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- Quarantined with a Purpose??March 23, 2020
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- Quarantined with a Purpose??
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"Sometimes the fastest way to get back in the game
is to expect something from yourself again"
- Brendon Burchard, Author of High Performance Habits
That's what my girlfriend asked me yesterday and honestly, I didn't know how to answer her.
Throughout my years on this earth - not that many, but more than a lil bit - I've attached myself, my identity, to my ability to do or achieve something. I've always been a dependable, loyal, shy people-pleaser trying so hard to fit in wherever I went. I always sought to be included in something that involved a group of people because although I have 2 sisters, I wasn't around them as a child. I spent a lot of time at home alone, because my mom was a single parent who worked 10-12hr days. Now, I know a lot of people who have found their identity way before me, with less of an opportunity that was provided me, and maybe that was my problem.
I spent most of my childhood looking for others' approval, and that bled into my time at college and into the relationships I'd formed. I guess you could say I had developed a false sense of popularity due to my ability to change myself like a chameleon according to my surroundings, which I had developed as a kid. I moved with my mom to West Virginia in the 3rd grade. I was the only black kid in my entire grade from the day I got there until the day I graduated high school. 9 years, with the small exception of 7th grade year where there was another black girl in the grade that avoided me simply because she didn't want to be expected to date the only other black kid. I faced a lot of times of self doubt and hatred of my skin simply because well, I wasn't seeing much of myself. My only saving grace were the summers where I spent my time in South Carolina with my extended family of about 15-20 first cousins from my mom's side of the family or in D.C. - my birth city- where my dad's side of the family lived. Even though they were my family however, I didn't feel like I belonged. No matter where I would move, that feeling of not belonging followed me.
But that's because I didn't realize the value of what she had gifted me and what my childhood had awarded me. I decided that it was time to change my perspective - yes this is all a recent development, so see me in 6 months ha. The fact that I feel like I haven't had an identity, yet I've accomplished a lot more than I even dreamed of as a child, shows how much of disguised blessing it has been. Everything, I have done up until this point in my life has been basically how I've lived high school - which was doing just above good enough to be seen but never my fullest. It's not that I haven't had an identity, it's that I've OUTGROWN the identity that got me by as a kid. I can CHOOSE who I become, I can CHOOSE the man I want to be, the boyfriend I want to be, the friend, the brother, the son, etc. I have the ability and awareness to become the identity I want to craft. And I know I can do that... because I've been unintentionally doing it my entire life. So now, it's time to be more intentional. And because of this quarantine that we are living in, I am forced to sit down, and BE that person. But that's only if I give myself the love and attention that I've neglected doing for so long because I had attached myself to what I was DOING, rather than just WHO I WAS.
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