It Had to Be You
This past August was a little bit of heaven, hell, and everything in between for my family and me; life got derailed like a locomotive, and it took time before I saw the beauty in it. On my darker days, though, I often questioned my circumstances’ vicissitude and wondered, ‘why me?’
We tend to do that when we sense our worlds crumbling around us without realizing how blessed we still are. A few days ago, my mother and I reflected on our personal and collective experiences that month. Amid our conversation, the answer to my question from late summer dropped in my spirit: ‘it had to be you.’
Professionally, many changes took place, too, and I found myself at a crossroads; ‘I’ve always been an only,’ Jamila said in her song, ZORA. I knew what she meant. If I wasn’t the only, or a faction of chocolate chips someplace, I was always one to follow my heart, even if that required me to egress the crowd. The closer I get to thirty, the less inclined I am to misalign myself to fit another’s mold.
I thought of what it meant to be a revolutionary; they inspire change but first, identify and acknowledge their differences. By differences, I am not alluding to race, but something more profound; revolutionaries cannot accept living in a broken-record world. They are unafraid to speak the truth in hopes of opening the eyes of their programmed societies.
Where would we be without people like that? It always takes someone coming before us to prepare our place, and do what others wouldn’t because conforming to posited narratives was not an option. In that sense, I, too, am a revolutionary; I’ve replaced, ‘why me?’ with ‘why NOT me?’ and, ‘if I don’t, who will?’
It is a blessing to find oneself as a first or "an only;” while it can be uncomfortable, frightening, and uneasy, we are assigned these roles by choice. Sometimes, not ours, but God’s, who knows the higher selves we have yet to become, which are the higher selves He destined us to be. The blood, sweat, and tears are prices we pay as firsts and onlies, but we’re designed to withstand the storms that accompany standing out.
I have never known anyone who faced a trial and didn’t get something positive out of it; consider this: sometimes, when things “go wrong” in our lives, they’re going right. It’s called redirection.
