AbenaAsWell's Blog

I have always been into a certain level of experimentation. This day was no different. I was in a down and out place But that is another blog and another time. I was finally FREE and I made these great new girlfriends. We'd become instant friends in this struggle we were in. Three Divas. One smoked weed, that's me always on the fringes but never plunging in. J was a dancer and I always marveled at how she had no problem in using her body to get what she wanted. I also learned that the main folks complaining about strippers are jealous. Then there was Y who was older than us but none the less a partner in our crime. This day started out no different, we got up and got our kids washed up and off to school. The day ended no differently. The children returned home we fed them bathed them and sweetly tucked them in. The only difference was the secret is that we engaged in forbidden behavior while they were at school. For some reason none of us had anything in particular to do that Friday. It was a sweltering hot August day. We decided to have some fun. My sister J and I gathered the money to make the run She became my sister and remains to this day. Well the walk it was only two blocks away. Of course we had to get our hair right, our clothes right because we were going to the spot. The spot is like the Mecca of the hood. Everyone goes to or knows someone at the spot. All of them silky in varying shades of black to brown to yella. Flashing glistening jeweled, gold and platinum teeth. When you have been smiled at by diamond encrusted gold teeth it is quite an experience. For all you ladies that are too upstanding or self-righteous to engage in such folly I pity you. You have not been charmed until a man with $10k in teeth and $10k in his pocket has his driver take you home in his $40k car Or better yet to the mall. I like those trips too. I was 31 I had only known good boys. I was separated from my husband and this was the first free summer I ever had. It was the first year all of my children were in school. But, those beautiful sun-kissed brothers have caused me to trail off again. We were talking about my girls and I and our forbidden taboo. I grew up going to church and all my relatives and their friends found their way in and out of church. So this was a big deal. I didn't even see marijuana until I was 18. I saw a joint but never the green on stalks So let's fast forward to "the spot" Y had acquired her taste for crack 13 years before we met her. She was a devout Muslim and her husband had turned her onto it while she was 8 months pregnant with their 3rd daughter. She was a beautiful black woman who always wore her hair and body covered. She was tall and heavy. Y and her family were from Chicago. She was well educated and working on her masters. She had endless ability to turn situations around. She was an inspirational figure. She taught me that drugs don't mess people up the lack of money and opportunity mess people up. I'm talking real sometimes we have to learn to think outside the box. J is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Her drug of choice was powdered cocaine. I had only seen it on television and previously vowed not to do it because don't you sniff that shit and it goes directly on your brain or something? Not only was she a dancer, and did very well at it, she is extremely intelligent. She sold herself short many times. I don't know quite where she picked up the habit but she introduced me to the stripper drug culture and I imagine that all of it was intertwined in the entertainment industry. Later as we brought out partying to a perfection we would meet our fellow co -horts at the strip club. They would sit there while the girls made their money to make their purchases for the night. Sometimes we rode from strip club to strip club with our boys gettin' high, and serving It is a whole culture so very different from where I came from. It was fascinating. We went to the spot and they didn't have no weed. At first I was so out of place at the spot they thought I was the police. They had crack they had powder they had NO WEED. Who the hell can run a successful drug dealing establishment with no weed? We had a strict time limit damnit We had to do our thang and get back before well we had several mitigating circumstances and the children were the main one. "No we can't wait for your homie to get back from the other liquor store, we gotta go." So there I was at an impromptu get high day with nothing to get high with. I don't drink I only smoke weed. This was supposed to be a FUN FRIDAY

