I Thought Wrong Then Learned Right

I am a student at heart. I love to find lessons in everything. And I just love to learn about things I don’t know about.

I know a lot of random facts because of this reason.

Years ago I watched an entire gender assignment surgery process and recovery in Thailand on IG Live over a 2 week period because an actress I follow put it out there. I knew nothing about the process before I started following and learned so much in the process. I watched tears and pain and gained so much understanding during that time and process. I am not an expert on it now but I do have an understanding, empathy and compassion about it.

I followed Bassey Ikpi in the late 2000s and have always credited her for opening my mind about mental health. She was open about hers and I had no experience with it but the way she writes takes me in. I feel every word she writes like it is happening to me. She detailed her experiences in such a way that gave me so much empathy for anyone going through any mental health crisis. Many years later when I experienced my first anxiety attack I remembered her words and felt comforted. Yes, I was terrified to experience something so new and foreign to my body but I got through it because I was able to identify it because of what I learned from Bassey.

This who I am. I learn and I apply. I thought everyone did this but life reminds me that they do not.

We have come a long way since the late 2000s. Mental health is on every television show, there are commercials about it, billboards, you name it. I just knew the world viewed it differently now. I thought wrong. I shared with a trusted group about something I identified as a mental breakdown episode because I remember how Bassey described it. They brushed it off as something else because of their discomfort. I wasn’t ready for that. I believe in safe spaces and the worst feeling is believing you are in one and realizing that you actually are not.

I am not a fan of my equilibrium being fucked with and this did it. It throws me in a tailspin when I realize that not everyone is like me. Welcome to life Sis. It took me a minute but I recovered and came back to center after I processed it all.

It made me think about how my first reaction when I am told about something I may not know about is to search my memory bank and see if I have learned about it in the past. If I haven’t, I offer encouragement and kind words while I research it. I would never brush it off as something else because of discomfort. I cannot imagine someone considering a gender reassignment surgery coming to me with it and me brushing it off. I watched a human being cry daily as they recovered from one. My soul tells me that compassion and love are what they are asking for and that they found a safe space in me to bring it to me.

I cannot and will not let the world change me.

Life is about learning and I will continue to learn and grow and apply.

And I learned to vet my safe spaces with even more of a fine combed tooth cause Sis, we ain’t got time to be off kilter.