Our Black Wound

Our Black Wound can be defined as the source of our pain, it's the origin of how we have coped with being Black in a society that hates us. Obviously, our individual Black Wound is individual and unique to us, it’s from a personal experience that shaped our world view and formed our personality, our compensation for our defect, being born the wrong color. Our individual Black Wound was inflicted by our families, our communities, and our personal experiences in life. Our collective Black Wound originated in slavery. Our collective Black Wound was inflicted by society. Our collective Black wound is based on centuries of the false belief that we are inferior.

It's hard to identify our own wounds. We can barely identify our own coping mechanisms to deal with our wounds, it's virtually impossible to identify our wounds themselves. We've been told that not being a perfect person makes you a bad person. There is no such thing as perfection but the belief that perfect can be attained and that it's our choices, it's our inherent stupidity or unattractiveness, or it's . . . our Blackness that keeps us from being perfect, that belief that we aren't perfect and it's our fault that we aren't and that we are worthless unless we are perfect - that is the belief that keeps us tied to suffering.

Our Black Wound, in our mind, is the experience, event, the circumstances that first let us know that who we are as a person is not good enough, that the skin we come in is not Grade A. We don't have to have just one Black Wound but we carry those wounds with us for our entire lives, festering, infected, untreated, and malignant.

It's almost impossible to identify your Black Wound by yourself. The part of your brain that sees your own flaws and fuck ups, it has been told time and time again that you're born a sinner, that you are a piece of shit just for taking a breath. That belief, the belief that we are inherently bad people, distorts the mirror so to speak, it creates and image of perfection for us to behold. It’s not that we are unable to see our own flaws, we have been socialized in a society that thinks glamor and the perception of perfection give a person more value. So when we look in the mirror, metaphorically, what your subconscious mind allows you to see is someone who is right and good and perfect, and everyone else who doesn't "look" (i.e. think, believe, love, party, vote, pray) like you is wrong. It's a piece of cake to readily identify everyone else's wounds, society has taught us to name everyone else's flaws and faults and failures but that mirror is really foggy when we look in it.

We have to identify our Black Wound. We have to identify the way in which we cope with that internalized hatred and shame. Do we only date white people? Do we make sure we speak proper English in front of white people to make sure they know we aren't . . . one of those niggers? Do we just give up trying to better ourselves and rot in complacency because we can't imagine that we deserve better than the fucked up life we have been given?

There are a million ways we use to cope. Some brothas lie, cheat, and make a million and two babies to hide the fact that they don't know how to ask for love, they can't say that they're afraid, they can't admit to feeling weak. Sistas readily embrace being objectified and used by men as a sign of empowerment to keep from feeling objectified and used by the perpetrators who want nothing more than to hurt and violate us. Too many of us bust our asses working on the corporate plantation, convinced that it's the measure of our security, identity, and relative importance in life if we get a good performance review at a job we hate; that we need that pension and that paycheck to be valuable human beings in life. We bust our asses to make rich white people richer review while we are barely surviving. All those behaviors are coping mechanisms for the Black Wound. It's time to heal the Black Wound. It's time to clean and dress it so that we can become healthy.

We have all kinna Black Wounds and coping mechanisms to hide them. What we need are treatments to heal our Black Wounds. We need medicine. We need therapy. We have to face and accept that all of us have Black Wounds because we live in a society that has historically hated our melanin.

And, unfortunately, for those of us who are champions of karmic justice and retribution, you cannot have a white wound. It is impossible for you to have an emotional wound associated with your whiteness when whiteness is fallaciously revered around the world as being superior. Do you understand how being able to feel safe and secure in your skin, knowing that you can go anywhere in the world and people will respect you for no other reason than the color of your skin is something that Black people simply can’t do.

Learning to Love

I am, what I like to call, emotionally retarded.  You see, I did not receive love from the first, most important source every child experiences love, my mother.  I have to struggle to love, to receive love, to feel deserving of love every single day of my life. 

