LIVING IN COLOR

I didn’t search for God; he was given to me, wrapped and decorated in a religious fabric. Passed down from the hands of my grandma, grandpa, my mother, and then me. God was an essential part of my upbringing, like many other religious folks.  But we weren’t like other religious folks; we didn't keep our teachings in-house.

 “Go therefore and make disciples” was our God-given assignment from the gospel Matthew brought directly to your door. Following this command meant the reward of a paradisiac future where the dead would be brought back to life; there’d be no sickness, no death, just blissful harmony between animals and man, living and serving God under his son. It was my favorite incentive. It erred on fairytale, but my faith at that time just knew it to be true. And the threat of eternal death and destruction should we stray from the path God laid out for us in the Bible was a less desirable alternative.  It was a pretty steep juxtaposition, but that was the premise on which our beliefs were hung. 

We followed the Bible closely and read every passage from front to back annually.  During weekly meetings, demonstrations, and large gatherings, we’d go over bible based literature to ensure that each member understood and remained in compliance with our beliefs. They were the typical teachings of Christianity; ”You must not steal, abstain from fornication, do not partake in drugs, do not engage in drunkenness, do not murder, do not gamble, do not engage in homosexuality,” etc. But meticulous nuisances separated us from the rest. 

For instance, if one were to sin against God in any of the ways mentioned you were excommunicated from the congregation. Not to be associated with or participate in community worship or fellowship until you’ve proved your repentance to God as determined by the older men of the congregation. 

Socially, our beliefs were othering. It was a fact we all knew to be true, so we did well to compensate. Aside from the occasional milestone, albeit graduation, marriage, or congregational achievement, our celebrations excluded major holidays, including birthdays. As you can imagine, as a kid I found these to be the hardest teachings to follow. To me, foregoing birthdays meant practicing self-denial for what should otherwise be considered a special observation of life.  I always adored the concept, especially because gift-giving is one of my love languages. So, even though I held a brave face, the holidays as a whole were difficult for me to ignore. As I grew older, though, publicly foregoing my birthday became less hard since I always privately found a way to treat myself a bit more special that day. When I was younger, that meant wearing my “going-out” shoes instead of my usual scuffed-up “play-sneakers “. Or wearing my sparkly dress on whatever random weekday my birthday fell on that year.  Buying myself an expensive sweet or savory treat while I reflected on another year of life became my personal tradition. It was a small thing that made a big difference in how I carried the weight of self-denial.  But as a kid, few things prepare you for rejecting the piece of birthday cake your teacher offers you on your classmate's birthday. Few things ease the pain you feel when you’re removed from the classroom because they’re having a Christmas party. 

I liked Christmas and everything about it. I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I did. It was a pagan holiday, and I knew it wasn’t a biblically accurate account of the lord's birth. But people were nicer and they seemed happier. They didn’t yell when I’d come knocking on their door, and that specific warmth drew me to the winter holiday. The movie “ Home Alone" felt like an inside joke that I shared with the rest of the world, one that was funny no matter how many times it was repeated. I loved the way people decorated their homes and sang carols. The world appeared lighter and more inviting, but we declined the invitation. 

We didn’t swear or say  “bless you” whenever someone sneezed. We didn’t participate in reciting the pledge of allegiance, which almost always came with a heavy side-eye that I secretly relished in. 

“Armmoni, why aren’t you saying the pledge ?” my teacher would ask. “It’s against my religion,” I’d say in a condescending yet assured tone. This was a belief I felt strongly about not only religiously but as a black American in this country. I had a personal beef with the flag and the heinous things it enabled people to do on its behalf. Plus, it helped that students who practiced Islam didn’t recite the pledge either, so it was a less lonely experience. It felt like we were in solidarity with one another, which gave me something to talk to them about.  

We were always looking for ways to share our beliefs, even to those who held their own. It was encouraged to find an “in.”  It was common ground on which to build a foundation for possible conversion. I really just enjoyed the mutual exchange of faith even though I knew mine to be the correct one.

Although I was extroverted and outgoing, maintaining friendships was hard. We moved around a lot, and close friendships were limited to those who shared our faith. So, any extra time spent after school was out of the question for me. There were kids whose parents would let them engage in extracurricular activities, but my parents did not share that outlook. All the things I enjoyed and excelled at; track, moot court, choir, etc., were forbidden to me. Forgoing dances and proms hurt my soul, but I found ways to cope.

