LaToya M. Davidson-Perez

Having also not yet watched the Leaving Neverland documentary, my opinions of Michael Jackson still unchanged, I will make my comparisons brief. There are periods in our lives where we feel violated, stripped of our innocence, used. And when we politely and sternly ask to be left alone, we are haunted still. We are left tattered, worse for wear and for a time, defeated. But at the end of the day, all we ask is for you to Leave Me Alone.

My story is not unique. I thought it was for some time, having treasured every poisoned moment. Throughout the years I was not allowed to move past the situation. I had buried the memories, the desires, the hope that I’d once felt and shared and as if on cue it and he would rear its head of malcontent. Continue reading “Leave Me Alone – Leaving Neverland” →

When possible, I try to have a cheery disposition and outlook on life. Granted those times seem to be much fewer and farther between, I still cling to the hope that I’ll reach the next summit, that the day-to-day of life won’t keep me down. And while I have a bit of a handicap, severe depression, I do try to celebrate life’s little daily wins as a way of keeping many of my woes at bay. It’s difficult, life’s difficult. Today was one of those rare days where I was so depressed that it physically hurt to breathe.

I recently found myself thinking about the past. I’m guilty of looking more backward than I do forward. This makes the present a very sad place to be. The past cannot be changed while the future has yet to unfold. However, when I revisit the past I frame and reframe the narrative, like a book shelving and re-shelving frequently taking it down to review again. To that end, there is some comfort in even the miseries of the past. It’s a fixed point in time that you know you can’t change but that you can run what-if scenarios and reanalyze what happened and how you should have handled or even avoided the situation. Continue reading “The Realities of Life” →

The very reason why I took a respite from writing is why I now return. Then too, the season is changing, and this time of year my mood takes a definitive and sometimes unwelcomed shift. What I’ve discovered, however, is that as I get older the more that I start to understand myself.

Honestly, age and time provide a sense of clarity that is not often found in one’s youth. That isn’t to say that that wisdom just falls into your lap. I’m guilty of being insane. Specifically, there has been a person who has been in and around the periphery of my life for about a decade who never should have been. My naivete and inexperience allowed me to explain away why he was allowed to remain after February 20th, 2010. Let me be clear. Even now, I have and will likely always have deep affection for this person (the version of him that I fictitiously built in my head), but the caveat is that there are pieces of delusional insanity inside of all of us.

This isn’t going to be some tantalizing manifesto on past transgressions. Nor is it meant to be a male-bashing fest. Breakthroughs hurt. Life hurts. S— happens. We make mistakes, and at some point, we hope to learn from them. Well, you either learn, or you’re destined to repeat them. And then you die. Continue reading “Introspective Retrospect” →