Caught in the Crossfire

  “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it Be… There will be an answer, let it be”


~ The Beatles, Let it Be






Last Friday, I was driving down a main street in a medium sized, relatively populated town. A huge market spans out on either side of this main street and it’s never empty.

The first thing I saw was a few people running. Their body language told me they were afraid and desperate to get away. Next, I saw cars turning, the sort of u-turns you see in action films and know the stunt double is performing. Immediately I became tense and on edge. Fight or Flight.

Then I saw it. A police vehicle was being high jacked; driven backwards and in a zigzag pattern. I told my driver to turn the car around -- luckily we were just by a break in the median. Old and not prone to common sense or critical thinking under pressure (or not under pressure), he failed to respond.

I saw men fighting to gain control of fire arms, pulling and wrenching. I saw others fighting to gain control of the vehicle. Before I could scream at my driver again, I heard a shot. I hit the floor of the car immediately and hoped that my little sister had the presence of mind to do the same. I saw her folded over in her seat and thanked God for that.

I stayed down and heard more gun fire, a spraying of bullets. Once I heard a break in the fire I knew either someone had gone down or one side had won. Who or what didn’t interest me, as I tentatively raised my head and realized to my utter dismay that my car had not moved and the skirmish was still in effect only six feet from us.

I screamed continuously “Turn and move the car! MOVE THE CAR!” at my dumbstruck but still breathing driver. It seemed everything happened in slow motion and then suddenly, the car was moving at a pace more so to my liking. I didn’t look back as we put more and more distance between ourselves and the scene, but I did stay low in my seat until we turned a corner where bullets could not follow. After all, Mama didn’t raise no fool.

I think I saw the bullet hole in the windshield earlier but I had not examined it or its full implication until we were at a safe distance. A hole the size of a quarter with circular cracks and then angry zigzag cracks extended up from the rounded ones.   

All I could do was stare in disbelief and pray and say “Thank You”. All of us in my car were a few inches or a weaker glass away from a shallow grave and mourning relatives. Even thank you seemed inadequate.

We got out of the car and took pictures then. We laughed shakily with glistening eyes and called them “Happy to Be Alive” photos. And indeed we were.

Later while clearing out the shattered glass, I found the shell. Long and bronzed and thick enough to obliterate any human flesh in its trajectory, thank goodness for big-bodied vehicles.

After an experience like that, I expected to feel… new, affected, and insatiably positive. I just feel happy to still be breathing. None of my issues were magically solved. No instant resolutions to my internal changes, my emotions. I have been given a second chance and still don’t really know what to do with it.

I am a victim or an active seeker of over thinking. Always thinking, my minds gears never stop. I often find myself waking to a continuous train of cognizant thought, punctuated with a “thank you for waking me up today.” Sometimes I have trouble keeping up and I sound scattered. Sometimes I simply hold a thought in a queue and address it when I find a gap. This phenom presents itself as a delayed reaction to the outside world, and I guess it is.

I make things harder than they should be, all the time. So I have resolved at least one thing. I know from experience that a leopard cannot change its spots, but the way those spots are perceived can make a world of difference. I have decided to let it be. “It” being things, that used to stress me, set me on edge, occupy my mind without my express consent. Keep praying, don’t run or artfully dodge. Face down life as it comes, but let it be.

Change

“The winds of change are blowing wild and free. You ain’t see nothin’ like me yet…”


~Adele, Make You Feel My Love   

I feel nothing like the person I was, or used to be. I’m darker inwardly. My insides feel like a hulled coconut, all the water drunk and all the fruit carved out in jagged chunks.


On the road between Ibadan and Lagos again, I appreciate the scenery that has become so familiar to me. The road is treacherous, full of pot holes the size of craters, tractor trailers that see it as normal to park on the road and block traffic and some of the most lush, dense and untouched green forests I’ve ever seen, lining either side

It is comforting to view the land like this, and imagine that it has been this way since the beginning of time. Changing so slowly that no human being can tell the difference until years later as he or she recalls the landscape of their youth.

So much has changed in me since the last time I passed this way, yet, physically, everything has remained the same. I can still ride along staring tirelessly at a sky the color of slate and muted periwinkle. The clouds block the stars tonight, but usually, the darkness plays host to a majesty of dancing lights. The air is fresh, smells like undisturbed earth.

My emotions for the most part come in waves, all or nothing at all and then, when the last of the tide has ebbed, I’m left with the still silence of a vacant beach.

I know this signals what it always does, that I am not at peace. My spirit is in a state of unrest.

For the first time ever, maybe, being here, where I decided to make my home for a while, I feel completely alone. Of course, I still have my friends, which I thank God for everyday, but then, everything else is in a state of flux. I am beginning to see the reason behind the statement “Nothing in life ever really falls apart, it only changes” but those changes sometimes feel like the foundations of the world are about to shift.

K tells me to stop running, which I admit is hard to do when it comes to things I feel that are painful. Much easier to put them in a box and focus on climbing higher, leaving them behind. It seems I habitually forget that even a mountain climber must descend at some point, and what I left in that box, I will eventually see again.

