A debt has been incurred. And they've come to collect.
Vanessa Cruz is a young black woman, simply trying to survive in a world set up to conspire against her prosperity. Grinding Monday to Friday, and working Friday to Sunday left her no room to h...
Moodlist Forgive Me - ChloexHalle DON'T HURT YOURSELF- Beyoncé Needed Me - Rihanna Plan B - Megan Thee Stallion Hood Bitch - Ms Banks
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Beyoncé's Lemonade was a masterpiece. A true labour of love, sent in a ribbon that only black girls would open all the way. I cried, profusely, when I first watched the film with Malia. I had heard the music before in passing, but there was something monumental about falling feet first into the universe she created.
I felt like I was her, when she jumped off that building, leap of faith style. Her hands were open, reaching out for God and their guidance. And for her blind faith she was rewarded. As opposed to coming to a pulpy end on the pavement of a busy city, she fell into a body of water and began a rebirth. Coming back into a new phase of life, as an infinitely stronger woman, because the old version died from the impact of the new information she received.
I didn't know it, but she was granting me a glimpse into my immediate future, playing out my fate, frame by frame.
All I could see on the first watch, was my story so far, embedded within the arc of the one she was building. There was layer after layer and it took me almost 20 watches to try and catch them all. The part that stuck out to me immediately though, was the interpolation of Warsaw Shire's How To Wear Your Mother's Lipstick.
The British-Somali woman's words were read to us by the weary voice of Houston's own. It told a story of a girl trying her best to look like her mom. Not knowing that in doing so she world inherit the bad part as well as the beauty.
My relationship with my mom was complicated. Angelo was the only one who truly knew the extent of my turmoil. I understood logically, the sequence of events that led her to become the woman she was today. I understood the emotional manipulation and later violence that was at play.
But on an emotional level, I was hurt. Not only because that couldn't protect me the way she swore to when she laid in bed with my newborn form, whispering little secrets to me that I knew now, but couldn't remember. I was hurt that the flame of a young woman had been snuffed out to the glowing of a candle wick, waiting for a bit of oxygen to reignite.
I swore I wouldn't be like her. I had vision, resilience, and bravery after all. I made a way.
It was easy because I didn't look like her. Although I once desired nothing more than to be her splitting image, when I grew old enough to understand, I stopped trying to form myself in her image, decidedly striving to become my own person. And it almost worked; until I met Angelo.
See the thing is, as hard to believe was it is now, my mom once had all of those things. A girl trying to get the best spot on the hill to get a piece of the view. She had come to the US by herself after all. Not something for the faint of heart. She was good, even great, until she fell into the hands of a man that made her think that being with him was the best her life would get.
