Dear Queen:
I'm no expert on life, love, relationships, or religion. I just know pain when I see it.
I, too, have felt its familiar harness close to my mind, heart, and soul--the pain's gripping circulation grappling at all of who you are. My heart breaks most days thinking of you crying yourself to sleep at night. I often wonder if one day the hurt will seem just too hard to bear and you will decide tomorrow is not worth witnessing. I wish there was something I could do to make it all stop. To make you feel like you could wake up and this would all be over, but I can't.
Just let me tell you what I know to be true.
Life will sometimes make you feel as if you will be broken irrevocably. Situations will come along frequently without warning to make you lose sense of yourself, to make you feel lost, to make you feel miserable…even desperate at times. You will begin to settle in with worthlessness whispering in your ear. It will disturb you at every waking moment and taunt you until you listen. You will flail and scrape for shame the glue holding the remnants of you together.
You will live and breathe out of emotions that will take its toll on you and you won't even recognize yourself.
Dear Queen, that's not you. None of that is you.
Somewhere along the lines you've developed life patterns, more like love patterns, of worry, of doubt, of anxiousness. You've acquired these false images and saw yourself in the frame. Too much time you've spent on disguised brief satisfactions of love due to typical fixations.
Too much time you've spent doubting everything because one person taught you, you weren't anything. You weren't worthy.
Dear Queen, that's not you. None of that is you.
In that moment, you didn't know it was second-rate love and the real thing you had to wait on. In that moment, you didn't give your heart permission to be trampled upon.
In that moment, you didn't know that sometimes your first source of love could be the first source of your pain.
Now you're burned and you're searching and assessing through your insecurities because you didn't know. Now you're doing things that at times you know are wrong because it's easy and it's comfortable. Because you didn't know.
Dear Queen, that's not you. None of that is you.
It's not your fault. Someone once told me, “Good people make mistakes too."
You can't do anything about what you didn't know, but you can do something with what you've learned.
Dear Queen, you're not burned because of your past, nor due to your mistakes.
You're burned because you're walking around with half of yourself knowing you're counterfeit, but you're pretending you're whole.
You can't keep trying to pass off a facade of yourself.
To him. To her. To another friend. To another relationship.
You can't keep doing that.
You'll lose them.
You'll lose yourself.
Dear Queen, that's not you. None of that is you.
Only for so long can you keep cohabitating with life in brokenness.
There is no way you can make sense of it all.
You must go through the process of becoming whole again and it won't be easy.
It will probably be the most difficult thing you will ever have to do. I don't know nor do I have all the answers. But I do know who does--God. God can reverse it all. He will rescue you in your pain, but you have to stop hiding just because it hurts.
Don't you keep missing your moment because you are worried, afraid, or ashamed. Take a chance on you today.
All those things you've dreamed about are still being worked out. There are more opportunities waiting on you. The best thing you can do right now, in this moment, is to become intimate with God by becoming intimate with yourself.
Dear Queen--It is my prayer for you that you will take the sweetest baptismal in God's love.
That you will be so enmeshed by God that you are one, purified by his grace and mercy.
And you will walk upright knowing your sufficiency by knowing His.
-xo
Dominique
Dear Queen is a series dedicated to letters from women written for themselves and other women. Have a “Dear Queen" letter or a personal essay you'd like to submit? We want to read it! E-mail your submissions to editor@xonecole.com.
This letter is written by Dominique Mack, a writer, counselor, and advocate whose vision is to help people heal through their own stories. She hails from Brunswick, GA and regularly blogs for those finding their way at: A Regular Girl Who Loves The Lord.
Featured image by Getty Images
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America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
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Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
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Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
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"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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