How I Became Completely Emotionally Broken

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog titled, “Social Media Saturday,” where I gave readers tips on how to make their brand cool, hip, and colorful. After some time, I felt that although my blog had served its purpose, it was time for me to move on. I decided to “rebrand” and create ablog that would be more original and authentic – one that would reflect my personal experiences and feel genuine to anyone who reads it. I spent a great amount of time brainstorming, praying,fasting, and meditating on the direction of my blog. I finally decided to connect to readers by allowing myself to be as sincere and transparent as possible and share my life stories, lessons, and experiences.

(Note: This is the continuation of a blog series about my personal journey through anxiety and depression, and faith. To read the earlier posts, http://urbansocialitesnj.com/2019/04/6361/)

How I Became Completely Emotionally Broken

When the weather got warmer, my mom and grandmother would always tell me to put sunblock because it would make my skin darker. By the age of 10 my self-esteem was almost non-existent as I thought I was the blackest person in the world. As a child during the spring, summer, and early fall I would always make sure that I wore sunblock because extremely dark skin was viewed as a bad thing.  

At the time, I was taking gymnastic classes at YMCA which helped me with my depressive thoughts and feelings. Since I had accepted the Lord at the age of 7, I had a journal where I would write down my feelings and thoughts, something that I have done for the rest my life since then. I would write in my diary about having thoughts of wanting to kill myself. Not to mention I was still being teased by classmates and peers because bullying did not exist mid 80’s. I didn’t love or like anything about myself. I was extremely depressed and I actually thought about taking one of my jump ropes to tied it around the ceiling fan in my room so I could kill myself. I actually attempted to kill myself but I found out very quickly I wasn’t tall enough to complete my plan. Even though I had accepted the Lord, I didn’t know anything about killing myself and going to hell. All I knew that I was going through hell at school and home. I tried to talk to my parents about my feeling of depression. My mom’s response would be, you are making yourself depressed and my dad would say, you have nothing to be depressed about. My feelings would either be ignored or dismissed, even though I had family around always felt alone and the black sheep of my family. When I think back to those days, the only thing that made feel safe was writing in journal and praying to God.

Upon 5^th grade, I was looking forward to my last year at Prince Elementary School. I couldn’t wait to go to middle school, hoping, wishing, and praying that it would be a better experience than this. However, I was sitting down at my desk and I began to talk to a boy whose name I can’t remember.  I can’t remember the exact conversation, but he was picking on me and I told him several times to leave me alone. He did a teenage mutant ninja kick to my head (some kind of karate kick). He kicked me in my head so hard that I had a slight concussion and almost knocked me unconscious. I was rushed from school to the hospital. Eventually, all parties involved when to court because of this incident. My father being the man that he was, he really felt bad for my classmate because he found out that his mother was a single parent and his father was incarcerated. As my father was a black man, he didn’t want see anything  negative happen to this young man. I don’t believe that my parents pressed charge against the young man. I had a huge black scar on my nose that took several months to go away.

On a more positive note, I had practically begged my parents, especially my mom, to enroll me in dance classes. I have an older cousin who is only two years older than me who had already been taking dance classes for two years and gone on a dance recital the year. She used to spend night over our house and go on vacations with us. My cousin was more like a big sister who really look up to however all that was about to change…

My aunt worked at Temple University full-time and volunteered her time at the dance school where my cousin took classes and it was in the same neighborhood as my school. Finally, my mom enrolled me into dance school. However, I didn’t know that my cousin had cousins from her father’s side of the family who attended the same dance school. This is when my self-esteem fell apart. One of those cousins attended the same school as me, but I didn’t want her to know that I was in Special Education. Everyone knew that you were in Special Education, even the student. One day she saw me with my class and found out that I was in Special Ed. The following Saturday, she told everyone in my dance class that I was in Special Education and then I got teased even more. In addition, my cousin is much lighter than me and we don’t have any have common features.  So eventually the students start to question if I was actually related to my cousin. I would explain to them my mom and aunt had different fathers, but that didn’t help. My cousin’s cousins and their friends would tease me about my dark complexion, acne on my face, muscular shaped body, and of course me being “slow and dumb” because I was in Special Education. This emotional torment went on for three years, before this matter was complete resolved. However, the damage had already been done and I felt completely broken.

About SATUR-Your-Day

SATUR-Your-Day is an interactive blog where I invite readers to engage and go in depth with me as I become transparent about personal and professional obstacles that have had both negative and positive impacts on my life. I want you to learn that we are all going through trial and tribulations in life and no one is exempt from these life hurdles. Ad long as you have breath in your body, you are going to go through “the storem” of life. I sincerely hope that you will find lessons from SATUR-Your-Day Blog, and discover that we can all learn and grow from each other’s experiences, which ultimately makes us better people for our families, friends, colleagues, community, and the world. I feel your pain and know that you need time for you to just be you and that is the purpose for SATUR-Your-DAY.