won't you celebrate with me

  by Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

This Lucille Clifton poem is hands down my favorite poem. Even before I read the analysis and learned of its connection to Psalm 137, this poem spoke to me because I recognized myself in it. That's kinda what plays and poems should do--show you who you are or who you could be, either as an affirmation or a cautionary tale.

Last year today, I checked myself into the psych ward at Cleveland Clinic and spent a week on the mood disorder floor at Lutheran hospital.

I remember waking up and seeing nothing but gray. I remember thinking that things--whatever things were--had to stop, that I couldn't go on that way. In the time since I made that decision, I have had many mornings and nights when I felt the same way. However, Cleveland Clinic's lame attempt at mental healthcare is no longer an option.

I'm not the only one who feels like this. Another girl in one of my classes who is also one of the few African Americans in the program casually mentioned to me before the start of one class that she had done the same thing over the weekend. I gave her my number and told her to call me if she ever felt that way again, but she never did.

Even if I were the only one who struggled with this, I'm just learning that what I feel is real and valid.

"born in babylon/ both nonwhite and woman/"

I sat in a class and a teacher, who is kind and funny and well-traveled and who I like, looked at me and looked at the syllabus and realized he had chosen no plays by African Americans (or people of color, for that matter). And when he added one, he chose a play by a Black Gay man.  And yesterday, I sat in a meeting at work in which examples of couples where given and not one Black or Latino face was shown. The person who put together the presentation is kind and very nice.

I'm not angry--though people assume if a Black woman points out that people deny her existence on an hourly basis, she suddenly comes to life in the guise of the Angry Black Woman.  I'm just realizing the cost this has had on my soul. This constant being the only Black in the room. Every day, I look for myself and I am not there.

"something has tried to kill me"

I was in Mac's Backs looking for a book to research a play I'm thinking about writing, and I saw another book about emotional abuse. I picked it up and thumbed through it. Resisting the urge to read yet another self-help tome, I left it in the store. But something in it kept nagging at me. Eventually, I got up, went back out and bought it.

I am not relishing playing the victim. Nor do I want anyone to feel sorry for me. But I am trying to understand why I am the way I am and how I ended up where I am. The book talked about being in a relationship with someone who treated you like an enemy. A light went on, the same way it did when Greg explained play structure to me. It's exactly the way I felt whenever I was around Michael.

When you are in a relationship with this kind of person, they will do things that make you think you are crazy. Since they are in a relationship with you, you assume they like you and mean you no harm.  But you are wrong. The book went on to describe every single conversation and interaction Michael and I ever had. The parsing of words, constantly having to explain myself, the sudden outbursts of anger, the withholding and belittling. I once remember joking that if I said, "Today is Tuesday," Michael would say, "Sure, if you want to use the Gregorian calendar."

He'd do things that made no sense like sneak into my plays before the curtain went up and sneak out before curtain call so that I wouldn't know he'd been there. Since he's 6'6", my friends saw him and told me he was there. When we got back together, which precipitated my stay in the psych ward, he'd tell me things like "Stop hanging around Cleveland State, you don't need to be there," or only communicate by text and suddenly stop communicating all together. To some extent, Don did these things as well. And these things happened in private, so I had nothing to check them against other than feeling like I wanted to die.

It's also the way I grew up. The way my father treated me until the day he died. Even my mother shamed me and contributed to the crazy-making simply by refusing to divorce my father, even after he went to prison for selling narcotics through his medical practice.

"I had no model"

Being in these kinds of relationships and this environment destroys the spirit. It makes you sit up one morning and see nothing but gray. It disconnects you from God's power to do the miraculous things He is always doing. I was in a meeting and I forget what I said, but a manager looked at me and said, "Lisa, I'm not arguing with you." I was taken aback because I realized that I was operating in a defensive mode in my every day life. My father was dead, Michael was gone, and I was still acting as if I had to fight to survive or avoid the punishment of isolation.

And it didn't help that two women I thought were my closest friends completely and utterly left my life, not asking about my health after I had been hospitalized or offering condolences when my father died.

It freaks me out because I wonder what is wrong with me that I can ferret out people who treat me this way. But then I try to remember the people who stepped up and surprised me with their kindness and friendship, the professors who offer a diverse syllabus without a second thought, the eye-popping miracles God drops on me like rain every once in a while.

"won't you celebrate with me."