 The friends I had within my religion threw parties and held events where we’d dress up and have fun. Plus, I got to do things other kids weren’t at the time, like going to Paris before my senior year. I was traveling the world and preaching with my best friend. I wasn’t wanting for anything and I’d tell myself that over and over again until I believed it.  Besides, those were trivial matters in the grand scheme of our beliefs. 

We didn’t vote or participate in elections. We never involved ourselves in political affairs. My politics stopped and started with, “ Both parties are corrupt, and I already cast my vote for Christ '' which seemed foolproof until you were asked why and cursed out the minute you opened your mouth. Over time, I built tough skin. Neutrality was of utmost importance to us even when we found ourselves directly impacted. 

As a black woman, neutrality was always a balancing act. There is a thin line between neutrality and radicalization when you are a black person in America. Your existence cannot be neutral when it’s constantly policed and politicized. Your eyes cannot stay focused on scripture long enough to unsee the injustices and atrocities that happen to black bodies every day in this country. I remember hearing the news about Trayvon Martin and seeing his killer get away with his murder. In real-time, I watched the innocence leave and unbridled anger enter my classmates during a block period of geometry. Typically, in these situations, we were always encouraged to share a comforting thought from the Bible, but I wouldn’t dare offer them scripture at that time.

Besides, the same rage they felt had filled within me. Rage that I could not release via protest or solidarity posts because of “neutrality.” Wrath belonged to God and he would make it right on his own time. It was a sentiment I heard and preached to others often, but it didn’t do much to remedy the pain of this reality, nor was it sufficient enough to quiet the feelings that stir within me when I see the mistreatment of those who look like me. Color- blindness only went but so far, and it felt like another form of self-denial. Yet and still I continued to put my trust in God, as he was given to me. I trusted him enough to practice neutrality even when it hurt.

We abstained from blood, which meant the refusal of transfusions even when faced with death as a result, in compliance with his command in the Bible. A command that was often a point of contention and made us the center of much vitriol. But these were our practices, unique to us and us alone. We were to be no part of the world, to distinguish ourselves was something to be proud of. 

As I admitted earlier, my heart didn’t always align with the reasoning behind some of these practices. But as I grew older, the deeper I delved into the Bible and our teachings, it stuck, and I dedicated myself to it. Our positioning with God was special. We had a unique order of things, an organization unlike any other—a society within a society. It gave me purpose and breathed life into my ego. 

The ego of a religious person is one of the most formidable entities on this planet. It is ironclad, steeped in indoctrination, and does not leave any room for those who argue against it. It abandons reasoning and often defies logic. It rejects any inquisitiveness, and all dead ends are met with a mysteriousness of a godly nature. It is situated upon a pedestal erected by God himself according to those who sit upon it. They have found a favor that evades the rest of the world. They are the ones who have gotten life right and they are tasked with the burden of their perfect righteousness existing among the poor lost souls who they must save from eternal destruction. These poor souls who cannot use the mental faculties God gave them to distinguish right from wrong will never experience true happiness or purpose unless they are converted; anything else is fleeting and merely a ruse. They are the the spokespersons for God. And even though humans have been documented to worship thousands of deities and counting, they all claim to render judgment on behalf of the one and only true God.

Within religion, there is an inherent hierarchy like any other organization identified by titles and positions. Those who enjoyed esteemed privileges were treated differently, held high, and given important tasks and assignments. I referred to them as “the spiritual elite.” They were the celebrities among us, and I wanted to be one of them. I was willing to do whatever I could to protect the trajectory of that status. I was unreasonably scared to sin, either in thought or deed. I’d pray profusely at any improper thought, begging God to cleanse me of my affliction. I became overly concerned with perception and judged those who weren’t. I didn’t understand why some of my peers acted out or weren’t afraid to misstep and be faced with the loss of religious privilege or excommunication. I wasn’t afforded that sort of freedom. It wasn’t a gamble I was remotely willing to take. 

This was all I had. It was all I knew and inherited. A university education was not encouraged and rarely supported, so I didn’t attend one. Pursuing a creative career in music, dance or modeling was seen as a gateway to straying from God, so I completely rid myself of the possibility. My family and friends were within this religious structure, so there was nowhere else to go, and that was by design. 

