Feeling Alone & The Anticipation Of Being Still To Heal

Help Is Coming, But You Must Open Your Hands

I am going to be having surgery to repair my meniscus tear in my knee, which happened in 2022.

I was in the club

I was dancing with this guy

He picked me up 

He slipped and his whole body weight fell into the side of my knee. 

I was with some “friends” everyone treated me like I was being overdramatic 

Oh, she's just being Imani.

There's nothing wrong with her 

I was in severe pain. 

I couldn't stand up. 

My leg wasn't working. 

I was limping. 

But because everyone told me I was being annoying, 

I forced myself to try to stand on that leg. 

It kept giving way.

But I gritted my teeth.

And carried on.

Flash forward years later, 

I got an MRI, and it's a complex meniscus tear I have in my knee. 

It pisses me off that I pretended like everything was okay when it wasn't 

I should have gone to A&E that night. 

But instead, I went on, I hobbled through the streets

I wanted to be easy

I went the day after, hungover

holding back my tears

I was alone

I was in so much pain 

limping around the hospital 

the doctor looked at me with no remorse and said, 

you're fine. walk it off. 

Then I ended up having to go back to soft tissues up to five times.

For the same issue.

With the same knee.

With varying degrees of support from the staff. 

When I didn’t hold back my tears.

Let myself cry the third time I was there.

They had a porter help me.

They didn’t tell me to walk it off.

They gave me crutches and painkillers.

Whereas when I tried to hold it down.

Be A Strong Black Woman

They made me feel like I should just suck it up.

I was already sucking it up

I'm holding back my tears.

Biting my tongue to swallow the pain

i bite my tongue

my mouth fills

with my own blood

i don’t know how much of this

i can swallow

i hate myself

for saying nothing

i should have told you

i was hurting me

but i thought you would notice

i love you

but you keep asking me to swallow

my pain

i can’t anymore

Going back to A&E multiple times.

I learnt something.

When you cry your eyes out as a Black Woman. 

That's when they see you.

When you can't contain how much pain you're in. 

That's when they see you. 

You don't get help when you are easy to ignore.

The first time, they should have given me painkillers and crutches. 

Now I've been offered a date for my injury to be repaired, and I wasn't happy. 

I just cried my eyes out because. 

When I thought about it.

I feel like I have no one.

I have distanced myself from my family.

Specifically, my parents, and it feels like I have no one. 

That might not be true, 

But when you're in the stage of finding yourself, 

Finding your community,

It can feel like you are alone,

Especially when you're used to never asking for help and being helpful.

I don’t feel relieved because I’m so used to swallowing my pain 

I didn’t realise how much it hurt 

Even when I express my pain, I feel like a liar 

Like I’m doing too much 

Like I’m over exaggerating 

Like I’m a beg for attention

i was in real pain and I deserved help from the start

i just feel 

i feel this feeling of isolation 

i felt this way for a long time 

i felt there was something wrong with me 

before the injury 

inside my mind 

when i was a child 

i thought i was different 

i felt i was wrong 

i couldn’t be like everyone else 

before the injury

i was already conditioned

to be a performance of myself 

to be palatable 

to be fun 

to be easy 

to be the sun 

i must be like the breeze

make people feel at ease 

but i didn’t realise i forgot to breathe 

i didn’t realise i was choking 

choking on the performance 

of me 

it makes me sad 

how many years have been lost to pretending? 

what is the truth? 

who am i? 

who am i? 

who am i? 

All I want to do is reach out to them,

To my parents,

To have them hold me,

Take care of me, but then I remember,

I remember,

How my dad kicked me out,

Leaving me homeless and alone in London,

At nineteen years old,

And when I asked him why,

Years later,

He said he thought I would come back,

After he had told me to leave.

The letter my dad gave me when I asked for help to look for housing

I remember 

My mother 

Saying it's my fault that 

My brother choked me out 

And almost killed me 

I remember every tiny cut 

That almost had me bleeding out

I have to protect myself 

I wouldn't want to reach out to them 

In my most vulnerable moment 

Knowing the pattern 

They have had throughout my whole life

Expecting anything different would make me a

Duppy

It makes me want to have so much money, 

I never have to rely on anyone ever again. 

Or better still, foster an accessible community that is within proximity to me. 

Which means leaning on people.

When I need them. 

Money can buy you support, 

But it won't bring you deep-rooted care. 

