Nobody Invites In A Storm

I couldn’t figure out where to begin, how to start to tell the stories that were swirling inside of me because more palpable than any thing was grief. When I closed my eyes and surrendered the dam to hold back the tears, I could hear my uncle’s voice. I could hear him telling me he loved me and he missed me and asking me to come see him.

I couldn’t see the words I was supposed to write but for the grief soaked tears that blurred the ink before it could dry. The sadness of loss colored everything a misty grey, and even though everything was there, none of it made any sense.

In the past year I have helped to plan three family funerals. First my younger cousin Bryant, second my Uncle Patrick and lastly, my cousin Anthony. Words had been my gift and so, to honor their lives I offered what I could in terms of solace and peace specifically with words. I wrote for them. I wrote to them. I said what I felt many of us wanted to say and I offered my gift to grief.

I haven’t written since last May. I hadn’t made the correlation until right now that perhaps, I could not face the words because they would remind me of our last encounter. Obituaries. Mourning. Loss.

I talk to my dad and my uncle most of all. They have assured me my cousins are at peace and everyone watches over our family. My uncle is, as he always was, my constant. I can’t really explain our relationship, he just got me and I got him. He had a way of talking to me and bringing be back to center, back to me.

Recently I was in the shower, sobbing. Deeply heartbroken over what I considered, at the time, to be a career setback. I was rejected from another job with confusing feedback about my greatness but not for this role. I had heard the same or similar feedback after third interviews, after second interviews, after interviews where I talked to the HM about the role beforehand, after interviews where I was asked to apply…it seemed no matter the circumstance, I simply was not meant to be employed. At least, not yet and not by these people.

I heard my uncle say to me, “Nobody invites in a storm,” and I said “WHAT?!” I heard the smile in his voice. Could smell the burning of this ash from the tip of his cigarette. Nobody invites in a storm. Was I a storm? I scrubbed at my skin and ran my hands across the word “Divergent” tattooed across my left ribcage. I laughed, full of spite and anger. I was a god damn storm.

I read an interview of Quinta Brunson and the interviewer was asking her about why she sought fame and to be in the entertainment world. She said it was because she’d gone through a break up and she wanted that mfka to see her everywhere he looked. She wanted to be inescapable. She was a storm.

I think about that story often and I relate to it. I take it to heart when people miss the boat on me. I see what is special in me, so clearly, so when people “pass'“ on me, it rarely makes me question myself it more infuriates me because I KNOW what I have to offer and why have all these gifts if I can’t give?

That is when I remember my greatest gift…this one. The one I had been avoiding. The one that was too difficult to reconcile. The one I have cried through embracing. Writing my truth and sharing my story has left me puffy and dehydrated but full all at the same time. What is a storm if not a mix of paradox? a swirl of warm and cool, the intersection of push and pull, the crux of possibility and chaos…A storm forces action and it forces truth. A storm wipes away pretense and revels the bones—the foundation be revealed.

Is it enough? I feel the nerves set in. The doubt. Should I forget it? How do I end it? The nerves creep in and threaten to redefine me. The wind is a storm in the right circumstance. So is a wave. but these things can also be found in places of peace. I may be a storm, but I can also be a rainbow I can also be the blow of the breeze across a cheek or a storm hiding in a falling tear.

I welcome the storms within myself. However they may come. I want to remember that I can always find a way through them with words. And because with my eyes open, I now had context. My dad? My Uncle? My Cousins? Those were losses. These jobs were redirections. If it took missing out on every job I applied to, to get back to myself then it was well-worth the journey. Because this is the person I am fighting for; this is the person for whom I would weather every storm. With every decision to love myself gracefully, softly, compassionately, and without condition I fall further into alignment with the woman of my dreams.