I finished my work, returned all the phone calls by listeners and readers alike, listened to their stories, took a bath, tried to relax, tried to distract. I went into my room for the first time in a while and sat on the edge of my bed. I looked around, kicked off my house shoes, lay back on my bed,, and tried to find my center underneath the facade. I oiled my body to feel something, anything besides the emptiness I felt in my heart for so many souls in an eternal hell with no roadmap out. I needed to feel my own feelings, not someone else’s. I needed to be gentle and kind to myself, again something I had not done in a while because I’ve been conditioned to believe I’m no better than an automaton, a robot, not allowed to feel, think or even cry. I realized in that moment that I needed to shed those tears that have been behind my smile...the smile I wear like a mask so that no one knows what’s going on inside.

Then I had myself a good cry.

I’m telling you

I cried until my nose was running all over my silk pillow case, which felt so good to my skin, where pain was seeping through my pores.

I cried until my ears were hot. I cried until the unreleased rage welled up in my soul. I cried and kicked and screamed and stomped until I called down a thunderstorm. I screamed like a banshee. I screamed in tandem with the wind that was beginning to whistle sweet breezes of comfort into my ears. I kicked and screamed and beat my pillow. I cried so hard, my head began to hurt and I could not see the tissues piled on the floor beside me like snow on a mountainside.

I want you to understand

I had myself a really good cry tonight. No holds barred.

Tonight I cried, for all the days that I was too busy, or too tired, or too afraid, or too mad to really cry,. Tears I shed then, I realized were not crying, they were simply allowing steam to come up from the boiler room which was my poor devastated soul.

I cried for all the days and all the ways and all the times I had dishonored, disrespected and disconnected my Self from myself and my Self from those who love me and care for me, only to have it reflected back in the way I allowed others that I thought needed healing to treat me.

I cried for the ex-husband who loved me so, but his love hurt, emotionally, physically and was plain ass toxic. I cried for the love we shared, in it’s pure form, but knew that man was no longer there. I cried because he thought his imposed pain upon me could be assuaged with gifts and trinkets. I cried for the child in him that needed a mother, not a drinking buddy. I cried again for the little boy who needed understanding, not another beating for imagined wrongs.

I cried because he could not cry for himself and I know he never will. I cried because I really missed him and wondered where the soul who touched mine so went to. Did it go into the bottle where he drowns so many of his childhood sorrows that are unspeakable? Oh I just bawled then...great jerking tears.

I cried for the "man" I was with, who "imagined" he was healed from his own family dysfunction, so well in fact, that he wrote a book about how to heal. But here’s the deal.. I found he had not a clue and kept changing the boundaries because he was never taught in all of his dysfunction what a boundary was. I cried because he really thought he was doing some good, when all along, he was just like the others...a user, abuser and loser. He turned out to be a predator, in sore need of healing himself. I cried his tears, the tears of a family torn apart by abuse, misuse and self deception. I knew in my heart of hearts in that moment, I could not spend my life with him. His love for me was so toxic that I needed a hazmat suit to approach it.

I cried for the little boy in him, who still cried out for acceptance of a woman, any woman, just don’t lave him alone. I wanted healing for that little boy so badly, but his addiction was the mirror, and his fear was the dark, lonely nights when he should have been healing, but could not. The fear was far too great.

I cried because it really was telling in that I could take my heart and put it in a neat, strong clam shell and close it to you, to keep you from loving me the way you needed to and allow Sistahs who tell me they need me to help them, hurt me in ways you never could or would.

I cried because you were man enough to know that when I was screaming or rebelling at you, I was really rebelling at my Self who needed to allow you to nurture me, but didn’t know how to allow it to happen.

I cried for all the things I had given, only to have them stolen; for all the things I had asked for that had yet to show up; for all the things I had accomplished, only to give them away, to people, cot circumstances, which left me feeling empty and battered and plain old used.

I cried for the goddaughter who came to my home today, to support me. I cried her tears, the tears she has yet to shed. I cried because she hurt and I thought I was so brave to tell my story to the world, when inside I felt as young as her son, my godson, only "little". I cried because she asked for a second, third and fourth chance with me and my kindness after abusing it and I recently loved myself enough to tell her to get it together, put words to action and show me. I cried because she trusted me with her secrets and though I fussed with her over what was good for her, she took baby steps into her own healing. I cried because as I watched my young god-son for the first time in his life, look up at his mother, she smiled back, much like she has seen me do with her and others. I see there is some good in Iya Ade. I see it in her and in him.

