Sympathy Magic for a Bloody Valentine and a Heart Letting Go

I felt like s***. Poured out my soul and what did I find, the emptying out of everything from within. The goodness, the darkness, the pain and I have to tell you that I just wanted to cry. The first time I did a talk about Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality, I felt really seen and this last time I felt exposed. Exposed for what I'm not really sure but, it really hurt from the inside out. 

I think maybe I got a little close to my wounds and a conversation that I wasn't ready to take public yet. That's okay. Every time I do these kinds of talks it's a feeling out process anyway. I have a plan. I have notes. And, a general guiding direction I don't do scripts because then I would have to read it and that would be difficult. It'll be difficult to see, my nerves would be unstable, and I think it would just impact my delivery altogether. 

It's nothing against scripts, I could actually probably write a better speech or segment if I wrote it out in advance. I know that about myself, I also know that I'm going to be naturally witty on the mic, even if that's to shield me from the pain. The fact is I don't really like doing any of this. I wish I didn't have to tell stories to the world in order to be seen. I wish I could just be seen. But, I'm not. I'm not seen at home. I'm not seen at work. I'm not seen in general.

I don't say any of this for your pity. I don't actually want that. I want your attention. I've struggled through a lot of hard things just to do normal things. Do you know what I really want out of this life? I want to be debt free from the burden of my student loans, I want to be debt free from the burden of medical debt, I want people not to second guess whether or not I deserve to be in a position of leadership. I've worked my ass off to get there. You work seven days a week, double shifts, across five jobs, and you'll earn it too.

Doing that s*** broke my body down. And for what? Success? Money? I did it for my kids. I did it because you said I couldn't. I did it because somebody said I wasn't enough. I did it to prove you wrong again, and again, and again. Why do I even give a s*** what you think? Because frankly without a snippet of your approval I don't earn a paycheck. 

I've got to get you to look past the way I walk, something that I can't change, and then I've got to get you to look past the way I don't always filter everything I say through the perfect political lens of upper middle class propriety because I was born in chaos. My normal was yelling and screaming at my own family members. It was unfiltered, it was raw, it was confusing, and it was anything but the professional American workplace. I had to learn how to not tell someone to go f*** themself. 

I found out how to fit in a place I don't. I figured out how to fit in a world not built for me. I figured out how to survive. I even figured out how to thrive somehow. But the struggle is real every f****** day. I don't live in happiness and joy. That was stripped for me a long time ago. But, I do find peace.

“I don't have to be worthy…It didn't keep me safe like you told me it would, so c'mon tear me wide open” (“Sympathy Magic,” Florence + The Machine). “Like handprints in wet cement…it's permanent” (“Bloody Valentine,” mgk). Sometimes when I tell my stories I find peace in the possibility that I'll be seen. Sometimes I feel like it's another adventure in missing the point. And, sometimes I touch the wounds and it hurts. “‘Ceuse tonight I hold the love I used to know, and listen to a heart letting go” (“Heart Letting Go,” Chris Stapleton). We don't put down what we carry when we go to work, when we parent, and even when we speak about what we carry and how we want to show up in the world. We carry it everywhere, the question is how do we carry it?

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