I’m exhausted but not that lack of 8 hrs of sleep exhausted.
I’m exhausted from putting peoples needs first.
I’m exhausted from checking in with people that don’t check in with me.
I’m exhausted from putting in the work and everyone else just goes on with life.
I’m exhausted from feeling their emotions and suppressing my own.
I’m exhausted and it’s not from the lack of sleep exhausted.
I want to feel alive.
I want to feel refreshed.
I want to feel my own emotions.
Care for my own needs.
I want to escape the burnt stage of life and capture the awareness of the day.
I’m exhausted from being exhausted!
When will I breathe again?
That is the question!

Let’s go back to those nights of walking the neighborhood.
Of riding our bikes thru that same neighborhood bypassing the “scary” street.
Let’s go back to sitting in front of the TV playing video games til the sun comes up.
Go back to the days of driving around feeling like grown adults.
Let’s go back to those day trips that consist of music blaring thru the speakers. Our voices singing as loud as they can.
Go back to the nights of just us girls & the open road which led us to the unknown.
Let’s go back to those nights in our 20s of just dancing the night away with no cares in the world.
With the only thought of “will it be mimis or dennys” after the night is done.
Let’s go back to girls night in.
Banging drums. Tapping the microphone. & strumming the guitar.
Can we go back and just live for the moment?
For the simplicity.
For the joy.
Can we go back & just enjoy being present?
No rush for the next task.
No responsibilities that will consume our time.
Can we go back & just be?
Let’s go back & see.
Just us three.

Do you not see how strong you are?
How worthy you are?
How loved you are?

All those sleepless nights prepared you for the best sleeps of your life.
Those uncomfortable mirror talks set you up for those beautiful reflection affirmations.
Those in and out acquaintances part of your life were just props to what led you to today.

The most strongest, worthiest, and lovable woman the Universe could have!

