August 30, 2015

I could see myself sitting on the steps in front of our old apartment in Hurt Park, a low-income housing project. Everything was in place as I remembered it. Across the parking lot and the street was a very long fence leading to a bunch of train tracks in the distance. Norfolk-Southern trains run through the city all the time. But instead of trains this time, I saw water. Vast amounts of water.

This wasn’t river water or even lake water. This was the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean found its way from the coast of Virginia about four or five hours away to the parking lot and sidewalks of Hurt Park. However, I noticed that not every part of Hurt Park was drowning in big sea water. Just the area where I grew up.

It made perfect sense. There was so much pain and trauma tied to that apartment. I have told the story many times verbally and in written form. Unfortunately, it is a common story. Little brown girl violated in a few different ways that unravels her very being a hundred ways and she spends almost two decades trying to mend the wounds of several years of sickness.

However, this story feels different this time. This dream called in the water. Yes, water represents the emotions and clearly, there was an overflowing of emotions that mixed love and fear, which is like oil and water, but this ocean was there to cleanse. It was there to purify. And then...

I saw a very handsome dark-haired light brown-skinned man looking at the ocean from where it started before it reached me at my childhood home. His hair was black and straight and reached to his shoulders. He turned to me without saying a word. He began to guide me across the ocean waters.

We weren’t swimming. We were moving, gliding across the water like dolphins, like fish. I saw two huge dark whales come up and over the water back into its depths as we glided across. We were in mid-air at times and gliding across the top of the water at other times.

While all of this may sound fun, at some point, I yelled, “I am not having fun!” And that’s the truth, when I am navigating my way across deep feelings of anxiety, frustration, hurt, worry, and fear. However, my brother was guiding me. At some point, it did become fun. We raced a little bit. We never paused though. I noticed that. We never stopped. I complained a little bit along the way, but I never stopped. We kept going until we reached the temple.