My awareness of wounds that still lingers reared their ugly heads triggered by the senseless murders in Buffalo, NY, on May 14, 2022. I know this because I will move into spaces of questioning why certain people in my life haven’t reached out and acknowledged me. I realize this type of thinking is asinine and a way to deflect from what I am feeling and what my motives are. The pain of others resides in me, and most times, I don’t realize it’s me that I have to work on healing. It doesn’t justify or ignore the tragic murders, but it does help me see that I have some more work to do with me.

My immediate response to the tragedy was homicidal tendencies, and I know that way of thinking is not healthy, nor is it sane. In other words, I take old wounds and pile higher with current traumas created in the world and pile trauma upon trauma, and I cannot heal because of the inability to separate the two from one another.

My childhood mirrors that of one that needed more than I received. In hindsight, I realize this information because of my willingness to recover, so I can live without carrying baggage from the past and allowing it to comingle with other trauma. It’s so easy for me to feel sorry for myself and feel isolated and take things personally because of abandonment issues.

At my age, I am still struggling, and it is hard, yet I write to get the thoughts out of my mind onto paper because I am a visual person. It is hard for me to pretend it’s not happening when I can see what is happening. Once I accept what I see, the hardest part is making changes. It’s easier to ignore and move on and repeat the behavior that I so badly want to transform.

I am grateful for the awareness. I continue to ask a power greater than myself to help me, and that power is my ancestors. Although I sometimes want to blame them for my woes because, after all, they were the ones that perhaps taught my parents what they knew. I know if I compare them alongside with what I don’t know, I can accept that my ancestors want nothing but the best for me. Their chastising me was an acknowledgment,  a request per se, to do better, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was a concern to help me survive this cruel world.

Today, I accept and appreciate precisely that. My abandonment issues are mine to deal with the best that I can, and at any time,  ask whether I can survive the acid test and not drink and do drugs when the going gets tough. I am grateful for the awareness that I am not alone but with myself and want to survive.