I didn’t know how to stop falling or reaching for people on my way down. I stepped away from hiding behind the piano and began the excruciating voyage of reckoning with and loving myself freely. That sounds a bit pseudo-social media-guru-ish. I'm trynna’ say that I wrote and confronted myself and wrote and confronted my family and wrote and confronted God every step of the way. I’ve grown a lot, but I’m still climbing out of that dark well. If you knew or tried to love me during this time…I am sorry. I know that ain’t much as far as amends go, but I mean it with the very best parts of me.
I still make fear-based errors, but I’m trying to stumble well: to grant myself grace and a heart safe enough to offer grace to others. This collection of short thoughts (published in 2012) is that journey. Someone who loves me convinced me to rerelease it. I wanted to edit this book a million times, but it wouldn't be authentic...so, this is it: part cringe, part crisis, all courage.
I hope you see some grace and grit in these pages that support you or someone you love.
With all my heart,
— Té
You ever been angry with God? Not the temporary tantrums that spring up after you pray for the newest trend and don't get it. I mean, infuriated and wounded enough by life to withdraw from anyone who dared to invoke a hopeful word about religion? This isn't a Christian book. It isn’t anti-Christian, either. This book is, in its way, a testimony of stumbling in the dark, trying to find the light.
——
It's 2008. A long, slender man with warm brown skin like my grandmama & who walks like my grandaddy, has just been announced as the 44th President of the United States. While folks storm the cold Denver streets in celebration, I stand paralyzed. A family secret was accidentally revealed, and my life is in shambles, but God bless America.
Some of my favorite writers and musicians turned to drugs or drinking when life was blurry; I turned to relationships in a sloppy attempt to escape. I ran from city to city, trying to find anyone who would want and claim me as their own. A small, tattered notebook holds a note to myself from that year. "I will do anything. I will be anything if someone would just want me."
I tried on countless faces for lover after lover until my lies eroded whatever held us together. I was reckless with my heart and others. I manipulated and cut off parts I thought would prevent folks from keeping me. When their love couldn’t convince me of my worth, make me feel safe, or fill the hole, I plummeted into paralyzing depression. I donated my left kidney and decided to talk to God one last time. I prayed that this donation would be the one really good thing I could do. I prayed that he would allow the surgeons to err and that I would die on the table. As I'd come to expect, God did(n't) come through for me.