There are 33 more days left until I turn 24, my solar return, the day my mother intentionally brought me into this world. I wake up, and my vision blurs; even though I just arose, it’s a different fog. My mind is still… yet full. The room is quiet, a perfect sounding board for my thoughts. To be introspective, to reflect, to love, to hope, to pray… I found myself in a river of tears, sorrows collecting, drop after drop, experience after experience, as memories of love came back to me.
I love love, always have. My Nana would tell me that, and at my core, I always knew. I forgive easy, love hard, love quick. As I was about to embark on a new chapter in high school, leaving for college, I reminisced on how my heart was then. My IB Biology teacher, Ms. Johny, advised me, “A’Shiah, you are such a sweet girl, I’m worried for you. You need to learn how to guard your heart. You’re too nice. People may try to take advantage of you.” If I knew then what I know now, I don’t believe she was wrong. I do or sometimes should do a more intentional job regarding matters of the heart. More caution, more strategy, more boundaries, less vulnerability so fast. That’s what seems will absolve me of the pain I’ve experienced with love over the years.
It won’t. I have accepted that although these practices will help stop some hurt from happening. It won’t prevent it, sometimes, you have to take the bitter with the sweet. In this world, I was born to love as a reflection of God. So now, I pray for courage, discernment, and God’s strength to navigate the muddled waters of my tears into his purpose for my life.
A lover’s prayer…to always remain sweet at the core but more diligent with who experience all of it. I know that with blessings come burdens, with loss comes lessons, with love comes understanding. I understand that all of these experiences with love, both wonderful and weary, come with understanding. I don’t regret the love I share as I lay here with red eyes and a heavy heart.
All of the love given was needed by the other individuals and myself at that time, and I learned a lot of lessons. God will teach you the same lesson until you get it. The lesson is patience and presence. To be more patient with myself, take things slow, float in the slow moments, and be more patient with others. To float in the omnipresent presence of God and experience the peace of knowing everything happens for a reason. That all things work together for my good.
I have always felt like I received the short end of the stick when it comes to matters of the heart. Not just with romance but all forms of love, platonic, familial, and most of all, self-love. As I took time to swim in my river of tears, my brother knocked on my door. It was 7 am, and he heard me crying. That’s when I knew something had to change. There are 33 days until my 24th birthday, and I will be intentional about it. For the first time in my life, I will prioritize myself without regard and love on myself radically.
I’m grateful to God and all my loved ones for the love they wrap me in, the love I witness and am enveloped in. I realized something when my little brother heard me; I didn’t want him to hear me like that. I knew if I didn’t take serious action to give myself what I so willingly, subconsciously give others, I would be in a whirlpool instead of floating. In the same cycle of expecting others to validate me instead of myself, others to fulfill me instead of myself. I refuse to be that way anymore.
I pray that these next 33 days of Radical Self-Love will reveal things to me I need and that my tears will infiltrate the cracks in my heart where the load got too cumbersome. That each day teaches me to forgive myself for not knowing what I don’t know… To appreciate myself for what I know, and to apply those lessons. Most of all, I pray to love God and seek God’s heart every day because that love upholds me and is a reflection of myself. Amen!