#write2014: For Black immigrant girls who said 2014 was their year...
For Black immigrant girls who said 2014 was their year, when having resolutions wasn't enough.
Like at least 500 million other people, I told myself "2014 is MY year!" And I meant it. Right before 2013 ended I got my visa and work permit so it looked like ALL MY PROBLEMS WERE SOLVED,FINALLY,JESUS. Exuberant I gathered my work permit, my visa and driver's license manual and set about the task of getting my life together.
FINALLY, JESUS. I was going to be a real, American adult.
And then my life exploded in my face. I've been trying to gather back up the pieces but first I had to learn to sleep without bolting awake in fear. Once I stopped being afraid, more bad news.
I decided something had to be done. 2014 was MY year. I said it, I wrote it down on paper, gotdamn it. I just needed to make a list. Lists fix everything. There are lists that help you manage how to grieve. I needed a list and an action plan.
This is how adults handle things. And in 2014, MY year, I was going to finally be an adult.
My action plan lead me to the Cold Shower Challenge. On it's face it's really stupid simple: take a very cold shower every morning. But the cold shower is to prepare you to do the uncomfortable things you'd need to do. Seeing as waking up was becoming an uncomfortable thing to do, I thought this would somehow make everything else seem easier.
The morning I climbed in the shower, I'd received more bad news. Before the cold water hit me, I was already crying. I felt nothing. Desperate to make the challenge work, I made the water even colder. I couldn't make it cold enough to hurt more than the words rolling around in my head. I washed my body feeling nothing, not even realizing I was learning something.
Getting out the shower I knew I was cold. I didn't so much feel the towel on my skin as remember there should be a sensation. I lotion-ed myself, knowing the lotion should feel wet, knowing my skin should be cold to the touch but unable to process those feelings and what was going on within me.
The next day when I tried to stay under the freezing water for the same length of time, I simply couldn't. Present in my body, I could feel my fingers swell with frozen blood. I know it happened. Or started to happen...or something really close. I stumbled out of the shower, cursing my entire life.
At this point I'm being serious, I actually learned something from the challenge. A part of it was to see how you react to and face discomfort.
Originally, I thought I failed because I couldn't physically feel anything but that day was about how I reacted to my emotional discomfort.
I'm uncomfortable feeling anything unpleasant. Either I make jokes about it or I start to "fix" it. It took something real to make me realize I can't do that. I can't plug along like I'm not devastated and expect at some point for my heart to catch up.
There are things I'm going to miss because of how much I hurt but there's nothing I can do for that. I can't fast forward to the healing process, I can't run away from the pain. I have to feel this, let the discomfort and the tears and the anger and the breakdowns happen, While I'm still processing the pain, there will be no way for me to actually fully experience anything that's happening outside of me. And I have to be ok with that. Otherwise this will be another thing, I never got over, just another thing I put away and pretended was resolved.
I realized in that shower, how powerful my state of mind is. How powerful everything going on inside me is. The cold will not touch me, the good will not find me until I work through this. Until I build myself again. It's devastating and empowering to realize this.
I hate every moment of facing this pain. The blood-freezing, lung-squeezing, heart-stopping cold showers are easier. But this is the year I promised myself I'd start acting like an adult.
2014 is MY year...or something.