Feel the emotions, handle them, know them so that you can do away with the ones holding you back, she says.

K, to me has always been a warrior woman. When I think of her essence, a tall, armored and very fierce warrior maiden comes to mind with long flowing hair, a contagious laugh and a very big sword. Beautiful to behold but a formidable opponent even on her worst day.

K says that God shakes things up in a major way to give us an opportunity to refocus, not run.

I agree.

Reasons

When you have no one to blame but yourself in a bad situation, it makes everything just a little bit worse.



I’ve come to discover that extending outward, one purposeful, blaming finger through which all your frustration, annoyance and wrath are channeled alleviates the pressure some. With that one appendage, you are able to advertise to others, and more importantly, to yourself, that the current situation happened TO or UPON you.


An index finger is the difference between being a victim, worthy of empathy and comfort and being the catalyst, the gasoline parading proudly amongst flames and worthy of a long eye-roll and ridicule, or worse, pity.


Of course, it’s only natural to point the finger at others first. Cry, scream, throw some spectacular tantrums, and manufacture situations (consciously or not) that separate you from others you care about, or who care about you. Smolder with hatred at other people’s ability to move on and find their happiness, while it seems yours has engaged you in a game of hide-and-go-seek.


It’s easiest to light the match, toss it on dry newspaper and simply turn your back. Not so easy to actively search for the matchbox and all the reasons, feelings, frustrations that led to the match-lighting in the first place.


In the midst of the confusion, the anger and the sadness, there lingers a nagging question. One that is swept under the rug at every time it rears its hideously earnest face, because maybe, just maybe you don’t want to know. That unbearably honest question is Why? or in its milder form, How?


And I ponder, somewhat reluctantly, the answers to both.


Reasons seem to be a running theme for me at the moment. All I want is a reason.


Sometimes the most painful thing to accept or acknowledge is that you are not meant to benefit from every relationship or association that you enter into. Sometimes, you are meant to BE the lesson. End of story. And, sometimes, there is no reason.

Returning...

“like a child passing through, never knowing the reason. I am home, I know the way. I am home, feeling oh, so far away.”


I slept non-stop through the flight from Newark to London. This was partially because I refused to sleep the night before, opting instead to fiddle with minute details at the last moment. I also washed, dried and curled my hair and spoke to Rico* via phone and webcam.

Rico was an easy choice as a final conversation. He’s easy to talk to and happens to be in my same position. Talking to Rico also meant I didn’t have to talk to my friends whom I was lamentably sorry to bid adieu. Rico meant I didn’t have to hear my best friends voice only a short ride away for the last time in a long time, or explain to my other bfbf why I’d been so unbearably distant lately.

Sleep is like my own personal morphine. In the comfort of one’s own personal abyss, sadness doesn’t exist except in dreams and even then it doesn’t seem real, but detached and floating. The night before, I always forcefully ensure I can achieve a blissfully unaware state of relaxation. On the first leg of any journey that I am apprehensive about, sleep is my security blanket, blotting out the anxiety, the dread and the uncertainty.

In the airport at Newark, while I passed my passport to the ticketing agent, my mother walked up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder and another hand on my dad’s shoulder.

“Don’t look now,” she whispered, “But Phylicia Rashad is standing right there about to check in.”

Unfortunately, as soon as we heard ‘don’t look now’ my dad and I proceeded to crane our necks in her general direction. Sure enough, in a red sweater and blue jeans standing about 5’5”, there she was. Her face was paler than I remembered and surrounded by fluffy black hair. She smiled. She knew and so did we.

As I stood there, the ticketing agent next to me beckoned to her. There I was thinking about how quickly I could self-administer my sleep-morphine with Madame Rashad standing right next to me. Claire Huxtable would be so disappointed with my particular brand of cowardice.

Once I landed at Heathrow airport, (I awoke during the final descent and became cognizant just in time to hear the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac) I became expectant. Usually, at this point and juncture I get happy. Duty-free window-shopping is my last and final retail binge. Its’ a shameless free-for-all. This time I stock up on pharmacy lotion and liquid eyeliner. I also claw my way through the crowd to reach the much-sought-after Starbucks counter and order my last caramel macchiato (skim) and it was good. Fantastic.

What I did not expect to feel rolling over my tongue along with the espresso and caramel syrup was the same apprehension I nursed while placing my bags on the scale at the check in counter at Newark. Something about this trip was not like the others. I had a sense of excitement before, a constantly occurring new beginning, my chance to start over.

I stayed awake between London and Lagos. I had run out of sleep-morphine and like any addict going through withdrawl, I broke out in a cold sweat, had chills and forcibly stifled the urge to rock back and forth.

I ordered two glasses of wine during the meal which I did not eat. My father stared at me, his eyes inquiring. I quickly turned from him and up-ended the last of the house white into my mouth. There I held it and contemplated asking for more when I noticed the small old woman sitting beside me staring at my two already emptied glasses. I decided against another but pondered revisiting the first two for those last droplets that settle at the bottom, waiting.