In her defense, my mother probably never really learned how to love from her parents.  In fact, she probably learned that love is strict, mean, violent, oppressive, and very conditional from her parents.  That’s not to say that her parents, my grandparents, didn’t love her or were abusive to her, I’m saying that loving, how to love, isn’t something that’s taught in Black families.  My grandparents loved their children but didn’t know how to show it with affection, hugs, reading to them, spending quality time with them, or even saying, “I love you.”  To my grandparents, descendents of slaves born during the depression, raised under the oppression of Jim Crow, and who became parents on the eve of the civil rights movement, loving your children meant putting a roof over their head, clothes on their backs, food in their stomachs and enforcing enough discipline to keep them from being identified as “a nigger.”  Their parenting skills, while probably exceptional when being measured in terms of their providing stability for their children, left much to be desired.  They raised three completely dysfunctional children. 

I have one uncle who is an alcoholic, wife abuser, and the most “niggerish” of the bunch.  All that discipline and structure created a rebellious, stagnated soul who buries his pain in a bottle, makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like the poster boy for marital family values, and who has raised his own two sons to try to single-handedly attempt to repopulate the planet.  Every year, if there isn’t a new grandbaby by a different baby mama, there’s an adult, coming out of the woodworks, identifying themselves as a long, lost offspring who wasn’t acknowledged or raised by his very fertile sons.  He sees nothing wrong with his sons’ behavior and loves them unconditionally  which usually takes the form of him praising them, even when they do something wrong. 

My other uncle stopped maturing at about the age of 10 years old.  While there is absolutely nothing about him that could be considered niggerish, he throws hissy fits and tantrums when he doesn’t get his way.  His entire life is based on superficial perceptions.  Whenever he walks in a room, he has to have the most beautiful (light-skinned) woman on his arm, be the best dressed, and the most charming.  His conversations, however, are limited to celebrities, music, and the most publicized politics of the day.  If there is a task to be done, responsibility to be taken, or manual labor to be performed, he can only, will only do it if there is someone there to see him do it.  Otherwise it will NOT get done, EVER, no matter how pressing, urgent, or important that task is.  He is the epitome of narcissism.

My mother SEEMS the most balanced of the three but in many ways she is the most unbalanced.  Her great dysfunction is in her need to control, dictate, manipulate, and lie.  She got pregnant with me in her senior year of college which brought shame to her very prominent family.  The shame was actually all in her head, constructed from her own internal dialogue, not an indisputable fact.  The fact that my grandfather more than likely didn’t say anything to her made her construct a reality in her head where he hated her for her “mistake”.  Combine that with the fact that my biological father (look up the definition of absentee father in the dictionary and you will see his picture) dumped her and married another woman before I was even born, coupled with the fact that she and I have different RH factors which made her sick for her entire pregnancy, means she resented my very existence before I was even a person.  My mother never loved me.  She never bonded with me like most mothers do; she never thought I was a special and unique gift, she never felt the genuine love a mother feels for her child.  She felt burdened and shamed by being forced to be my mother.  She took out her frustration and hatred on me, and still does to this very day.    

I remember my mother would go for WEEKS without speaking to me.  Some people think that’s rather benign, not so bad in the scheme of life, no big deal.  It is, however, emotional abuse of the most extreme sort and sets a child up for a life of isolation and feelings of being disconnected.  It was always in response to some minor infraction, some insignificant slight she perceived I had done wrong to her.  Not hanging my coat up after school, setting the table without napkins, or GOD FORBID, not performing some chore to her impossible standards of perfection, all resulted in violent, abusive physical outburst followed by weeks of emotional withdrawal.  Any way I deviated from what she wanted, from how she expected me to behave was interpreted as me disrespecting her, resulted in her withdrawing her “love” from me as a form of punishment.  Love, for her, was providing me with educational and cultural opportunities and had nothing whatsoever to do with her feelings for me. 