I didn’t deal well with failure. As the eldest daughter, my parentification made me a chronic people-pleaser.  I carried anxiety in my body, and I was often sick with perfectionism. It was psychological warfare on behalf of God, so I endured everything it came with, including the constant nitpicking and complaints on how I presented myself. My clothes were either “too progressive” or  “ too trendy,” which allegedly caused a distraction. Between my personal style and low haircut, my physical appearance was heavily scrutinized. I’d be showered with compliments one moment, and the next be told I was too pretty to sport such a masculine look. “Why would you want to look manly ?” words spoken to me a day after a fresh haircut and minutes before being greeted at the door I had just knocked on. I was too stunned to speak so I stood there, mouth agape, thoughts jumbled as my had all but esteem vanished. It was a miracle I still managed to preach to the person at the door. I will never forget the way I was treated when I showed up as my true self. I was repeatedly misgendered at congregation meetings and lectured often. So I dialed it back and I conformed in the name of peace. I grew out my hair and dressed in a much more understated and modest way.

Still it was an uphill battle. Privileges readily given to my peers were ones I had to fight for even though I was qualified. My personhood was constantly under a microscope. I was chosen as an “exemplary example” to those coming behind me, so there was no room for error. I was reined in often and reminded of such. So I took every lick on the chin, practicing self-denial and blind compliance. As you can imagine, my self-esteem suffered greatly due to the shattering of my self-image over and over again. Despite it all, I’d pick up the pieces to rebuild myself better, stronger, and less imperfect than before. The Bible celebrates the one who endures the most. The more the battles, the more love God poured onto his strongest soldiers. I believed myself to be one of those soldiers until life grew to be more complex, and started to poke holes in the bubble I was safely nestled in. 

Scripture didn’t act as the bandage I needed it to be when my closest sibling was excommunicated. Blood relation was not taken into consideration when it came to following the protocol for these things. Anyone who found themselves in such a position was invisible, we weren’t to talk or associate with them. They were on punishment with God, and we were not to meddle. 

This protocol wasn’t new to me; my mom found herself in the same position when I was a kid. She was pregnant with my sister and wasn’t married to my stepdad at the time. It was an easy enough concept for me to understand then, but what I couldn’t understand was how my brother and I were treated. There were a few nice people who would make an effort to speak to us or take us out, but we were generally overlooked. By extension, we had inherited the sins of our mother and the consequences. Eventually, my mother was welcomed back in and it was water under the bridge. I was young, so I didn’t have much emotional stake in that aspect of an excommunication. She was my mother, and there were no rules in place for small children and their parents. But this was different; it was my teenage brother. The first thing on the planet I ever loved by choice. I kept thinking “How could I let this happen?” “Was my example not good enough?” “How could I fail so tremendously?”  It was my fault! I spent so much time with friends. I spent so much time pursuing perfection and spiritual celebrity status that I failed to give my sibling what he needed. I didn’t shield him from sin. “How could God let me miss this?” “Why would he allow this to happen?” I didn’t know how to handle this.

 I was naïve in my reasoning and arrogant. My brother didn’t need saving from sin. He needed me to be his big sister and advocate. He didn’t need a bible peddler or one of the “spiritual elites.” It is an oversight I regret till this very day.  I found myself at a standstill with the God I inherited and the community with which I served him. A rift had been sewn amongst my family, and it was the start of a series of unfortunate events that shook my world and spiraled beyond the control I had worked so hard to maintain. My sibling and I were at odds I never experienced before. I threw scripture and my love at him; I recited all the biblical talking points I knew. I mishandled him terribly. And I didn’t know how to make it right. On one hand, I was upset on behalf of God but I was also afraid of what life looked like without my favorite person. I decided to uphold our beliefs and treat him the way I was instructed to. But it was too great a burden to bear. My body betrayed me. I felt mentally ill and started to slip into the depths of a darkness the aphotic zone could not compete with. Ideations of suicide flooded my thoughts whenever I found myself on an El train platform. I was having an extreme overreaction and couldn’t manage to get a grip. The quality of my worship suffered; I wasn’t meeting my goals, so a loss of privileges followed, and that “spiritual elite status” faded into obscurity. I didn’t do anything wrong, but I was treated like it. I lost close friendships and tried hard to cling to the ones I had left.

I was so busy performing perfection that I became detached from reality. I had placed religion above one of the most precious relationships you get in this life, one forged in blood and lineage. A sibling bond broken, never fully healed.

The person I worked so hard to build over time became fully realized. I didn’t recognize this iteration of myself. Pieces of my character and individuality were bled dry and reformed into a more palatable puppet of my former self. This new image was disorienting. I was just coming into my young womanhood and I was trying to find my way. My bubble had turned elastic and started to choke me. I was suffocating, and no one was coming to save me. 

