Opening to Darkness: The Final Gate
Alls well that ends well.
It’s been a while. Last month marked the one-year anniversary of me blowing up my life. I think back to the moments in the aftermath. Tears in my eyes as I packed a small overnight bag. I took my time because I knew once I left the apartment, nothing would be the same again. Before I stepped out of my home studio, I looked out the window and saw the birds and the sunset, and a feeling washed over me. “The possibilities are truly endless, finally”. A year later, I’m still heading towards that horizon. What I didn’t know then, but know now, is that endings are a continuous process. Much like the story of the creation of the earth, God had “7 days” to create something; we never talk about how long it truly takes to end something and what endings can look like.
This is my final post for How to Be Bad. I’m closing this newsletter with the final gate of Opening to Darkness by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. The truth is, Ras died that day, and I had no idea. I’ve spent this year combing and digging through the remains, and I found who I’ve always been, humming under the surface. No more pretending, no more performing, just beautiful becoming. If you’d like to join me on that journey, subscribe to my new newsletter, where I post twice a month about this new leg of my journey. If you decide that this is where you get off, I thank you for witnessing and for your support.
Like always, below you’ll find some journal entries and my response to the last and final gate of Opening to Darkness.
Thank you
Ras Bad
Raheem Mercy Badejo
Black sheep and other new beginnings - January 19 @ 1:36 am
I’ve been thinking a lot about time. How colonialism has distorted our sense of time, and how the older I get, the closer to indigeneity I become, and thus, my relationship to time is changing. Especially as I learn more and more about quantum theory. Time is something that is so relative yet finite. It has happened all at the same time. Many indigenous peoples know this. So we don’t force time. We flow with it. We honor and cherish its qualities, so we take our time.
Colonialism wants to conquer time. Beat it to submission and force it to obey. Aging, which is a blessing and a privilege, is marketed as a curse. Something to defy, control, reverse. something to fear. Maybe it’s because of our fear of grief.
I had my first Sufi healing session of the two-month healing container. And though I’ve been undoing the barbed wire of grief around my heart for over 6 years, this session revealed that time does not heal all wounds. In fact, if not tended to, time will deepen and accelerate the infection of the wound. The work I’ve been doing has just been cauterizing the wound. At least what I understood. My grief is so multifaceted that it sometimes feels like a hydra. I tend to one piece, thus cutting off a head, and it shows me another head. It feels as though this familial trauma is my life’s work.
Post the session, many revelations about myself came in waves. I’m still wrestling with what it all might mean for me. But as the dust began to settle, the new beginning of “Black Sheep” presented itself. So it’s time to start writing again. Maybe this is the way to transmute and make sense of the grief I carry.
The motherland is also calling me. Like the language, the literal soil is calling me. The closer to myself I become, the more Yoruba I become. I’m seeking our music of the past and present. Fashion, the deep desire to get my hair threaded. I’m not interested in anything truly Eurocentric. I want to read African philosophy. Learn more about who we are, were, and will be. But I’m wrestling with how my authenticity clashes with the present of Nigeria. How my divinity is illegal. So I’m having this deep internal conflict, a negotiation with myself. If I’m truly a trans man, then I stand to lose it all. The connection to my family, which honestly has been dangling from a thread for years. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that level of grief. It’s always grief. Here comes another head of the hydra.
Trying to Human, Trying to keep it together - February 13 @ 2:39 pm
I had a panic attack on the train on my way to MFTA. I didn’t recognize it as a panic attack. I was reading on the train. It was the first time I’ve been on the train in a few days. There have been a lot of folks, mostly men, coughing, so I wore a mask. Then one after another, coughing and coughing, and I felt relieved that I had a mask on, then I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt claustrophobic. I only had two more stops until my transfer, so I closed my book and just closed my eyes. When I got to my next train platform, I took my mask off to see if that would help, but no. I still felt claustrophobic. And there were very few people around me. I tried box breathing and humming a familiar tune. A few more minutes passed before I felt back to normal again. I thought it might be motion sickness. But it’s just another PTSD attack. I’ve been having them a lot lately. Waking up in the middle of the night after a stressful dream, unable to breathe. Sometimes the dream itself isn’t stressful, but the undercurrent of energy around the dream is.