September 2019, I was walking to the bus stop to go to work at the church as the administrative assistant. The day was rough. My body was hurting and I didn’t understand or know why, yet refusing to take the opiates the doctors offered me to mask the pain. Walking with my heavy backpack, my spirit was low and my head was down as I braved the even heavier traffic of Lafayette Road. Walking with my head down, something that growing up in my family and in my neighborhood, was taught not to ever do.
“You don’t ever walk with your head down. It’s a sign of weakness, insecurity or pain. Always walk with your head held high, no matter what or who, you don’t look down unless you are picking up something.” I heard my grandmother’s words with every step I took, chuckling a bit to myself about how crazy I often drove her.
I’d joke and say “But Gaga, I’ve found some good stuff with my head down. Remember that $100 bill I found on our way from the ticket house? I found my favorite stone, a lottery ticket and that sack of weed…”
“Hush!” she’d scream and I’d giggled but straighten my face sure enough out of respect and the fact that I knew that my grandmother was, as always, “speaking the truth.”
Yet that day in September 2019 with Chronic pain, depression, grief and mourning so much loss – my head was down. I was in the midst of several storms and my backpack probably weighed a ton. Midway in the middle of the street, as the cars raced by on every side, on the ground lay a butterfly on its side. Its wings flapped weakly, barely moving and as the cars passed by us both on every side, I walked past it and thought, “how sad, it’s going to die.”
I had got to the bus stop but couldn’t take my mind off that butterfly, so I walked back to the middle of the street, noticed it had stopped moving and picked up the butterfly by its wings. Here I was hurting, going through, in the middle of heavy traffic and afraid of bugs – picking up this butterfly by its wings to take it back to the bus stop, for what, I didn’t know. I placed it among some flowers and weeds, and as I waited on my bus to arrive, the butterfly’s wings began to flap as it moved up higher on the flowers and finally the light pole. As my bus came, I took a picture of the butterfly without understanding how significant that moment truly was or what the purpose of this simple encounter with another of Yah’s wounded creatures, on this particular day, was for. I can tell you that when I got on the bus that day, my spirit was much lighter and my head was held high.
I will never know what happened to the butterfly. It could have dropped dead the minute I was gone, fallen victim to a bird, went back into the streets to be run over or it could have flown to lands unknown. I can’t tell you what happened to that butterfly because that part of its journey was not my assignment. My assignment was a mere simple thing and gesture, to pick up that butterfly and put it in a better position.
In ancient culture the butterfly is a symbol or personification of the soul and rebirth. In fact the Greek word for “butterfly” means “soul” or “mind”
“The butterfly at the bus stop” became my testimony on how we should never be content on walking past something or someone who is afflicted, who needs help, and not do anything. This encounter reminds me that we are all Yah’s butterflies and at some point, we have all been that butterfly in the middle of some road or storm in our lives, where we were or felt weak and The Most High sent someone to pick us up by our wings and put us in a better position in life. Be it physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially or professionally.
So when we talk about mental health and spiritual health, we have to talk about how 50% of mental health illness is hereditary and 50% environmental. We can not control what we are as far as our heredity but we can control how we help ourselves or others who are afflicted. For those who are commissioned to serve by ministering to others also note that you can’t pick a butterfly up safely by the wings if you are too busy stepping on the body by being judgmental, self absorbed and/or holier than thou attitude. How can you both judge and labor with someone at the same time? Sometimes we call ourselves picking somebody up but because we are either too broken ourselves, ill equipped or too distracted that we end up causing further damage by pulling their wings off.
And if you are the butterfly at any point in your life, it’s ok to have faith and get help too. It’s ok to have therapy and theology, to allow yourself to be picked up and placed in a better position. Don’t let anyone tell you that therapy is a waste of time, especially when they don’t have the time, because it’s not. When we have been all traumatized by a violent American history, an impatient, unemphatic, unjust and harsh world that results in the lives of our children being taken, them taking each other lives and taking their own lives – it’s’ evident that it feels as if there are more butterflies in the middle of the road than they are up flying. Do we truly see each other? Do we not recognize that how we treat or don’t treat our fellow brothers and sisters has such a ‘butterfly effect’ in the world?
We need to seek to always be obedient, use our discernment and be bold in our assignments. That each of us are butterflies, a soul, that as long as we are living may be seen at any given time, in the middle of the road or in mid-flight on this journey called life. The next time you see someone in need of being picked up by their wings, may you not walk by content on that it’s not your assignment or so caught up in your own world that you fail to see the beauty and purpose in another. So as we continue to pick each other up, may we pick up our own wings by doing so and fly to destinations unknown but always felt.

~ copyright © 2019 TaMara E’Lan G.

Falling in love ought not be such a terrifying act
Is it as daunting for you as it is for me
I sit in wonder what my life would be
Minus all the heartbreak and perpetual agony
Would I be the type to trust “I love you”
Would I be the type to trust at all
If only I’d been shown
If only the words “I love you” came from those already grown

Look at you so filled with joy
With so many around you to annoy
Not a care in the world seeking new adventures
You’re lucky Mama’s not filled with lectures
Even though she yells “GO PLAY”
You always make the best of your day
I’m here to put it to you clear
You are loved and there’s nothing to fear

Eye see you
Do you see me?
Soul to soul
Yet oceans away.

Is it weird
To not only ask
For one more night—
But for you to stay?

They say love lasts for a lifetime,
But every minute apart
Feels like you’re eons away.

Eye see you.
Eye see the star you are.
I see the parts of your soul
You try to hide.

Could it be
That you are my soul tribe?
Or maybe my mate…
Either way it goes,
This union feels divinely great—
Almost as if it was fate.

Bashert.
Eye see you.
Soul to soul.
Fated love so true.
Eye see you.

Bashert, my love,
For you is destined to be.

⸻

My soul searches for you,
But eye cannot find
Where you are hiding…

Some days I am rain.
Other days, I am earth.
Some days I am air.
Other days, I am fire.

I scorch new paths to rebirth.
But will you still love me the same
On days when I can’t flow like water—
When I bring storms, lightning, and rain?

I might blow my fuse and explode,
Blowing like wind…

But the river of my love is ever flowing
Into oceans of understanding,
Deeper than the cosmos—
The great gift of knowing.

That you are my Baz, and eye you.
My soul sees your soul,
As the light of this
Divine union shines through.

