Photo by Adeline Alanis
For years I’ve exploited my pain as a foundation for others to feel sane in their sorrows. I’ve searched for ways to prove that turning pain into power is possible. Like look, here’s a girl from South Chicago who has been raped, robbed, and beaten, who felt broken and scarred through circumstance and she’s still standing, so can you. It’s become a scarlet letter that I’ve worn proudly for years, masking my own mania in order to inspire the next generation of hurt individuals to feel normal within their chaos. Art had become a catalyst that I used to express my mind without actually owning my problems as a problem. Grief and sorrow were apart of me, I was prone to misery through experience. It was just what I had to deal with and while I went through it, I’d have to find resilience in order to come out on the other side looking like a warrior.
Fact of the matter is, my normal was never normal. People say that God gives his hardest battles to his strongest warriors. However, God blesses the righteous and sends struggles and trials to those who who need refining. (2 Cor. 1:6) God wasn’t sending me trials because I was His strongest soldier, He was sending me trials because I was accepting life’s struggles as a way of life. Never changing who I was because I thought that pain was apart of the life I was meant to live. Imagine being so good at mastering chaos that you don’t even flinch when it arises. God didn’t want me complacent in my misery, He wanted me to give it to Him to handle. I was so used to maintaining His tests and never changing who I was in the process. The fact is, I needed to wake up and realize that God is always in control. He wasn’t blessing me with hardships, He was testing me to relinquish my control and when you deal with trauma so often as I have, you have a tendency to cope with and mask things a lot better than other people do.
I am no longer oblivious to my actions in the matter. The arrogance of someone who’s been beaten down over and over again yet they still find the grit to stand up tall to take more. God wanted me to tap Him in to take over. God wanted me to relinquish the weight of burden and take the sidelines while He took the winning shot. Sometimes we have to sit things out. It’s okay to rest and take the back seat every once in a while. Imagine you’re on a road trip with a friend who has been driving for 10 hours straight and although you’ve been offering to take over and allow them to rest a bit, they refuse. They become delirious and unpredictable. They start missing exits and dozing off at the wheel, endangering themselves and everyone in the car because they refuse to relinquish the control of being in control. YOU CANNOT BE A SERVANT OF GOD AND A MASTER OF YOUR OWN UNIVERSE. (Isa. 45:5-7)
I can recognize now the many ways that God had been asking me to take over, yet the pride in my heart to be the savior and the hero blocked me from reaching my full potential. I’d held onto these hardships like a badge of honor and where I knew that God had gotten me through these conflicts I started resenting Him for continuing the battles I was in. I had acted out and become a person that I was so ashamed of, ruminating in the chaos that felt so comfortable. It was a bad cycle of circumstance, mania, and shame, over and over again. I was on a spinning roller coaster of emotions that held me captive for two decades. My mind was so caught in this pattern, that I truly believed was normal while simultaneously making this normal apart of my brand. I wish I could hug the young girl that experienced so much at such a young age, that laughed at her trauma like it was a comedy show not realizing that I was the butt of the joke.
Sometimes when you’re built to be so strong, being soft seems like a weakness. You hold these ideas of what strength looks like and although in solitude you may be a mess, your exterior to the world NEEDS to show resilience. The vulnerability I have given to all of you, through art and acts of service have truly saved my life. Had I not had the outlet of transparency throughout some of my hardest times, I don’t believe I would have made it this far. I am thankful that I have been able to show my weaknesses, my faults, my unhealthy behaviors and my shame on a public forum which has forced me to be accountable to those who have listened with kind ears and open hearts. It has been a pleasure to hear the stories of those who have struggled like me and have found solace in my story, your stories and words of encouragement have kept me going. Despite my strong exterior, there have been many times I have debated taking my own life in order to save myself from myself, but to be considered a role model and the responsibility of leadership that has been placed on me throughout this journey really helped me to persevere and endure whatever the next day would bring. I am not perfect and I could never do this alone, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with me when I needed you all the most. I promise you, the best is yet to come.
This is a new era of freedom that will no longer stand on pain or power but on peace and clarity. God has placed an opportunity for me to just stand in the comfort of acceptance, acceptance of who I am while not in control but as a servant to just LIVE. I don’t want the power of leading any of you, I want you all to see a woman who has given her life to the service of others but I first need to be of service to God and then to myself. I cannot lead without leading by example. I cannot serve without first serving God. That means making a priority of placing myself in spaces of love, compassion, appreciation, and faith. Now as I walk in the clarity of the Holy Spirit, I can see how I allowed myself to stay in toxic environments surrounded by toxic people who disrespected me and my boundaries for so long. I spent decades trying to compensate for the inability to save my sons father that I tried to save everyone who I felt needed saving. I AM NOT JESUS, IT IS NOT MY JOB TO SAVE ANYONE. (Ac. 4:12) Although I would love to see the world fall into the serene tranquility of true and honest freedom, I understand that not everyone will understand or accept my truth as their own. Everyone has to find their own space of content within themselves, where they are forced to reconcile with their past and relinquish the act of control over their future. True freedom lives in the present moment. (Gal. 5:1)
Today I introduce the new and improved XOCHI, who just IS. I’m thankful for the space you all have allowed me to have and hold but I offer you a space of your own. I don’t want you to be held in the what if’s or the how come’s, just in the I CAN’s and the I WILL’s. We all deserve to know and love and respect ourselves, for who we are, what we went through and the person we’re becoming. We’re all allowed to change and develop and move differently as life is not meant to be a cycling roller coaster of the same old shit. Try the new thing. Exit the bad things. Never fall into the lie that you’re only meant to be one thing.
Finding yourself takes courage, lets do this TOGETHER.
God loves you and so do I,
XOCHI