Things feel hard lately. Harder than they should. I honestly wish that Aquarius season wasn’t always so taxing for me. I wish it were just a celebratory season for me instead of constantly facing another shadow, deep-seated trauma, or death of self. I wish it were new beginnings, full of energy to create and execute. Instead of false starts and mouthfuls of dirt. Though I recognize the beginning in death, it doesn’t come with the burst of energy that new life brings.
Who am I these days? Where do I want to be, and why isn’t it here? Why do I keep getting the feeling to run away? To escape a little or a lot. To sell all my things, quit all my projects, and flee the country to start over again? I think it’s because endings are longer and more laborious than one might think. I’ve been ending steadily for 10 months. And only last month did I finally get the courage to see myself. So I am an infant. Beginning again. So yes, things will be hard. Lifting your head for the first time always is. So how do I slow down further? How do I take my first steps as Raheem? Who is Raheem? What does he dream of? What is his ideal life? Vocation? Lovers? Friends? It’s like I’ve opened up a new profile, and it’s a blank slate, so I fall back on the old file saves to get by. I’m allowing fear to co-opt my dreaming. Maybe I need to have a funeral for Ras. Ras has been my favorite file save in this game of life. The closest to a sense of safe freedom that I could achieve. Walking between the raindrops, being rebellious enough to be endearing. Another question I have for myself is, “What happens to Ras the creature?” I just spent so much money on that domain. Lmao. Is a double life the one I truly want? I don’t think so. I never envied Hannah Montana, but I understood the choice. The illusion of safety, the illusion of privacy.
I dream of Raheem.
Train to Tea Class- February 22 @1:58pm
I continue to dream of Raheem. He has soft hands and an earth-like patience. He studies me for a while.
“When do we get there?” I ask.
Are we not already here now?
I’m starting to get impatient. I pace the studio. Raheem begins to hum. He picks up his sponge and continues to paint.
I awake.
I look for Raheem every time I’m out. I hope to catch glimmers or reflections of him in store windows and puddles on the sidewalk. Proof that he is possible. And I do, but I keep it to myself. I know he’s coming. In his own time, he will arrive, and I will welcome him with open arms.
Opening to Darkness: Gate 8
Please reflect on an experience when something within you died after you went through dark times. What changed in you that was so great you felt some part of you (or all of you) died, and something else of your being came to fruition?
Leaving [redacted] after 11 years of partnership ended the false sense of self I’d developed. It was so painful, so much so, that I disassociated. The last 5 years of that relationship were full of a personal darkness that I couldn’t see myself. I ignored all of my body’s signals. My survival self, though I love them and respect them for keeping me as safe as they could, died that day. The self that thought they had to earn love. The self that shrank and hid for fear that my partner would resent me. The self with no self-worth. The self that was so afraid of failure and success because it felt like the love I would/could receive was riding on it. The self that had no boundaries because self-sacrifice was the only version of love I’d known and understood. The self that loved unconditionally to its detriment. That waited too long for him to catch up, when deep down I knew he didn’t care to try. The self that was too afraid of taking up space for fear of being or wanting too much. The self that saw rejection as a moral failure. That felt like they couldn’t do enough. The self that constantly had to prove itself. The self that was too afraid to stand up for themselves and that wanted so desperately to be chosen, accepted, and protected.
What came to fruition and is still flowering is my unconditional self-love. The belief that I have the right to exist even if it contradicts culture and expectations. My desire to live, actually. How much power I possess and what I’m truly capable of. The pathways to my desired life and the realization of my purpose. I also kinda give less fucks. I can definitely give even fewer fucks, but I’m getting there. I’ve released my attachment to certain outcomes and find a lot more joy in the journey. There is still more work ahead of me when it comes to releasing certain survival patterns, but I’m a lot more aware of what they are and where they come from.
Before the dark experience changed you, what words would you have used to describe death?
traumatic
painful
all consuming
perverse
violent
heavy
forbidden
What words would you use now to describe death?
liberating
beautiful
raw
bittersweet
ending & beginning
What do you see of yourself after death?
weightlessness
pools of laughter
true knowing
the choice to begin again