I cried because there really does come a time when the only thing left for you to do is cry. But I never learned that because if I cried, somebody would always tell me, "I’ll give you something to cry for". Wasn’t what they had just done to me enough?

Tonight I cried

I cried because little boys are caught in the middle of battle between Mommies and Daddies.; and little girls get forgotten by their mommies and daddies don’t know what to do, so they leave their babies behind to be abused and misused.

I cried because when my daddy left, my mommy got mad and took it out on me.

I cried for her pain.

I cried for his pain

I cried for the pain of my sisters and brother

I cried for my nieces and nephews

I cried for the children of dysfunction. I cried because we try to explain why we are falling apart and expect them to understand a childhood lost to us. I cried because we expect our young ones to go places and spaces where no child should ever have to go.

I cried for my abusers, who had to have been in pain, to hurt me so over and over again. I cried because their pain came with the tag of "love" then I cried because I wanted to sentence them to suffer a fate worse than death, my fate. I cried because somewhere, although I am struggling to find God, that He, would not be pleased with my thoughts.

I cried because my feelings were so mixed up and I had no one to talk to because I am Iya Ade.

I cried because in the stillness of the night when my soul is pouring out it’s grief, I can’t call anyone to tell them because I am the one they talk to when their soul is crying out for help. I cried because I only know how to care for others and not myself. I cried because I need to learn to accept being loved and nurtured.

I cried because I thought I lost you and then found you again and when I did, I found myself.

I cried because I had a little boy, and because I was a little girl, and because I was a mommy who didn’t know what to do, and because I wanted my daddy to be there so badly until I ached.

I cried because I realized I missed my daddy and needed him in the moment.

Tonight I cried.

I cried because I hurt. I cried because I was hurt.

I cried for the Sistahs who came into my life who didn’t know who they were. I cried because they disrespected themselves so because of past abuses and misuses and didn’t understand the pain they felt is not today’s pain, it is yesterday’s. I cried because they could not live in the moment.

I cried because I missed my old gang of Sistahs of the Nah Nah Sistahhood, who were so far away. (Nah Nah gurl, dat brotha just plain WRONG fo’dat) Oh I missed them, those longtime friends who may not see me for years, but would love and embrace me as soon as I landed. The sistahs who would follow me all over the planet to check on their "gurl". I cried because I wanted to impart this sense of sistah hood to so many black women I met, but they had their own agendas.

I cried for the knives in my back, put there by supposed "friends" and "sistahs" who had not a clue how to love, how to feel, how to have a healthy relationship, even with another sistah. I cried because I kept looking for what was present in those unhealthy sistah relationships. I cried because I could not take the knives out of my back and slam it into theirs.

I cried because I knew, I knew in my heart of hearts that the next Sistah who came calling for help and friendship, I would help, and I would take a knife in my back when I least expected it.

I cried because I thought I deserved it to help them heal. I cried because I really really missed my Sistah friends at home. But I couldn’t call them...not tonight. Tonight was reserved for those issues I was wrongly renting headspace to and needed desperately to evict. I knew the "Nah Nah" Sistahhood would cuss me out lovingly for allowing such madness.

I cried for the little girls inside these women, who needed their daddies and wanted mommies who would protect them from harm. I cried for the little girls inside these women who went looking for daddy and thought they found him in a thug and that sex equated to love.

I cried for the babies born to these little girls/women who would repeat the cycle.

I cried because hurt had no place to go except deeper into the pain that caused it in the first place, and when it gets there, the hurt wakes you up, and screams at you, "I’m Here Ademide, I ain’t forgot you".

I cried because it was too late, I cried because it was time.

I cried because my soul knew that I didn’t’ know that my soul knew everything I needed to know.

I cried a soulful cry tonight and it felt so good.

I cried because it was so cleansing and so right.

It felt so very, very bad

In the midst of my crying, I felt my freedom coming like a freight train.

Because unlike all the other times I cried

Tonight I cried for the very last time. From now on, everyone else does.

Circa 2004

My eternal thanks to Iyanla VanZandt whose book "Yesterday I Cried" was my inspiration and impetus to healing this "in the moment" time.