When Did I Stop Dancing...

"The spirit in which you do something is often as important as the act itself."


When did the music stop and why am I standing alone on the dance floor? At what point did my world lose its texture and hue and become black and white? One thought leads to another, which feeds into another, in an endless debilitating cycle that sucks any energy, leaving one to feel like a hollow shell drifting in limbo. Life was irreversibly damaged.

Mental pain under the surface stirs those thoughts. It keeps the leash just snug enough on those thoughts so they don’t escape telling the world your dirty little secret and leave you vulnerable or unstable. Some of the painful thoughts that keeps going round and round in my head…

§ There is nothing I can do
§ I am falling apart at the seams
§ I am worthless
§ I have lost some thing I’ll never find again
§ I am not my old self anymore
§ I am an embarrassment to my family
§ I am a failure
§ I am defeated
§ I am damaged
§ The pain will never go away
§ I have no future
§ Repeat all of the above

Triggers come in many forms and too numerous to mention. The answer lies in how we remember events from the past. For instance, when I was in kindergarten, my teacher put me in the supply closet for talking too much in class. She turned the light off, and what was probably about ten minutes seemed like eternity to a five-year old. Her perfume is a trigger for me, a distinctive and very strong fragrance. On a few rare occasions, I caught a whiff of that same scent, usually on an older woman, and mentally it put me back crying in that small dark closet. I’m sure you may have similar experiences where a scent, taste, or touch immediately transposed your mind’s eye back to an experience you had in your past.

I’ve been asked, “…But it’s been so long ago, why can’t you let it go?” Well, I thought I had a grip on depression for a long time by working long hours and raising a family. Then one day a fleeting moment sneaks in and floats past your nose, and the stench of that memory almost brings you to your knees. Every day after, you take a hot bath, put your makeup on, you comb your hair and try to shake it off, but it’s still there clinging like the addict’s monkey sinking its teeth into your fleshy parts. Those teeth are called triggers and one day I was defeated. There were several events molded together which led up to where I now stand, expanding a thriving business, a wedding, two floods, selling a house, buying a house, a phenomenal business that was failing because of the economy, and lastly, being ostracized from my family for some lame reasons. It was a downhill spiral and all the feelings I listed previously weighted me down with failure being at the top of the list.

Everyone has at least one fear that haunts him or her. Maybe it’s losing your sight, your hearing, your teeth, your hair, a limb, growing old or dying. My fear was being committed which I think derives from some early childhood experiences. My mom volunteered many hours at the women wards of two different mental hospitals in the Detroit area, one I don’t remember much about except that a favorite aunt seemed to take residence there often and I couldn’t visit her. The other, my mom occasionally brought me along with my dolly. I was content and didn’t mind until one day, a lady came down the stairs and walked towards me holding a baby. She wore a blue poodle skirt, white shirt, bobby socks and brown and white oxfords. She wore a smooth pageboy and dark rimmed glasses. She sang softly and stopped to smile at me. Her baby was swaddled in a pink blanket tightly in her arms, sleeping. I held my baby doll close to me as she neared. When she sat down, I saw her baby was a doll too. I became frightened when she stroked my hair and I saw her baby had a hole in its head. A couple nurses escorted her back up the stairs and she tried to resist the firm hold they had on her arms. I’ve thought about that incident many times, the woman, a child, a breakdown and I think I understand.

You see, I was raised in a time when mental issues were only whispered about, shhh…hush, hushed away. We were a proud family, my parents were pillars of our church and community, but we were not a close family due to the age differences between siblings. You knew not to do things to humiliate your family and to uphold the integrity of your family name. You loved God, your country and lived by the Golden Rule. No one openly discussed individual troubles, and some secrets remained secret until now. I am a strong, proud woman and I will find the help I need to liberate the woman in the mirror without embarrassment or persecution from others who are not willing to understand the lifelong effects how rape and depression can fuck up your life…