My mother didn’t know how to love me, even if she had actually loved me.  Her concept of love is based on people doing exactly what she deems appropriate.  Unfortunately, her perceptions of what she considers reality are based on elaborate lies she constructs and then believes them to be the truth and her fear of going to hell for the hurt and dirt she has done to far too many wives and people she no longer considers friends.  She alienates and ignores anyone from her past who knows the truth and she sets out to hurt, destroy, and demonize anyone who threatens to expose her for who and what she is.  She has an irrational need to be right (as do most people) and she justifies her actions without an ounce of guilt, remorse, or regret, no matter how heinous, manipulative, or just plain wrong she is.  She feels justified in treating me like I’m evil, like I’ve done something wrong to her, because I’m not rich and successful.  She NEVER apologies because in her mind, she’s never wrong. 

It is that mentality that can allow her to believe that she is perfectly justified in telling me that I wasn’t raped, because, as she said, “You didn’t act like you had been raped to ME.”  When I needed her support the most, when I needed a mother’s unconditional love at my lowest point, she not only withheld it, she falsely accused me of lying to cover up my alleged promiscuity.  You see, my mother refused to accept that I had gotten pregnant from being violated from a man who took what I would not give him.  No, my mother assumed that my pregnancy was because I was fast and loose and that I refused to accept responsibility for my actions like she had so nobly done.  She has defended her actions, justified her behavior and continued to deny that I was raped over the subsequent decade and a half that has passed since that day because she refuses to acknowledge that my pregnancy wasn’t like hers. 

I could write a list of egregious and offensive things my mother has done to me over my lifetime for which she has never and will never apologize.  Some people reading this will inevitably offer their apologies to me, uncomfortable with my level of honesty and needing to say something to me to show that they empathize with my pain.  Some others will find my openness about mother offensive, suggesting that I’m too sensitive, ungrateful, or just plain fucked up and trying to blame my mother for things that are my fault.  It is most often those people who will flat out tell me that I am undeserving of love because they are similarly hurt, struggling with their own feelings of inadequacy, and they will strike out at me for daring to be unashamed of my emotional wounds. Others still will offer advice, tell me what I need to do in order to heal, tell me to pray and forgive my mother in order to release my pain.  The vast majority of people who will offer advice, critique, or words of solace have never thought to examine their lives as I have done, never thought to explore their issues, and are most certainly not brave enough to share their pain with the world. 

My healing comes through loving.  Well, writing and loving.  For almost two decades, I wasn’t in a relationship.  Certainly, nothing that resembles anything healthy and nothing that would facilitate my healing.  I have learned that through loving, and allowing myself to be loved, that I experience my true, divine purpose.  It’s a process, and not one that is particularly easy at that.  Sometimes, I don’t feel worthy of love, other times, I find myself withholding my love from people because they don’t love me the way I want them to love me.  More often than not, I have given my love to people who don’t deserve it or who make me feel inadequate. 

There will never be a day when I don’t have to struggle with the gift of love.  It is a burden I will carry with me until the day I die.  I can never be completely healed of something that is so deeply embedded in my psyche, in my subconscious mind, that is can’t be accessed.  The best I can hope for is that I continue not to be afraid of telling my truth so that I can face my demons head on and that I continue to recognize when I am playing the broken tapes in my head that tell me that I’m not deserving of being loved.  I’m quite assured that it will get easier for the more I love, the more I want to experience giving and getting true, unconditional, L.O.V.E.

Scottie Lowe Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved

Untreated Wounds

Haunted Past and Untreated Wounds

There’s a man. He has a terrible secret. His shame and pain haunt him. His secret eats at his very soul; it has shaped his consciousness and the way he views life and he’s formed his identity around his unhealed wounds. When he was a young man, someone stole his innocence. He was sexually violated. He has hidden his secret and he’s denied it. He’s tried to suppress his memories and he’s even convinced himself after all these years that it didn’t happen. He says to himself, “I should have fought harder, it couldn’t have happened. In fact, it didn’t happen at all.” However, the pain is still deep inside. The thoughts plague him and everyone one of his relationships has been affected. He lashes out, he tries to hurt people, he keeps himself closed off, he lies. He refuses to address his past and he can’t figure out why his life isn’t happy, why he can’t seem to cope like other people can.

