A little bit about what led me here......
The entire year of 2018 (and well into 2019) was an absolute s***t-show for me. I lost a few relationships, platonic and romantic. I took other L's that were low in number but just as impactful and damaging. However, the biggest burden was actually the blessing of therapy. Simply put, therapy, as healing as it was, caused me to acknowledge and dig deeper into things that I would have rather busted my head and lost memory regarding. Unfortunately that was not my fate lol, the only way for me to make peace with things that happened and things that were happening right before my eyes was to face them fearfully and fearlessly. To be very honest, I got good at therapy after a while! It was a phenomenon similar to what "gym rats" experience. These people go to the gym and engage in super painful and extremely challenging activities! Right after, of course, they are like super sore, in pain even! But the pain goes away and they repeat until they begin to see gains. Once they notice their gains they keep going back for more, keep pushing through those challenging activities; continuing to push through the pain that leads them to their desired results. I used to think "No Ma'am." lol just that, "nope." But once I started therapy I encountered that same will, stamina, and resilience in the form of God's spirit. Needless to say therapy was WORKING chile! But after a while I had built up that stamina, will, and resilience so much so that even beyond "gym-time," aka my 1-hour therapy sessions, I desired further self-expression, affirmation, force of being, and release.
Quite frankly, there were still frustrations I had regarding some of those "L's" I mentioned earlier. Particularly did I have frustrations with desires I still very much had for a person I very much did not. As a means to express, affirm, be, and release I began to write-- poetry to be exact! I thought, hmm.. through this I can do what I need a become what I want to be. See, I've always wanted to be "creative" and "artistic" but never thought I had it in me; I always considered myself a rigid "stick-in-the mud." I soon discovered that my hero and twin W. E. B. Du Bois wrote tons of poetry, quite beautifully I might add, I thought "hey, if he can be a creative so can I!" So then I went off! I began writing poetry at 3 am, the hour insomnia got the best of me and my soul/heart's favorite time to wine!
Soon enough, I began looking to my poetry as an opportunity to release my sexual and emotional frustrations, as well as a chance to affirm myself. I hoped that the poems of self-affirmation would provide me the constant opportunity to paint a self-portrait over and over, using different colors, brushes, and strokes. As for the sexual frustration, I began to see this as a means for God to lead me towards the healthy sexual being that God had been willing in me to become. (Here's where the explanation for the title of the blog comes in) The more I wrote about sex and sexuality, the more I began to make connections between the feelings and emotions experiences with God engendered as well as the ones that the thought of the person I was in love with (and very much sexually attracted to). One Thursday night at Emmaus Bible Study at my school, featuring food and great wine lol, I sat, as the professor spoke, and reflected on my love for theological discourse... as well as my love for the person I loved. I then began to think about the combination of the two, of one of my favorite pastimes of ours; talking about God. A lot of joy filled my heart and the thought sat with me for the rest of the night. As the wine set in, my mind quite literally waltzed into a deeper level of intimacy between he and I, and I began to think of the Songs of Solomon. This Biblical text is said to be racy Hebrew love poetry, a poetic image of lady wisdom pursuing us. The poem ends by informing the reader of the scope of lady wisdom's love, alerting us that it is more powerful than death. As it celebrates humans' desires for the varying levels of intimacy, it foreshadows, alludes to, and almost serves as a window that exposes this notion that intimacy with God is our ultimate purpose and greatest plan for us all. Intimacy's consanguinity with our individual selves, our desired partners (whether erotic, agape, etc.), and divine source casts into a river in which we are ever-present with the varying individual elements; and yet fully engulfed in them all. MY divinely inspired erotic poetry speaks to the way I engage with that very river, the ultimate pleasure and satisfaction I find in total emersion, and the joy I feel with the individual elements within it. May my time in this river inspire you to dive in, go as deep as you possibly can, and feel the elements... (haha! see what I did there)
With all the different types of love,
Khaleelah.
What to expect?
I will post my first poem this Wednesday, September 4th, and post poems bi-weekly on Wednesdays!
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