This year, I’ve literally been fighting for my life on every front.
Over the years, I sacrificed my happiness for the happiness of others. I sacrificed my beauty for the comfort of stability. I sacrificed my mental health for the appeasement of others. After all that sacrificing, I found myself depleted and depressed this summer.
As someone who has suffered from depression before, I never thought I’d see myself in that position again because I knew how much it would take to pull myself out of that place if I ever got there again. But for me, depression surfaced when I was at my weakest and emotionally exhausted enough to feel like giving in.
My depression became particularly heavy toward the end of June.
After being laid off in February, I did everything I could to maintain my home without a secondary source of income. I quickly learned that losing that job had ricocheted me into instability, regardless of how much I had prepared.
And in the midst of losing so much this summer, I also had to learn that being a good person to other people doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be there when you need them.
For the last five years of my life, I sat on top of money that could have saved me this year. Instead, my heart wanted to take care of people. I wanted to be present, supportive, and dependable in the lives of people I loved—even when that meant depleting myself.
I took and paid for the flights required to make sure my daughter maintained relationships with people who, quite honestly, should have been coming to visit her. I spent my last making sure everyone else was comfortable.
But when I lost my secondary job, I was awakened to the reality that very few people were ever going to be present and active in my life in the way that I had been in theirs.
And now that I’m on the other side of that depression, I’m realizing just how much of my life has been a combination of me pouring into others with very little being poured back into me.
So as I enter this stage of my life where I’m not only having to rebuild what I built alone that was taken from me, I’m also having to rebuild myself.
Once upon a time, I was a woman who wouldn’t leave the house without my hair and nails done. I held myself to a certain standard. I wanted to be a good person on the inside while also being put together, beautiful, and glowing on the outside.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped giving that same woman the attention I gave everyone else.
This year showed me that you cannot continually take from yourself to make other people happy and expect to remain happy, joyful, and whole.
I also spent this year watching people who know my character bend the reality of what I was dealing with to fit their own perceptions. I watched people who had called me for help in their own times of need attempt to talk down to me when I became the one in need.
I sat back and stayed quiet while people ran with narratives they had created in their own heads—narratives that never really bothered me to begin with, but eventually had to be addressed because of how big they became.
And honestly, I think I needed to see all of it.
Because this year was the wake-up call I needed.
You will never be happy as long as you are living for the happiness of other people. People will never be satisfied with everything you do to maintain an image that makes them comfortable. There will always be something else to criticize, compare, or use to keep you in the position they are accustomed to seeing you occupy.
I’m not interested in living like that anymore.
So as I enter my 33rd birthday season, I’m calling this my Redemption Season.
Not because everything magically worked out.
Not because I didn’t lose anything.
Not because this year was easy.
But because despite facing potential eviction, potential repossession, isolation, depression, and all of the other things that contributed to the weight I carried this year, I made it to the other side.
It was me, and my matriarchs, who ultimately helped pull me through.
And this time, when I rebuild my life, I’m building it according to the vision I have for myself rather than the vision other people think is most fitting for me.
I have no desire to spend the rest of my life searching for some perfect husband who will somehow make my life complete. I have no desire to have any more children. My religious beliefs are no one else’s business but my own.
When I set boundaries, I expect them to be respected.
I’m no longer the Ebony who gives her last to make sure everyone else is safe.
I’m no longer the Ebony who sits quietly while people create narratives about who I am.
I’m no longer the Ebony who believes that doing what older people tell me is the path to happiness simply because they are older.
I’m no longer the Ebony who jumps up to make sure everyone else is happy the moment they tell me what they need.
I’m finally entering the stage of my life where my needs, my beliefs, my desires, and my vision for my life actually matter to me.
And nobody gets to change that.
For 32 years, I lived a life where almost everyone I loved came before me and my needs.
I’m sorry to anyone that disappoints.
But sitting in my house in isolation this year woke me up to something I don’t think I could have understood any other way:
At the end of my life, when I look back at everything I accomplished, it won’t matter whether I followed the path other people thought was right for me.
It won’t matter whether I made everyone comfortable.
It won’t matter whether I was the good daughter, the good mother, the good friend, the good partner, or the good woman everyone expected me to be.
Because eventually, it will just be me sitting there with the life I lived.
And I refuse to reach the end of it wondering if I ever actually lived it for myself.
So this is me choosing myself.
Not because I stopped loving other people.
But because I finally understand that I am one of the people I’m responsible for loving, too.
33. Redemption Season.
And this time, I’m romanticizing my own life.
Queendom Entertainment 