Bashert, my love—Bashert.
For the Divine One
Designed me just for you.

The storm, the sun, the people
Gimme shelter

The wars, spiritual or physical
Gimme shelter

Higher Power, Universe, provide it wherever my spirit goes ….. If I seek it, it will show

Just like my glow

These are magical moments we can experience everyday

If we seek we shall find.

Are our bodies the amazing external shelter
Of the fascinating machinery
That makes the true existence of the psyche possible?
Without this body, this “me”
You cannot know or share any of my thoughts
And that would be the tragedy at hand, soon enough;
So thus,
As long as my mind is held in this body
I will love it and feed it
And take it on walks
And give it warm baths
And tuck it to bed cozy
And I hope you can do the same
In your own safe housing of your soul
So I can hear your sacred thoughts as well,
That only you can speak.

Here I thought you were “the one” with what was programmed from within.
Walking life without you seemed so numb at the time.
Breathing different air than you set for sleepless nights.
I’m so glad you were not “the one.”
My programs from within have switched from fantasy to reality.
Walking life without you has defrosted in the most warmest ways.
Breathing different air from you
has given me better nights of sleep.
The weighted blanket type of sleep.
Here I thought you and I would be the forever type.
Boy, was that such hype.
I’m so glad forever was not for this flight.
Here I thought I’d be together with you, the “love of my life.”
Not knowing that love would be with me years after the blue.

I sit with my internal child outside on the stairs, because I know she wants me to.
She giggles so softly.
Her dimples shine so brightly.
She tells me about her day on the playground swing.
We share a bowl of cheetos, the puffs kind.
We make pictures out of the clouds in the sky.
She sees a puppy. I see a pig.
We even forget about the thing of time.
We get lost in the freshness of Spring air.
Dreaming of what the fields of life has in store for us.
I sit with my inner child outside on the stairs because all she wants is individual love.

If we’re playing a game of “I believe,”
I’d like to believe there are past versions of me that get together for frozen yogurt.
They all talk about who I once was
And how I’ve hit all those curveballs of life out of the park.
They don’t “boo” the swings.
Yell rude comments.
Or bring up some of the strikes I’ve received.
They meet for frozen yogurt and cheer me on every single day.
During every single game of life played.

Where has my light gone
That used to twinkle in my eyes?
I feel like I don’t belong
In this body I call mine
I don’t know who I am anymore
Not even a single clue
Maybe I don’t know who I was before
It’s hard to know what’s true
Have I lost myself somehow?
Gone without a trace
Or was I never found
A vessel without a face

Outside my body
Looking in
It’s time to alert
My last of kin

I’m not myself
Think I’ve gone crazy
The last few days
Have been quite hazy

What am I thinking?
Have I gone nuts?
I’m acting insane
And I’m dressed like a slut

My middle finger
In the air
I’m drunk by noon
And i’ve cut my hair

Couldn’t give a fuck less
If I get in trouble
Speed limit’s 30,
I’m doing double

Blaring music
Hysterically screaming
Everything’s foggy
I must be dreaming
Met up with some new friends
Guess it’s high time to go ghost
On the people around me
That care about me the most

They’ll know exactly
What this all means
They’ll try and stop it
And I’ll cause a scene

My mom will exclaim
“Oh, fuck, she’s gone manic!”
And when you look at her face
You can see she’s started to panic

But what everyone here
Is failing to realize
Is that a manic episode
Is like winning the grand prize

I’m having a great time
I just quit my job
I’ve pounded a fifth
And i’m making kabobs

I don’t wanna come down
I don’t wanna stop it
Won’t take medication
So you might as well drop it

So I’m watching my alter
Destroy all that I’ve built
She won’t even slow down
Doesn’t understand guilt

Give it a week
And I’ll snap back to reality
But I’ll be so fucking depressed
That I’ll crave that mentality

No one can wake me
For almost a week
But when they finally do
I’m empty and bleak

I’d rather be mental
Blissfully crazy
Than low, sad, or sleepy,
Vacant and lazy

It’s no easy task
Living life with bi-polar
Cause when she gets on a good one
Even I can’t control her

Style Score: 80