Crash Outs & Comebacks
As a kid, my feelings got trampled over. The emotional rollercoaster of friendships was too much for me. One minute we were friends one minute we weren’t. I'm sure kids were so mean to me for many reasons, including being short.
pause, I’m probably the same height so…..
Anyway, the main reason I think they were so mean to me was because I was too nice. My mom use to say to me religiously “ never be so fine that you can’t be kind” I took that to heart and so mfs thought shit was sweet.
Pouring out that energy and not getting it back caused me a lot of pain. When I graduated 8th grade, I vowed i’d never feel those feelings again.
In high school, I built this persona an unfuckwitable aura if you will. I didn’t like how my emotions made me feel so I suppressed them. When I was hurt I immediately resonated with anger and took it to levels no sane person would dream of. I turned into what we would now call a supreme crash out.
Anger is an emotion that is accepted from black women because it’s expected. I got more attention when I was angry, unapproachable, and irrational. It seemed like as I got faster at popping off on anybody that tried me, more people wanted to be around me. Next thing I knew, I created an army of angries ready to terrorize anybody that breathed wrong.
I don’t know why I thought I was exempt from real life consequences. Maybe because I thought I could only get in trouble by my mom and the older I got the chances of that were slimmer so I thought I was in the clear.
BOY WAS I WRONG!!!!!!!
In college, my quick temper got me a pair of circulation suffocating silver bracelets,12 hours to think about it between a bank robber and a prostitute, 200 hours of community service and, 12 weeks of anger management.
Before I continue let me just say Jail is not for me. I rate it a -999999/10. I recommend sliding your open eye across concrete before doing anything that’s going to get you thrown in jail.
As for community service and anger management, I begrudgingly completed what was required of me but I enthusiastically calmed the f*** down.
None of that whole experience was for me so I knew I had to make a change to make sure I never ended up in that situation again.
I took away two life-changing lessons from Anger Management. I learned that I was afraid to explore my feelings because I didn’t understand them and I didn’t know that there were healthy ways of expressing them.
Let me go deeper …
I remember wondering why they would make movies like Inside Out and market them to kids when an experienced mind could only understand the messages. Then I realized the complexity of those messages had to be palatable so they said fuck it, let’s animate it.
boom, check it out guys this is what I learned….
This is anger, we get to know him by asking about his triggers and emotional patterns. When he shows up how does our body respond? Do we start sweating? Does our breathing shorten? When he shows his ugly ass up we got to notice what’s going on around us. Are we triggered by a certain person? A place? Is it a smell that reminds us of that one time we were cooking chili, that nigga phone rang, it was the girl he swears he blocked and it fucked up the whole day now we got to lie and say we are allergic to chili or allow our emotions to take over and send the whole function up?
Yall as bad as we want to for the safety of our mental health and those around us we cannot crash out in 2025 we have to find us something safe to do!
Nipsey said “Would you rather be at peace with the world and at war with yourself or at peace with yourself and at war with the world”
If it comes down to it, I choose my peace over anyone’s but I’d argue that me choosing peace for me is choosing peace for us.
I believe peace is ultimately what you get when you understand the importance of emotions if navigated consciously . I’ve learned how to read my triggers. My body tells me when something just isn’t right but Sometimes I find myself in a situation where I’m unable to process my emotions and have a calculated response so I study self-awareness and emotional regulation.
For me, that’s practicing mindfulness to manage my emotional responses and increasing self-awareness of thoughts, people, and places that fuel my anger.
If you don’t take shit else from what I say in this blog remember this one lesson that has saved me from myself and jail,
LEARN TO PAUSE BEFORE REACTING IMPULSIVELY
I’m human so I know I’ll always have emotions. Being sensitive to those emotions gives me a superpower in a world hellbent on removing emotions from everything.
Acknowledging our emotions does not make us weak. Understanding, exploring, and navigating our emotions can be a survival tactic if done intentionally.
Until next time, I encourage you to watch The Godfather. The difference between Sonny and Micheal is a life lesson everyone should learn to innerstand. Never be Sonny
