she is encouraged to say fuck it. Scream and fight—cause your anger is common and expected or cloak yourself in Afrika and let ankhs and words in Kiswahili be your shield, being the mother of civilization is after all enough….

So why am I sad? What was my trigger? The humidity and the rain? Watching my son get into some other woman’s car with his father? Not having much contact with another adult for a week? Seeing all the Black women around me confused and sad? Being a fulltime mommy and trying to figure out how to discipline my son without being an emasculating Black bitch? Because I haven’t had a man in over a month and miss being soft and having arms to cradle me? The one who used to hold me stopped calling. The one who I am married to, I don’t want to touch me and the one who I want to touch me probably never will. Why? Because I am scary because I am serious. I do smile but I am serious. I laugh and joke but I am serious. I am sexy but I am serious. Act like a lady but think like man. Be sweet and shinny. Rub his back. Feed him, fuck him and don’t complain. Be mythical. Be manipulative and give good head. But when you are too serious you are dangerous because questions are asked and hey, he’s still young.  And I could go on and talk about slave masters and Black studs but I won’t. I could conjure up Aunt Sara and the Hottentot Venus but that’s another essay.

I am watching sadness boiled down to a purple mouse that lives inside my chest. It acts up sometimes like arthritis when outside is rainy and gray and no one calls. It responds to chocolate, poetry, meditation, herbal teas, prayer, tears and sometimes fantasies. At other times I just take a movie for about two hours and lay on my couch. When I am feeling really mystical I’ll read a book on Afrikan Vodou or watch a youtube clip of someone dancing Oshun. Tonight, maybe I’ll pray over some honey to remind me that I am a goddess or take a bath in some blue water made salty by my tears.