I spent much of my teen years thinking about suicide. I don't really recall for what reason each time. I do know that each time it was because I felt that I had come against some peak that I could not overcome. Rather than rallying against it I felt better off dead. It was always because I felt there was something in this world that I deserved that I was being denied. And for all intents and purposes was never going to get. There was either something I fucked up, something someone else fucked up for me and of course it was forever so it seemed? And of course when these obstacles rear their ugly heads it seems that you are alone and lonely. The very nature of feeling suicidal often leads down another lonely path. The question of mental illness what black person in their right mind would admit to or want to be known as being mentally ill. There are so many perceived character and physical weaknesses that blacks are considered predisposed to why would anyone add mental illness to the mix? More often than not we don?t we suffer silently afraid that we are crazy or soon to be crazy, because it is so taboo in the African American community to admit weakness and defeat we don?t even know various differences in mental health states. Case in point there is a difference in a major depressive episode that could be triggered by a traumatic event rather than a signal of infirmity. Further the perceived infirmity may just be a series of chemical imbalances easily remedied with diet and exercise. Being depressed enough to feel like dying is not the end of the world. Suicide is the final end. I believe that European belief systems create the atmosphere for suicides. We mistakenly believe that if we don't have what we want it then we are better off dead. Perhaps we cannot easily decipher the difference between what we need and want because of the messages we receive through the media. May be it is just plain peer pressure. Keeping up with the Jones? is a great stress that even the Jones? themselves find hard to bear. We have been taught all of our lives that in order to be successful we have to obtain certain things by certain times to be whole and productive. For example a woman living in the projects is deemed as an under-achiever or a pariah on society because she is absent money or social status. Her home is considered a place to strive to be away from. How many of us strive to achieve beyond all stress so that we can leave the stench and shame of our impoverished neighborhoods behind. Another even deeper question is how many of us get to destination suburbia and never give the sisters and brothers we leave in that cesspool a second thought while giving valuable tax dollars and business to the people who need it the least? But alas that is a different story that moves us away from the point. No one would actually celebrate the fact that she is able to take nothing and turn it into something. Noooo she would be pushed to do more because if she was truly worthy and valuable she would have more... Learning to embrace ourselves in whatever state or status is another key in combating depression and alas suicide. Recently two famous black men committed suicide that really seemed to have it going on recording executive Shakira Stewart and actor De?Angelo Wilson. Both at what we feel is the pinnacle of success but something was still missing and it was missing enough for them to abandon all rational thinking and perhaps the lack of acceptance of ourselves is at root here as well. When you have everything and yet feel like you don?t have enough to live for, that says a lot in itself. What is fueling that emptiness and what will it take to leave the Europeans to embrace their culture and for us to embrace ours. Hell what does it take for us to even try and find our culture? My teen and early 20's suicidal preoccupation was thwarted by the belief that I would go to hell when I died and therefore be in a place worse than what I was FOREVER! Now at 39 I am in a new place and at a point of self-actualization. A new place of world realization... In part just embracing my black self made a significant change in my life. Not feeling myself or my circumstances are obstacles to overcome makes it easier to release self doubt when I hit a brick wall that I feel insurmountable. Americans measure success with stuff and not character. And black Americans in particular have a long history of spending our way to acceptance. It seems no one has arrived unless they have the most stuff. I mean who sends their children to school each morning so that they can grow up and follow their dreams? No! We send our kids to school so they can get good jobs to get away from themselves because we see self at various stages of lack. When we meet obstacles that seem to prevent us from achieving our mission we sometimes go spiraling into the depths of despair. Or heaven forbid when we reach the plateau of the amount of stuff we feel we can get or maintain we feel this is the end. We rob ourselves and those around us of the main ingredient... The human spirit. http://abenadiva.blogspot.com

It's time for America to pay attention to the impact its laws are making on its citizens and its wallet. Currently the United States has inadvertently created a new welfare state. Not the usual suspects which include poor women and children clinging to government welfare rosters in lieu of earning an honest wage, but able bodied men and women who perpetrate non-violent crimes. Mandatory minimums and the end of Federal parole have left America with a $40k per person bill and many of these low level offenders will spend decades imprisoned, much longer than sex offenders, or murderers simply because of congressional imposition of mandatory minimums. Americans pay more money housing non-violent criminals than reform in direct conflict with the goals of imprisonment outlined by the U.S. sentencing commission and the eighth amendment. Currently non-violent drug offenses make up of the total federal prison population. Many of these offenders can be rehabilitated to become productive members of society. Instead they are sentenced to prison terms that simply warehouse and do not reform. They have been sentenced to hefty terms under the guise of public safety however more and more people are trying street drugs at levels that seem to prove that drug dealers are not the problem. In fact many studies prove that drug prevention begins at home. The biggest factor in preventing youth drug abuse is in fact parents. Longer prison sentences increase recidivism, meaning that the longer men and women are incarcerated their chances for breaking the law increases. Shorter prison sentences coupled with a concerted effort to provide inmates with marketable skills actually increases their chances of serving their time and returning to society as productive law abiding members. Not to mention the safety issues created by overcrowded prisons on the correctional staff charged with keeping the public safe. In fact a great alternative to correctional officers would be to change the scope and duties of these officials to provide career counseling. Perhaps providing hope and correction would keep our correctional officers safer. The staggering dollar amount needed to provide care for the incarcerated is astounding many families only have 40k to provide for an entire family. The average median income for a family of 3 is $49,888. Caring for one prison inmate is roughly 40k. This is the average cost the notwithstanding increasing healthcare needs of an aging prison population has not been completely accounted for. Since the end of federal parole in 1987 these costs are increasing at a staggering rate because men and women are serving prison sentences decades with no parole at 87% with good time figured in. What happens to these people when their families have died off and they begin to further tax an ailing Social Security system that they have not paid into? The racial disproportion aside, minorities make up 50% of the federal prison population and 12-18% of the prison population, warehousing able bodied men and women for life for a few kilos of cocaine does not make sense. We are basically providing lifetime care for people who only possessed on average $ of drugs. A person serving a 60 year sentence for 8 kilos of cocaine which has a street value of $800,000 is given $2.4 million of care, excluding any unforeseen health expenses that the geriatric population incurs. If a person is sentenced to 60 years at age 20 and serves 87% and gets released after retirement they will only have social security to rely on which they have not paid into. The bill will fall onto our children and grandchildren. Moreover, few family members will remain to support this aging prison population and they will be left to rely on government housing to supplement the meager income they draw from social security. Who pays? The public that was deemed safer by their incarceration. Federal prison reform has to make sense and it has to meet the goals of incarceration outlined in part by the U.S. Sentencing Commission as "incorporate the purposes of sentencing (i.e., just punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation); and meet the requirements of the 8th amendment which holds that Americans not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment.