freedom is tricky

Wetting my quill after quite a real dry spell here. Bear with me. I know you will.

I initially came to write about something else, knowing full well I’ve written about it before. But, when I’ve written about that thing before, even though it’s been received so incredibly warmly, I’ve become repulsed by my own intense level of authenticity and deleted it!

They say it’s good to “be so prolific that you don't recognize yourself”. I guess my writing has always been that way. Growing up in foster care I developed such a hard impenetrable mask to survive. I had to pretend down was up and play along with a very false narrative of my own life in so many ways.

To everyone in the community I lived in I seemed only optimistic and probably very wunderkind pollyanna, if you will. Happy-go lucky. And I was! And I am! But there was so much more that was repressed for survival. If you looked into my journals, a place where I was as unabashedly honest as my mind could handle, I was very angry, sad, rageful, hurt… Lots of pages ripped through with my pen, and lots of tears. The voice in my childhood journals was not one anyone heard (well, except one truly horrifying time it was read and then later shredded by my foster mother but that is a different story). That voice was really necessary for me-- as a way to be able to keep myself. Keep me. Keep what I realized I had left of myself and help me figure out what was most important to hold on to going forward. To keep Tiyawnda. Lots of people called me Tia before I was ever in care, I want to clear that up-- and I don’t hate the name Tia (I don’t like “Tia McGregor” anymore really). But after I was put into care, the name Tiyawnda became sort of a joke, a representation of all my sick mother’s silly morbid ghetto mistakes. I’ve always loved my name-- Tiyawnda Karina Precious McGregor, and I always felt a little cheated that it somehow just became this shameful joke. I had adults and caregivers say to me growing up, “you’re lucky you have “Tia McGregor”-- that’s a good name! You can just get it changed to that you know…Your mother spelled it wrong- it doesn’t make sense”. I’ve always thought my name was pretty. Tia feels like an affectionate nickname for people who really know me and love me like that-- but my name is in fact Tiyawnda-- there’s no joke, and it IS spelled correctly. I journaled to keep Tiyawnda-- Tiyawnda who truly loved her mother and didn’t really want to laugh about her with foster parents and staff for whatever “inappropriate” gifts she had given me: fishnet thigh highs, a toddler size t-shirt, or a tween size training bra when I was 16 and had very, very giant tits. I journaled to keep the parts of myself I felt I was just not allowed to be in order to survive such a bleak situation.

Although the voice in those journals is not one people would recognize, it is certainly mine. However surprising to others or even to other versions of myself, however prolific, it is my voice. And so, all that to say, the voice of my writing takes a prolific tone maybe in part because that voice was honed by writing unspeakables in my diary so much.

The writing I did outside my journal was always fun. Often brutal and absurd comedy, worlds away. After leaving care and towards the end of University, what with social media and politics and culture, I began writing a decent amount of… creative non-fiction? Cultural criticism? I felt I had less to write about in my journal because I had less to escape now that I was out of care. I started writing about the world! I mean I always was, I think it’s impossible for people to write about anything but “the world” in some way... But I began writing sort of direct commentary on our shared reality in my voice that I had honed journaling. The recklessly honest voice from my journal that thrived on as much brutal honesty as my brain could handle began to emerge publicly.

We’re back to why I am sometimes repulsed by and scared of the things I write. Why I delete them even though I do know on some level they are good, and moving and helpful to people. It scares me to see that voice so public! Even if it’s not angry. Even if it’s just something tender about how much I love my mother. It’s just always been a voice that has had to be secret for survival. But as they say for trauma survivors, especially those with c-ptsd, the tools that helped you survive will not help you thrive.

It’s a shocking thing to wake up and realize that the time of freedom you spent years wishing and crying for at night is really here. I am free. The voice inside me can go wherever it wants, and speak to whoever it wants, about whatever it wants.

When I first left care and was in University I pretended to believe I was free, but knew I wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy for me! I was being as honest as I could with myself, but there were some pretty significant things I wasn’t quite ready to admit. I think I hoped reality would change and I wouldn’t have to journal about the hard truths because they’d just sort themselves out. I was free after all. From the violence! I can get water at night, I don’t have to use the rusty foster kid cutlery, life is dope. How couldn’t it be with all these nice new trustworthy University friends! And I was so lucky and had so much to be grateful for, so many kids in care don’t have the chance or find the resources to pursue a post-secondary education.

I found myself in a really terrible scary romantic relationship. I hate to slander, and this person did give me direct orders to never write about them… but this really is more about ME than them. I was being treated so terribly. Like shockingly comically bad, for a long time. And after a certain point I couldn’t bring myself to journal about it. I didn’t want to admit how trapped and abused I was...still...even though I was out of foster care! I really didn’t realize how much the pollyanna mask had fused to my true flesh face. I was still somehow hoping my old foster parents would *suddenly magically* become people that treated me a lot better, now that I was out of foster care, and wasn’t a burden, and had done everything perfectly right. And similarly I hoped that my boyfriend would just suddenly become a nicer person and stop being so cruel. I hoped that navigating how to have a post-CAS-1hr-visitation-centre relationship with my biological mother would suddenly be simple and not worth losing sleep over.

Orphans in literature are generally portrayed as naive or overly optimistic, why? I wish we were talking in person, haha, so this could be a conversation, I’m suddenly self conscious about talking AT YOU FOR SO LONG...but, I think it’s because they have to “get by on the kindness of strangers/others”. I think this is one of the more accurate stereotypes… but I think there’s something missing. I do see the “good” in some very “bad” people. I learned to as a child, to find warmth. Lots of us did. This doesn’t mean I don’t see “bad”. The bad is really loud and clear. As a child there’s often nothing you can do about it, though. It’s not that foster children/orphans/any displaced children are naive and don’t see the bad in the world, rather that they see that bad and think it’s manageable. I was aware of the bad and was very cautious, and got very good at trying to manage the bad while soaking in the good.

Breaking up with that boyfriend happened to coincide with me finally being able to admit how truly cruel my childhood abusers were without fear, without sugar coating, or excuses. I was able to start journaling again. Not as voraciously as I once did, but I did more, slowly.

I’m so ashamed of getting into old abusive dynamics because it truly feels like I’m letting down the child inside me who went through so much and couldn’t wait to be free. It feels like I’m betraying her by squandering my time and adult freedom to be treated badly by my shitty boyfriend or whoever. Getting to a place where I am not too ashamed of myself that I can journal somewhat regularly again has been difficult. And it’s involved admitting to myself that there were still so many ways I was being really hurt by people I wanted to see the best in, and whose demons I thought I could manage.

My partner and I moved over the summer, just the two of us. We were previously living with roommates. We have space now and I feel so safe, I’ve never felt so at home. Well, I have: in old memories before being placed in care. We’re living in East York, not far from the apartment I lived in with my biological mother as an infant/young child. That is to say: I don’t live far from my childhood home. Not the, “sad cockroach infested apartment with sheets for curtains that Nataša could barely keep up with except for sometimes when she’d clean too hard for too long proving she’s just kinda crazy, and because of that as well as many other reasons, home isn’t a good place for Tia McGregor” home. Not that place, but simply…my childhood home. There’s a park really close to our new place that I remember going to with my daycare, and it feels special to be back. That idea that all the conditions surrounding my childhood with my biological family before care are sad, are tainted, or are simply the gruesome backstory of the orphan given a better life by white saviours is so damaging and offensive. The idea that my early childhood with my mother was objectively sad and twisted, or that my mother (in the present) is someone who it would be best for me to “cut contact with for my own good”, because “some people just can’t be helped/I just have to let go/put myself first and have a wedding” is often projected onto me and it’s so soul sucking. Especially in a world where corporations and ignorant narcissistic people are praised for their empty virtue signalling declarations about mental health.

