What a moment.
Me looking at you and you down back at me.
Fear and uncertainty in our eyes: the themes of our relationship.
You fearful & me uncertain.
It’d take us 10,000 rotations around the sun to realize the honest truth; that despite all odds we were the same.
“What happens one may now ask when a reality finds itself on a collision course with a fantasy?”
- From James Baldwin’s essay “Dark Days”
I want to move and shake in this world from a belief system that I am worthy…that I am enough.
What about you?
What if man could fly?
I’d like to think I’d be soaring through the sky rn…
But realistically I’d prolly b doing just this. Laying here.
What do we do when we are given the whole world?
Open our eyes, breathe in, and 9 times out of 10 do the imaginable.
But maybe nothings wrong with that?
Maybe we’re not meant to fly but once or twice in an accidental escape from reality.
Maybe the key is to breathe in, breathe out, accept, enjoy, and be ready.
To only enjoy flight is to constantly be stuck in the anticipatory anxiety that is the “wait for something better” whenever our two feet are on the ground.
What if we wanted to stay?
To sit?
To walk?
To be fully grounded.
What if flying was no longer our goal?
Excerpt from an article I’m working on below.
May 15, 2023 - “I’m sorry I’m like this.” My dad cried through the phone from his hospital bed. It’s his third stroke in two years and his second this month. What do you say when someone’s apologizing for something outside their control? Even more so, what do you say when that persons your father. In a lot of ways, I feel like he was apologizing for so much more in that moment. To my memory, it’s one of the only times I’ve heard him apologize to me. Something I’ve longed for for many years. To say sorry for never being there for me, never coming to visit, for asking for money, showing up in cities I lived unannounced and in the psych ward, for calling in manic states, crying, and asking me to help him move or stay with me. In that brief moment, it felt like maybe he was acknowledging who he’d been. But now the apology felt kind of fucked up. Because death is out of our control. I had nothing to say but “it’s ok…” no anger, no momentous moment I could finally go off about all the shit he’s done to me over the years…only sympathy. What can you say when the one man you always wanted to know is dying? I did what I always do and just listened.
The stories I am about to tell are in no particular order Most of them passed down to me over the phone throughout the years. Many told by my dad during manic episodes. Some from calls I received while he was in the psych ward. Others during my visits there. Some from visits of him trying to escape his life back home. Other times, when he needed money for said escapes. And most recently, and in some ways most peacefully, from his hospital room. His trauma passed down only to become my trauma. I believe it was the only way he knew how to be honest and his best attempt to let me know why he was the way he was and why maybe he couldn’t show up for me.
I don’t want to continue without saying that my dads story is as much my own. Not only because he is my father, or because for years I’ve been told I’m identical to him in inward and outward appearance, but because in many ways, I’ve come to realize that maybe I couldn’t understand myself fully until I allowed myself to understand, and something I never expected to do, forgive him.
I write these realizations after nearly 3 years of being in recovery…1 year fully sober. Gabrielle Adina Woodland. I’m 30 years old, I love photography, the drums, guitar, basketball, I love hanging out but not going out. I’m a creative, a director, I’m a good friend, an even better sister lol (hi woodi), a daughter…and more specifically, I’m a daughter of an alcoholic who comes from a long line of addicts and alcoholics.
“Everyone just wants to feel wanted, to feel secure, and to not be rejected.
And we are either running from or towards both of those things. So be honest, and be true to yourself.”
Who am I?
What do I like?
Who do I want to be in this world?
The act of doing shit you’re afraid to do.
Every day life is beautiful…this we often forget.
To see the world through your eyes.
You are:
Young.
Black.
Naive.
Hopeful.
In you, there’s a part of me. The me I’ve lost but want back.
As years pass, I see how the world broke you also.
Although I’m old now, your existence made me open to the beauty in naivety
And hopeful for the days to come.
I hope you regain these sentiments too.
Until then, I’ll hold on for us both.