Saturday, October 29, 2011

“I think the black family itself is just so different from the white family. When a black woman is rape, it kind of weakens her as the female part in that family”***

“I think you learn it from watching your mother. Not being taught, just watching. I know my mom, when she would so something and injure herself, she’d say, “Damn.” Then she’d wrap something around it and go back to what she was doing. She’d say, ”Blood coming through there, but got to keep going.”***

“Black women are quick to get up. They may not be ready to stand on two feet, but they do it. You know? They say, “Okay. I need to put this back together. Let me get up.” Say she had this beautiful porcelain vase and say that represents her life and it gets cracked by something like… like a rape. Boom--it splatters everywhere. A black woman would do something like--she would take something like rope and put those pieces back together. It may not be as pretty as the white woman’s vase--taking all that time to put crazy glue on every spot and put it all together real nice and pretty. It may not be pretty but it works just the same. That’s the way we go about putting our lives together. May end up having some kind of little drawback or maybe we have to deal with things like anger and controlling our temper, but we do it. It may not be beautiful, but it gets fixed fast. And it works.”***

Now what my question is does it work? Does it really work to quick fix a problem that big and expect it to work the rest of your life? What is so wrong with taking our time and trying to put the pieces back together again? So what if it takes a long time to individually put each tiny piece back? Wouldn’t that route work out better for us in the long run?

A lot of us take that route of temporarily trying to fix a problem and in the end it always comes back up and bites us in the ass.That vase eventually gets shattered again, even if its by something minor and minuscule.
Those thousands of pieces that were tied together by that rope shatter again.

How many times are we going to wrap a cloth around a broken bone and expect it to heal? Ignoring the pain only allows more time to pass while the anger manifests in your soul. Then you start taking it out on other people. Trying to do your daily, “normal duties” with that mask on your face pretending that nothing is wrong.

Just because we get raped, it does not make us weaker as women, as black women. Because we end up in violent relationships, it does not make us weaker as black women. What another person does to your body is their blame to carry around, not yours. IF you choose to seek help, you are NOT weak. IF you choose not to seek help, you are NOT weak.

Often times we rely on family for advise and how we should handle certain situations. Family IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Just because they are related to you does not make their advice remotely right or even in your best interest. I have experienced this in a negative way. My family chooses to ignore my molestation, my rape, my feelings. They chose to try to keep it in the family, that infamous don’t air dirty laundry tactic that black families are famous for. Hell my father told me not to tell anyone about what happened. When I was raped and he had to come home from work the only thing he kept saying was what am I going to tell my job. Like he was ashamed because I was raped.
Now I find that very hilarious.

I know that families “try to keep your best interest at heart” it does not mean they are going about it the right way. It was always drilled into your head that family should be number one in your life and no one should come before them. THAT’S BULLSHIT to me.

My family only made my healing a more difficult process. Once I finally saw the truth and how they really were that’s when I started to change myself and didn’t care if they liked who I was becoming.
  My families ignorance is their own burden to carry not mine, I cant change anyone else but me. I choose not to be close to them because of that ignorance that was hurting me, that’s my own choice.

I’m not obligated to be involved with them just because we are blood and I think that’s wrong with black families now. When someone is hurting you stay away from them. SOME black families have this no matter how much family is hurting you or what they do to you still be involved with them. No, I don’t believe in that idea. If the victim doesn’t want to be around the person who has hurt them then they shouldn’t be criticized for protecting themselves.

We just need to open our minds and hearts and actually look and understand reality. Accept that black women get raped and its not their fault. Accept that black children get molested by family members and friends and its not their fault. Accept that some black men do rape black women and black men and its NOT the victims fault.

Stop being so ignorant and blaming the victims because you want to protect your family.

A Little Girls White Dress

My white dress has been
Covered in blood.
My beautiful white dress has been
Beaten so much
The back is ripped and its
Seam is torn.
My sparkly white dress is
Smudged whit unearthly prints
And stains that can not be
Removed.
My innocent white dress was ripped
Apart into pieces and
Carelessly put back together again.
I’ve tried to burn it, drown it
Pour alcohol on it to set on fire
And it still finds its way to the
Front of my closet
Dirty, fire stains, muddy, smeared with
Blood reeking
Of Jack Daniels, holding on by
A thread.
Sitting in front of what use to be
My white dress, I scream, I bellow
And finally I cry.
Realizing the blood, the torn seam
Smudges and pieces were only visible
To me.
The damage I had done to my own
White dress can be fix,
Even if I can get the blood out.
©Golden Rays

***Excerpt from Jacqueline a survivors of rape, the above quoted text was taken from the book “surviving the Silence Black Women’s Stories of Rape” by Charlotte Pierce-Baker
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