Emotional Currency and Depression: Learning to invest properly

I want to talk to you guys about emotional currency and attachments. I’m going to share some more personal stories about my life from times where I was investing my emotional currency into hardships and dealing with attachments that were unhealthy, to say the least. Trigger warning: I talk about childhood sexual abuse, teenage abortions, depression, and suicide attempts in this piece. Not graphically in detail but it’s in here, nonetheless. I can tell many stories of how I came to sit and wallow in my depression and despair. There are tragedies to tell from childhood to adulthood. You may not see it on my social media accounts, but I promise you I have suffered a great deal in my 28 years and in ways that some couldn’t bear to imagine. As a young girl, I was sexually abused by an older man and held onto that dark secret for so long that I almost forgot it happened.  

It wasn’t until I was in Belize on a high school trip hanging with some of my male classmates that I was reminded. We were joking around and being goofy teenagers and then one of the boys, thankfully I don’t even remember who, made a rape joke and it wasn’t funny. Yet the rest of the immature boys laughed it off and moved onto the next topic of conversation. I found myself frustrated and angry because I didn’t find it funny and more than that I suddenly was having flashbacks of being a 7-year-old child getting molested and manipulated by a grown-ass man, more than likely in his 40s or 50s at the time. These are things you don’t hear me talk about. Why? Because I never wanted to be known for or as the person who went through “insert tragedy here”. I hated the energy that came with pity and so I buried a lot of my childhood trauma deep deep down where no one could find it, not even me. 

 I have buried so many traumas that at one point I felt like if I had dared to let them go, I wouldn’t be who I am. I felt like my trauma was what made me so special and that’s not true at all. When we left New York City and moved out East full time, I was so depressed about it. I didn’t like change and I didn’t like the feeling of loss. I felt like I was losing my life and everything that I knew, again. A feeling I had become familiar with at age 11.5 when my father passed away from prostate cancer. I didn’t like The Hamptons as a teenager. It was cool to go off to on the weekends, but I never looked at it as a place I would want to stay all year. There’s not very much for kids, let alone teenagers to do.  Which is how you get so many teenage drug users. Idle hands are a devil’s playground, and when you add in money plus exorbitant access, drugs come quick. Shit, they come quickly even when you don’t have money truth be told. This was what I had moved to. An elitist town with entitled children who abused their access. I hated it. I come from a small neighborhood in Brooklyn. I grew up in SoHo and Clinton Hill yes, but I was born and raised in Clinton Hill first. Back then I played into everyone’s idea of me as this rich spoiled Black girl because it was easy, and it was true. So, while many people assumed that I was from SoHo, I let them. My family is something that I have always gatekept and it has more to do with how special, talented, and loving we are. When my family takes someone in we make them one of ours and never look back. I’ve watched people wrong my family members and take advantage of the kindness and love that was given to them while they gave the Bethea’s their ass to kiss. Ignoring the fact that it was us who donned them in the drip they were parading around town in. It was us who gave them love and affection and did it without expecting anything in return, but purely out of love. It’s important to know I come from a street family. My mother is one of 12 children and they grew up in Brooklyn in the 60s and 70s and in my early childhood, she was the greatest hustler in town. She could and did sell water to whales quite frequently. I knew at an early age that my life was not as easy as it looked and that I would have to keep secrets to maintain an image of normalcy. My mother hustling meant that I grew up not seeing her often. Her kids came second to the money ironically enough, the same money she was out getting so that we could have everything we ever needed and not want for anything. 

I spent my childhood protecting my mother in ways that many children don’t even think about. People made assumptions that she wasn’t around because she was in an alley doing drugs somewhere and that was never true. I have always had my mother in my life. Whether she was present and actively involved at all times was something that depended on the schedule of the streets. If she could make it she did, and if she couldn’t she sent some money to make sure we were alright. When I moved to East Hampton I was 15 and by then my relationship with my mother was less than ideal. It was actually nearing its worst stage and the next year we got into such a bad fight that I didn’t speak to her for over a year. All I wanted as a kid was to just spend time with my mother. As a kid, I had felt abandoned and it was something I had to work through even more after my dad died. I spent a lot of my life being angry with her and it really did nothing for me. I couldn’t admit that to you as a teenager and even in my early 20s though. I was convinced that if I kept holding onto those feelings they would make me more powerful and be fuel, but it only made me angry. I walked around with so much anger and rage that I was almost always irritable. I walked around that way until my mid-20s. There’s really no cure other than time and letting go.

All the suffering I had done at an early age made me feel like I knew everything I needed to know about life. Little did I know that emotionally investing myself into these hardships would only bring me more. I kept telling myself that I was doing everything right and that it didn’t matter if I was angry because I had every right to be. Here’s the thing though, I did have every right to be. That doesn’t mean that I need to live my life in a constant state of anger and frustration though and that’s something I didn’t learn until later in life. When I got to senior year of high school I was so empty and broken on the inside I tried to kill myself. I wanted to die because life felt so pointless and like it was filled with nothing but despair. I had just gotten an abortion and it was easily the most traumatizing experience I’ve had in life. I had such conflicted feelings about going through with it because having babies as a teenager is something my family knows well. The boy I was dating at the time however doesn’t come from a family like mine, so that was not something he was willing to entertain. Truth be told back then I really didn’t want to have an abortion, but I felt like I didn’t really have a choice. The other person wasn’t really interested in having a baby, and I couldn’t blame him, we were still kids. 17 and 18 isn’t the ideal time to become a parent. I remember vividly sitting on his bed with the positive pregnancy test in hand and the first words out of his mouth being “it’s okay, we’ll schedule an appointment at planned parenthood and then tell our parents”. Those words made it clear as day where his head was, and I understood and accepted the reality that was in front of me. What I didn’t expect was for that boy to then go tell the girls at his school a lie about that abortion for some sympathy sex. Something that was so deeply painful and personal for me, was now his story for getting laid. I remember reading the conversations word for word with multiple girls and not just 1-2, I’m talking about 4-5. That shit stung. It was so painful and humiliating and I honestly didn’t register the foulness of what had taken place until many years later. In my freshman year of college, I was still reeling from this pain and was battling my own mind while surrounded by people who meant me no well. I remember confiding in someone I thought of as a friend at the time about it and she responded along the lines of “how could you get pressured into having an abortion, that’s not possible” and I was shocked. I began explaining myself and found myself getting angry because a lot of the reason I went through with the abortion was that the other person didn’t want to be a parent yet, and I remembered what it was like growing up feeling like my own mother didn’t want me. When you have a child, you have to be mindful of the fact that you’re creating another human being who is going to have feelings too. I couldn’t in my right mind bring a child into this world and force someone who made it clear they didn’t want to be a parent yet into parenthood just because I was looking to fill a void of love that I felt like I wasn’t receiving in life. I am not judging anyone who has decided to be a single parent. I am simply expressing why I made the decision NOT to be. That was one of the most painful decisions I have ever made in life. I think a lot about the fact that had I not gone through with it I would have an almost 10-year-old child. I love children so much and I want to be a mom so badly one day. I really can’t wait, and I can only hope that God blesses me with a beautiful family and children one day. 

So, when I tell you, I have suffered in this lifetime, I am not exaggerating by any means. This is not to focus on my suffering either, it’s to let people know that when you do focus on your suffering, it only continues to get worse. I could go on and on about the various struggles and obstacles I’ve dealt with in this lifetime but that’s not going to change anything. Truth be told it’s only going to bring my energy down and make me depressed again if I’m not careful. I was inspired to write this because a friend reminded me of how I had been living before. I used to walk around EMPTY because of all the struggles I had faced left me depleted. I was giving to people when I had nothing to give. I was putting people in front of me because I was still too scared to sit with myself and experiences and feel them. Being present with yourself and your feelings is hard. It’s not some easy walk in the park with some sage in hand and a crystal necklace. It’s the ugly crying, the binge-watching shows, eating nonstop, or not eating at all. It’s isolating yourself and forgiving yourself for holding onto so much pain as well as for enduring so much for as long as you did. Sometimes we choose the hard way because it’s familiar but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way. When you’re used to suffering you accept certain behaviors and experiences without question. You don’t have to accept suffering. You have every right to live and live well!

I’m sure there are going to be some of you who read this that will be shocked at what you’re reading because I’ve never once let people know there was so much pain and turmoil inside of my heart. I can honestly say that the reason why is because I just knew it had to get better. I knew I wasn’t put on this earth to suffer. I know that I didn’t come here to live a life of pain and suffering but one of love, light, bliss, and peace. I didn’t know how much work it would take to get to those spaces but now that I’m here I don’t let anyone cause me pain and suffering. In 2018 I decided to start to live my life for myself and no one else. I shed a lot of tears, skin, and relationships that I thought were going to last forever since then. I finally realized a lot of what I was going through was because I was still investing my emotional currency into hardships and not all of the glory. Your emotional currency is the greatest form of currency you have. What you pour your emotions into materializes in front of you whether it’s good or bad. The return on investment when you’re emotionally spending in areas that don’t serve you is zero. You get nothing. Emotional currency is something I didn’t understand until the beginning of this year. My emotional attachments weren’t helping me for the vast majority of my life, and they caused me to invest my emotional currency into spaces that helped others to yield what they wanted, while I got nothing in return. It’s not easy to accept a lot of the hardships we’re dealt in life. I don’t have some quick hack on how to spring yourself out of depression and I won’t pretend like I do. I’m simply here to tell you to stick it out. To keep going because it does get better. The days won’t always be easy, and you won’t always feel like it’s worth it, just keep going. Wake up another day and try again. Make sure the people in your life aren’t taking from your empty cup and are helping you to refill it instead so when you don’t have the strength you’re not completely depleted.