There’s a woman. She suffered so much abuse, so much daily terror, she internalized it as natural. Her sexuality is wrapped up in feeling like an object, in feeling used and abused. She’s never known her body to be hers, since she was a toddler. She’s never experienced autonomy nor pleasure unless it was at the hands of others molesting her body and raping her of her dignity and self-respect. She is so numb inside she doesn’t even know what pain feels like. Pain and abuse have become her pleasure. She can’t even perceive of a healthy relationship and is drawn to relationships that reflect her painful life as validation that everyone is meant to hurt her. She has no reason to deny her past, however, because it’s all she knows, it’s all she can conceive of so she has no point of reference for anything else. She gets outraged and lashes out at individuals who try to suggest to her that she needs to deal with the pain and the abuse. To her, everyone else is fucked up for not seeing things through her lens of hate, pain, and abuse.

She’s different that the other woman that was sexually assaulted as a child. This young lady only had it happen once or twice. She doesn’t think about it, she only has vague memories that come once in a while. She tells herself it was no big deal because it wasn’t like it was a stranger, it was someone she knew, maybe even someone she was attracted to. Every man that she’s had to fight off, that wouldn’t take no for an answer she justified it by saying it was her fault for sending out the wrong signals. Her relationships with men have been cyclical; she tries to form healthy relationships but she ends up with men that only want her for sex or who don’t take the time to really get to know her as a person. Her identity is wrapped up in being attractive to men; she needs to feel beautiful to feel whole. Tired of having men use her for sex, she decides that she’s going to beat them at their own game. She decides that she’s going to be the sexual aggressor, that she’s going to get hers and fuck anybody else, literally and figuratively, that stands in between her and her pleasure. She tries desperately to use men, but only ends up used again because her feelings get in the way.

Is there any wonder we can’t heal our relationships? We have been violated, abused, used, raped, and we never discuss it. We don’t heal from the sexual devastation that has shaped our personalities. We can’t heal unless we talk about it, and sometimes, that’s not even enough. Our subconscious mind, the mind that exists beyond our waking thoughts, is so used to the pain, that it’s made adjustments in our personalities where the pain becomes normal. The deep, oozing, weeping, puss-filled emotional sores from our sexual past haunt us and the cycle can’t end. The violated are going on to violate, the abused are become abusers, of themselves and the people in their spheres. What, short of a miracle, will heal these haunted pasts and untreated wounds?

What is Healthy Black Sexuality?

For all too long Black sexuality has been defined by extremes. We have been defined as hypersexual, untamed savages who are ruled by our lust and far too many of us have embraced that misrepresentation without the presence of a healthier alterative example to model. Others of us have adopted a role of sexual conservatism in order to conform to a standard that tells us that the only sex that isn’t dirty . . . is boring. Somewhere between the freak and the frigid lies AfroerotiK sexuality.

Where do intelligent, middle class Black people turn to find sexual expression? What outlets do we have to be aroused without offensive, degrading, vulgar pornographic images? My work is providing such an outlet yet I'm continually and repeatedly told that my work is offensive. What's offensive is a nation of Black people who can't form healthy relationships because they don't know how to be open and honest with their partners about their needs, desires, and fantasies. What's offensive is that as an educated successful Black woman, I'm told that I'm a freak if I even make reference to sex, however academic the discussion. If my work glorified sex in exchange for money, cheating, or manipulation, that would be a perversion of sex. My work glorifies couples being intimate, communicating, sharing their secrets with one another and validating that adults, and young adults should be having sex based on LOVE first and foremost.

The African American community is diseased in our perceptions of sexuality. The middle class can't even have a conversation about sex; we can't even have a discussion about the subject of sex before someone is trying to censor it. The rest of us are out having unprotected, irresponsible sex like it's recreation. There's a vast difference between saying, "I'm a big booty ho looking to swallow seven loads of cum," and "I long to feel the sensation of your tongue licking me until I explode in your mouth." Until we as a people can discern the difference, until we as a people can stop relegating anything to do with sex as being dirty and unmentionable, we are doomed to be dysfunctional and sexually immature. We should be able to have discussions about sex in all forums, with relative boundaries in mind, and not be so quick to feign false indignation as if sex is dirty and unmentionable.

African-Centered Sexuality

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