You would need to cultivate that,

That doesn't mean blindly giving to people, hoping when it's your time. 

They return the favour,

But asking for help in small ways,

So then you build trust with people.

I can conceptualise what I need to do

But asking for help

And not being the one to offer anything 

In return is hard

Unfortunately, we are not obligated to each other. 

Everyone has their own lives 

That they are trying to get through. 

What makes me really sad is that no one will love me

Like my parents should have loved me. 

Since distancing from my parents 

Or even before then

I have been relying on myself

I only ask for help when I’m literally about to fall apart 

I don’t ask for help with the small things 

Because I don’t wanna be disappointed 

I don’t want to be annoying 

I only ask when I am about to collapse,

Then at least the request feels justified. 

I have earned the right to need. 

Gathered enough evidence that my pain is legitimate.

When I got the call that

I was going to have surgery

To repair 

The Damage

The call made me ask myself the question 

Who can I rely on? 

I can ask people for help,

But I don't know in my heart of hearts 

If I truly believe they will show up 

I didn't realise, I didn't trust anyone

Until I got the call

About having surgery

I'm an open person

I tell myself, and I'll share my soul

On the stage 

On a page

All over the Internet

But that doesn't take, Trust

It's vulnerable, but it isn't asking for help

It's just placing yourself to be witnessed

But I don't trust anyone

Not that I'm in my connections with friends and thinking. 

They're gonna hurt me.

But on a fundamental level, 

I don't trust anyone to show up for me

When they do, I'm happy 

But I don't think it's something that people will constantly do

It's a one-off

I feel I must be useful to be worthy of connection

And I didn't really interrogate that till I got the call

I don't know. 

I don't know.

I feel really lonely. 

I feel like I'm going to be trapped in my body, 

Not able to move, 

Watching the world go by, 

But unable to move or be a part of it. 

It makes me not want to be here. 

I'd rather not be here than be unable to move. 

Part of me feels. 

I have struggled this long. Why not keep it up? 

Why not keep swallowing?

But I know it'll be a relief once it's healed, 

But the anticipation of being still to heal 

Is making me really sad 

Because I don't know how I'm gonna do it, and I don't know who I can rely on.

I don't know. 

I'm writing this because 

I don't know. 

I need it out of my body 

To scream into the void of the Internet 

I feel scared and alone. 

I don't know who's gonna show up 

It just hits me in my chest 

Making me look back

To every moment

I have felt alone

Like when I was 13.. I started to go to London by myself.

My dad said I was old enough 

To travel from Leicester 

All the way to London 

On my own

When I was 13 

told me that I should stop being a baby. 

Then, when I was 16

at my auntie’s house for “family” dinner 

My cousin was starting year 8, she was around 12/13

A Secondary school in London. 

Her school was 10 minutes walk from her house

Everyone was telling my auntie

That she was too young to walk alone

My dad was the most vocal, 

Saying 

It's too dangerous, she can't walk to school by herself. 

I sat there holding back tears, eating my food

Almost all of my aunts had said to me 

I was old enough to travel to London 

by myself at 13

But my cousin, now the same age I was 

Could not walk 10 mins to her school

But I was old enough 

To navigate the underground 

On my own

That's when I felt it, the difference in care 

I felt like a bastard.

Like the unwanted bastard child 

The thing I could not quite name 

The feeling of being unwanted 

While I sat there 

And ate my food

Having the clear difference of care demonstrated 

In front of me

All that rang through my ears 

is you a bastard child

Even when people do show up, 

Sometimes I just think it's out of pity, 

Not because they truly care. 

And there is nothing anyone can do or say 

That will make me believe them,

That some deep-rooted shit 

That I will need to dig out myself

It's such a deep wound to feel alone 

To feel like you can't rely on anyone. 

I know where it comes from 

I know the stories 

It roots from

i thought i was fixing it

by trying to be that space for other people, 

but i was just burying my needs 

under being what i thought people needed 

from me

Now I sit and cry because 

I don't know who 

Is that space for me 

And even if I did know 

Would I ask

You can’t be the Sun while healing 

You have to be held by the warmth instead.

I don't know 

How 

To be still 

And ask for help 

You don't get a medal for enduring 

Your body will always pay the

Price 

When you pretend you are okay 

When you are not

I don’t know, maybe I’m just trying to sound poetic