On Allowing Joy
The best experiences are those entirely unexpected. Perhaps it is best to count it all Joy like my Gramma used to say. Expect the unexpected in order to instigate delight. I am developing language that will be cited at the beginning of a blank page somewhere in the future. Some person tracing the crevices of their memories to decode Joy will maybe wonder what chain of events led me to sit and write the thing, or say the things that made sense and sounded so much like right that the action could not be avoided. They had to take the bait, step into the portal, down the rabbit hole - charting the patterns of Joy. I am backward engineering a roadmap of Joy. I am tracing Joy’s footsteps through the crevices of my own mind via distant, ancient and recent memories of understanding mySelf.
Life unbound by expectations does not preclude us from attempting to control or predict situations and outcomes. Oftentimes, we find ourselves leveled by feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and despair conjured from the recesses of our minds and ignited by minor inconveniences of our daily lives. First of all, if you are going to spiral on a memory, let it be erotic, blissful, wild, pleasure centric, and thumping with Joy. Attempt to stand deliberately in one of those recollections of bliss until your eyes glaze over and you find yourself staring damp lashed out of windows, recalling the sweet scent on the tip of a forever gone lover’s tongue. Your time is well spent in these still moments. Do not be frugal with the stores of your pleasure bank, they become musty and rot like too ripe fruit. Focus on the Joy, not the thing that happened next. Outcomes are the tools of patriarchy. Outcomes want you to blame Joy for Pain. Notice our desire to drive Joy out, squeeze hot itchy tears from the corners of your eyes, and call your heart stupid for bothering to recall a time when you felt Joy. Do not recoil at the sweetest memories. Surrender / allow / accept / experience / embody Joy.
My default responses to Joy for much of my life have been suspicion, resistance and deflection. I was suspicious because I held a belief born from what I experienced as the impermanence of Joy. Who sent this Joy? Why did it come to me? What will it cost me? How long will it stay this time? Am I going to make a mistake and fuck this up? Why does Joy keep leaving? Am I the only one? Who are the ruiners? Why can’t I remember what song or color was playing when the sunlight broke across his fingertips peeling a nectarine that summer in Charleston? It is impossible to fully experience Joy when you are actively interrogating it. There is something here about the suspicion toward Black people experiencing Joy as it is perceived by whiteness. And just like that white supremacy sneaks into my Joy meditation mid-thought. Fuck that.
I suspected Joy came to distract me from the certainty of much more serious emotional states like Sorrow, Despair, and Anguish. The triad of body-wracking feelings brought tangible guarantees which were expressed through ritual articulations like funerals, whoopings, fist fights, and screaming tornado arguments that ripped everything up and left the whole house still and quiet. Hollow. I believed that I could arm myself to prevent the damage of such certainty by managing my expectations and protecting myself from the repetitive shattering that marked most of my childhood. My inability to anticipate Joy led me to resent its presence. Joy was an uninvited guest that I felt called to impress and perform worthiness for. If things were ruined and Joy was a total flop, it was somebody’s fault. Did I deserve to be Joyful? Had I earned it? The nature of this unpredictability mixed with my hyper vigilance and caught me nervously exhausting every ounce of my psychic energy to will neutrality into most human interactions.
I was a nervous wreck with a cool and attractive exterior that I would learn made folks trust me with their truths. I was a child who listened intently and responded with curiosity and wonder. I liked being asked questions and mostly engaged with adults to create opportunities to share my perspective on things and get feedback from those who had been on the planet longer than me. As a result, I was often chastised for not staying in a child’s place, or behaving as if I were grown. I watched language bloom and rot at the teeth of too many folks with the same mouth as mine. Painted lips I had spent a lifetime admiring could hurl Baby Love to Motherfucker in the span of one Miller Genuine Draft, or eleven Budweisers. I learned to read the room and watched for shifts in cadence and volume. My nervous system learned co-regulation by intuiting inflection and intonation, speech patterns and body language. Braille, but for feelings. These coping mechanisms left me in a cycle of bracing and compartmentalizing. While codependency grew from this garden and sometimes choked out the fruits of my childhood, I am a better gardener today. I have come to understand that my Joy is that; sun ripened tomatoes in summertime, contraband salt shaker from the kitchen table in my back pocket, warm seeds running down my forearm, rich black soil beneath my fingernails kind. My Joy is worth saving, documenting and banking the seeds, culling out the brambles of Sorrow, Anguish, and Despair.
It is the absence of Joy, the farewell that invites despair and sorrow to lurk and loom over the mundanity of routine and existence. We understand its impermanence in our cells. Our laughter remembers, the tear ducts know which recipe to brew when Joy comes and when it leaves. There is no amount of preparation that can anticipate when they will spring forth, or leak, or swell and trace our cheeks. Our palates surrender to the body’s recipe. Some of us are too starved to imbibe the nectar. It is soiled in the crystalized salt of despair.