Lagos was exactly how I remembered it, but that ‘home’ feeling was not-so-mysteriously absent. I wondered if it was my attitude, or my feeling toward what and who I’d left behind there, situations changed or dissolved, or if this place simply no longer welcomed me. For the first time since I moved here, I entered this city feeling like a stranger.

Failure

I eliminated failure from of my personal dictionary a very long time ago.

Oddly enough, it was the first time I was accosted by a crack head outside my Aunt Betty’s building on 125th way back in the day. I had always heard my mom and the others talking about who was on “that stuff” now and what they looked like with their skinny necks, uneven gaits and yellowish eyes.

Even as they described this and talked in hushed tones, I was on the verge of telling the entire room that cousin Lina* looked like that, so she must be on “that stuff” too. Fortunately, my 10 year old mind quickly stifled the urge to verbalize that thought, but it did remain in the back of my mind to be confirmed years later when I saw Lina* again.

My cousin J and I went downstairs to play, then get ice pops and candy from a store on the corner. On our way there, a very tall, slim man with skin that looked like caramel rolled in the ashes of firewood shuffled toward us. He wore a two-layer coat that hung haphazardly off one shoulder and a dusty black ski hat in the dog days of summer. I stared askance at his coat and long pants and thought about how glad I was I wore shorts.

We tried to walk wide to avoid him, my older and more street-smart cousin grabbing my hand and pulling me out of his path. To her obvious chagrin, he simply wobbled slightly to change the trajectory of his shuffle. He stopped right in front of us and a lump formed in my throat as he fixed jaundiced eyes on our faces.

“Ya’ll got a dollar? I need me a dollar.”

“Nah, man.” My cousin replied, staring directly into his buttery eyes, “We ain’t got no money.”

I froze as I suddenly felt the weight of the two dollars my mother had given us inside the pocket of my cotton shorts. I never was a good liar and felt with some degree of certainty he would detect the bills in my pocket and seize them. My cousin must have felt me go rigid because she jerked me abruptly forward around the man on “that stuff” and toward the end of the block.

He paused, then eventually decided it wasn’t worth lifting a dollar off two pre-teens that probably didn’t have it anyway.

“Them crack heads betta leave us alone!” she said fiercely as we entered the bodega with the bells on the doors.

What kind of person gets hooked on “that stuff” and wears winter clothes in the summertime? And on top of that, what kind of adult tries to bum a dollar off little kids? A FAILURE, that’s who. It was on that day while enjoying Now n’ Laters and Fruitella that I mentally burned the word “failure” and all its cohorts out of my personal dictionary. “That stuff” also became a non-option.

The tricky part is how to measure success now? Am I living my dream, doing what I was born and tasked to do? How to know is the thing. How do I know?

*- Names changed to protect the ‘users’

UPDATE: I just found this... I don't actually even remember where I got it from but....

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.

Food for Thought.

Dread

I’m back again. The crossroads. Yet another fork in my path, and allow me to express how tiring and repetitive it all seems. I don’t want to say yes to one road and no to another. So, for the past couple of weeks I haven’t.

Over a month has passed by with me staring at this new fork and throwing mental tantrums, complete with foot-stomping and flailing limbs. I have donned the solemn uniform of the exhausted and fed up: white t-shirt, yoga pants, baggy sweatshirt, comfortable socks. Every once in a while (and far too frequently say my favorite pair of jeans) I have employed Tiramisu and/or hot cocoa with marshmallows to keep me company on my shallow pallet of misery.

One great, saving thing about me is that I can not under any circumstances lie to myself. I’m in the habit of delivering the truth to myself with unrelenting swiftness and accuracy. Sometimes the truth bites.

This time, the truth went something like this:

This fork is going nowhere, it will not budge. No matter how many times you squeeze your eyes shut and wish it away, when you reopen them, this fork in the road will be right where you left it. Either you choose, or you stay here, in this very spot you stand now, staring at this fork in the road.

If you choose a path, you’ll have to say “au revoir” to one path and “yes, please” to the chosen one. That is the way it is. If you do not choose, you will remain exactly where you are while life, love and friends pass you by. You will rot in your lamentable ensemble and your socks will grow holy. At least you’ll continue to enjoy Italian desserts and hot cocoa and marshmallows with abandon. When you eventually decide to move, the only two speeds that function will be STOP and SLOW WADDLE (thanks mostly to the marshmallows. Tiramisu shall remain blameless). Regrets will take the place of your dreams.

I realize that I now know what it is to be completely paralyzed by fear, uncertainty. This doesn’t jibe with my “I can do it all” attitude or my “I always win” mentality. I’m probably the sorest loser I know. Defeat doesn’t exist to me, and when it does rear its ugly, misshapen head I find a quiet place of solitude to vent my frustrations. I imagine insanity looks a lot like me venting my frustrations.