I remember being 8 years old on Dec 31st 1999. I was in grade 3 and I was on a visit— with an old “foster family”. This isn’t at all common for foster children, to visit with past foster parents, but this foster mother had wanted to keep in touch with me— this was my first foster mother who had a large hand in my becoming a foster child. I remember standing outside of their townhouse near Broadview & Danforth with other neighbours and thinking about how the adults were pretty worked up about “2000”. It is cool. 2000. 2000. I thought about what the next “cool” year would be…2002…palindrome, pretty cool….2010…meh…2012 seems inherently cool/mysterious for some reason but I don’t know why…ah, of course 2020, of course. I’m sure there will be lots of 20/20 vision jokes, or maybe no one will want to take something so low hanging, I don’t know. I secretly wondered where I’d be in 2020. It seemed scary, somehow rude, even, to think about. I had recently learned that my current foster parents were considering moving their home/work to a small rural town with barns and cows and shit a few hours away from the city, where my foster mother had grown up. She was pregnant, a miracle baby, due soon, and they wanted to raise their child “out of the city”. So, maybe, in a year, I thought, I wouldn’t be in Toronto anymore, but this “Campbellford”. Why bother thinking about or mentioning 2020…but eeeeven still, I thought, if I were to think about 2020, I think I’d want…to be back in Toronto. Because truth be told, I don’t really want to leave. But who am I to say that? What right do I have? I’ve accepted my mom is just crazy, I can rest assured she loves me but she’s just not okay, so it’s not like I can live in Toronto with her, she doesn’t even have a home most of the time. Maybe a new foster home in Toronto? But, I’m just really getting settled with my current foster family I don’t want to have to start again…even though it does get worse every day lol... My Nana really loves me but she’s too old and has already struggled so much in life to have to raise another child (let alone what is most likely another problem child). My father isn’t stable enough to take care of me and I don’t really want that anyways…and his sisters, my aunts, that would be so great but, well there’s just no way CAS is gonna let that happen. My first foster mother made that clear about my dad’s side, I was to be kept away from that “violent Jamaican culture” as much as possible! And my old foster family? Well they still live right, here, in Toronto, but I DEFINITELY don’t wanna go back to living here, I hated it… truly miserable. Wait a second, why am I even on this stupid fucking weird visi— HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM ED THE SOCKKKKK!

Anyways, my secret new year's wish was to be living in Toronto in 2020. And here I am, in East York, on the ideal timeline.

Something that has really helped me in my healing with c-ptsd is a book called “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”, by Pete Walker. I really recommend it. In the book there’s a list of things of which to remind yourself when you’re feeling pretty down. One that has been so helpful, illuminating, and soothing to me is: “You can pick your own friends, and you don't have to like everyone”. It seems so simple but has made and continues to make such a difference. I'm allowed to play with who I want to and I am allowed to be close to the people I want to be close to.

The night before we moved to Campbellford I was laying awake in my bed quietly humming sweet Mariah Carey melodies while grappling with and trying to suppress deep difficult truths, as one does (deep truths I wouldn’t even put in my diary right away). I desperately didn’t want to move from Scarborough. I had to miss the last day of school, meaning I had to miss the big assembly-- where I had actually gotten the final student of the month! “Most improved”. Ah. A gentle sting. Started from the bottom now we’re on the way to Campbellford. I was laying in bed, there was still some very faint light in the sky, and I heard the voices of some girls from my school, a few years older than me. Very cool black girls who always laughed and sang at recess and let me join once or twice too. I remember once after my foster mother did a really shit job of braiding my hair, one of the girls whose voices I thought I could hear outside asked me, teasingly with a lot of love, if a white woman did my hair. I was only a little embarrassed. I knew it wasn’t my fault. I told her yes, and she told me if I wanted I could probably come to her house sometime and her mom would do my hair for me! I came home and brought it up to my foster mother— I will never forget the sharp cold angry offended dismissive tone of her response.

The voices outside were riding bikes and laughing and trying to carry these big speakers that my foster parents were getting rid of and had left out on the curb for anyone to take. They sounded like they were having so much fun. Tomorrow was their last day of school and I bet their whole summer would involve fun nights like tonight. I knew that where I was moving to there would be nothing of the sort! I didn’t realize it then, but of course CAS wanted to move me away from cool pretty lively black girls who liked to ride their bikes around and sing.

But, it’s 2020. I’m back in Toronto. And everyday I remind myself that I am free to play with whoever I want to.

Freedom is tricky. I think we have to constantly remind ourselves of our freedoms and our truths and our dreams because they are insidiously easy to forget. And when we can’t clearly see and follow these things in ourselves we will inevitably get tangled up in someone else’s, believing others’ limitations to be our own. I’m learning to be not so afraid of sharing my own authentic voices and desires.

The thing I initially came to write about seems much less interesting now.

Thanks for reading <3

drops quill