Black Girl Lost

Black Girl Lost

I am a woman of the night

Not the street walking kind but another type

A black girl lost of sorts

Not a bad girl by definition but by force

Or choice

The tough exterior you see is just a shell

But what lies beneath tells the true tale.

Born in this skin with the caramel red tint

Many fooled themselves thinking I was born privileged

The things I had weren’t always what they seemed

Because a lot of my clothes were hand-me-down jeans

But the trick was that I never realized we were poor

Well actually low middle class who made less look like more

But even the labels I was draped in didn’t truly hide

The disastrous hurricane that was brewing inside.

My first was an adult and I was still a child

So my first exposure to men and sex was at the hands of a pedophile

All this before I even turned five.

See if that doesn’t fuck with your mind.

And even though he wasn’t related biologically

The damage would be evident indefinitely.

The person who was supposed to be guarding me with their life

Lay right beside me pretending to be asleep as I cried

And when I asked her why?

She answered, “Little girls must never tell lies.”

The lengths a woman goes to keep a man

But I had to forgive her cuz she was a great grand

On the bright side this is where I gave birth to my imagination

Allowing myself to be lost in a world of my own creation

The place where a kid could be a kid

And no one knew the things I hid

Still it became too much for one little girl to hold inside

I was all alone & I wished I would die

And yes that’s probably the first time I considered suicide

But as the years would soon tell this wouldn’t be the last time

Because the scars would deepen and become harder to hide

And the men in my life would cause me to commit emotional genocide.

Once the innocence is lost it’s gone forever

Trying to get it back is a useless endeavor

So, try as I might my sanity began ungluing

Wish as I may there was no edit undo-ing

Pieces of my soul left every time

Pieces till this day I’m still trying to find

From henceforth my view of men has never been the same

Cause they think with their dicks and rarely their brains

I expect them to hurt me, so like a snake I strike first

I haven’t decided if that’s a gift or a curse

I still sometimes cringe when I’m in the room with a man

Uncomfortable and awkward like being 5 all over again.

My mind sees sex as a synonym for love

A record I have yet to expunge

For years upon years I remained in reckless relationships

Because the pain felt normal and of functional I am clueless

I barely loved the one who truly loved me

I fell hard for the one who loved she, she, & she

I’ve yearned for the one whose hands congregated around my neck

I’ve cried over the one who made me feel no bigger than a speck

Always finding the time to love someone else

But never smart enough to realize I need to save some of that love for myself

Said yes when I should have said no

Thinking it would make this broken vessel a whole

Hurt some because I believed that eventually

They’d go out of their way to inflict pain on me

And as I’ve searched for the love of a man

I’ve totally lost touch with who I am

I once dreamed of the husband, house, kids, and the fence

All in that order but my realization was this

Life is fucked up and definitely not fair

And damn right my life ain’t been no crystal stair

My view of relationships is warped

I govern only secondarily with my heart

Monogamy

Temporarily

Trusting…unlikely

Concerned…slightly

Jealous…rarely

Doing me…apparently

I feel like I’m a curse to men

Because I seem to always hurt them

Not just because I expect their pain

But because I do things without thinking

And even though I regret the acts

It’s usually too late to take them back.

My grandmother always told me I’m innately a good girl

But I would never be right until I found my true place in the world.

For now, I’m a walking disaster unintentionally

But in the words of my granddad “charge it to my head not my heart and me.”

I think it’s because in order to give love you must first love yourself

A craft I haven’t actually mastered yet.

They say the origin is because my father’s name I never did know

And that obviously, I’d have daddy issues right from go

But I will not sit and pretend as if it was all bad

My grandfather, uncles, and step dad

More than made up for what I never had

Still in the back of my mind the question lurked

Why didn’t my father love me, and that shit hurts.

Now my son finds himself in a similar situation

Realizing you’re unloved is a hell of a revelation

I can’t shield him from the pain that is to follow

Rejection is a hard ass pill to swallow.

Funny how my life mirrors his

Both of us being emotionally fucked up as kids

I haven’t always been the momma I should be

And I blame no one else but me.

Ashamed of the person I’ve become

Can’t even look into the eyes of my own son.

It’s funny how people are quick to judge me

See what they want to see

Don’t know me

Have no idea what it’s like to be she.

Tainted by elements out of my control

But act like they’d know what to do if they had my role

Have you ever come home to no food in your house?

And have four eyes looking at you and you have nothing to put in their mouth

Watching them suffer when you’re doing your best

So if the opportunity for them to have better came wouldn’t you say yes?

But you think it’s because I don’t want the responsibility

When in truth it’s because them I couldn’t clothe or feed

So when you open your mouth to talk about me

Make sure you know the whole story

Before you is an excerpt from the pages of my life

In this chapter much was written about strife

‘Cuz I still visit the place of my imagination from time to time

And deposit inside

The shameful things I try to hide

Hopefully I’m not consumed by pain

Not drowned in the rain

Lost in the flood never to be heard from again

Because I’m a woman of the night

Not the street walking kind but another type

Black girl lost wanting to do what’s right

Trapped in the abyss of darkness desperately searching for the light.