They all expected me to self-regulate like I had always done, but I was exhausted and had no steam to spare for myself. My fall from grace was a great spectacle. My lapse of strength, an unsightly stain on my reputation. My journey to recovery became an apparent inconvenience to those around me, and they moved accordingly. I was alone. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the God that I inherited. God rewards his strongest soldiers and blesses the righteous through his people. So where was he? Where were his people? And why weren’t they there for me or my family? I felt bamboozled, and I was losing my mind. I invested so much of my time and effort just to find out there was no reward for practicing perfection. My blind obedience had granted me nothing.  

So I walked away. There were few genuine attempts made to retrieve me. There was no fight from the pillars of men assigned to lift those beaten down by life. I felt like a shell of myself. I didn’t know exactly who I was or what I wanted outside of the goals that were assigned to me for my whole life.  I attached all of my self-worth and purpose to what no longer served me. I was conditioned to rely on that structure for a community, purpose, and happiness, and now it was all gone. The newfound freedom was overwhelming and nauseating. Leaving my religion indirectly meant I was choosing godly destruction, and that terrified me, but I couldn’t go back to suffocating.  The veil was gone, and I started to see life for what it was. Viewing people without a savior complex felt surreal. 

My entire worldview was shaken to its core. Starting from scratch while learning and unlearning outside of the confines of religion was intimidating. I was angry, bitter, and resentful. I hated how I was treated. I hated how my loved one was treated. And I hated the judgment I previously held for others. I loathed the idea of starting over with no community or sense of self. And most of all, I was crushed by God's silence.

I was forced into self-reflection. The deeper I delved into what I was taught vs what I experienced, the more internal conflict I faced. Things I previously accepted left question marks for me now. The God given to me became abstract. The God I spent so much time preaching about became a stranger.

Religious entities have a tendency to paint God like a benevolent barbarian, blessing those he deems worthy while watching the onslaught and suffering of the innocent. He even permits emotional distress and tragedy of those loyal to him as some sort of test of faith. They sell fear and repackage it as love, and so ensues the unhealthy relationship dynamic many have with God and religion. I eventually realized that God cannot be given to you or spoke on behalf of. My anger wasn’t with God it was at his representation and the image painted through religion. My issue was with those who have appointed themselves interpreters of the deity that is GOD; made up their definition of who he is and even assigned a gender.  

The God given to me from my grandma came with her religion, and although I love her deeply, the gift was no longer mine to keep. Despite all my best efforts to hold on, it slipped through my fingers as though I was never meant to hold it in the first place. And I had no desire to retrieve it. The God given to me belonged to my grandma and she carried him with extreme care; there are no better hands with which to be held. This iteration of God and the religious structure that came with it, simply wasn’t for me. And my departure allowed me to seek out whatever was. 

REDEFINING ROLES

Most of my life was spent peddling what I knew to be the truth until I found myself face-to-face with my own. And what exactly was my truth?  Self-discovery without constraint. Just being. Existing with imperfection and making the mistakes I’m entitled to. I was meant to be finding my purpose; living life without a purity/savior complex.

Still, the hardships I faced within a religious structure aren’t unique; many have had a similar experience, and suffered a much worse fate.  But they were hardships I had chosen. I was exercising my ”free will”. I was content with my illusion of choice. I was an ideal victim of Stockholm syndrome, ignorant to my duress. In retrospect, I can see the traps set for me and the ones I set up myself. It was no easy task to overcome deep indoctrination and the conditioning I had grown accustomed to. Changes didn't happen overnight, and redefining my life caused me to examine all the roles I played in it. 

Those roles being eldest sibling, therapist, savior, and glue to my family. In addition there were roles the world set out for me to play as a black woman. I was expected to play small and be quiet while maintaining strength, but not too much. I was expected to be just strong enough to carry the abuse and disrespect our bodies “were made” to bear graciously without complaint.  There was no grace for me in religion, there was no grace from the world, and there was no grace for the eldest daughter. There was only work to be done without room for error or sympathy. It was a difficult truth I pretended not to know. Losing my religion cast the first stone that led to the toppling of the barrier I had built between myself and reality. There was no grace, so I took it for myself. I didn’t ask for permission or forgiveness. I decided I needed to be relentless in my pursuit of untapped potential and growth. I had to do the work. 

I found a love that I’m proud of, one that wasn’t thrown at me. It was and still is a love that is palpable and fiercely tender. It's sincere and patient. A love that allows me the space to err and grow. Eventually, I moved away from the streets where I used to preach and the blocks that mocked my pain. I migrated to the south and carved out a new life in black and white. I started therapy and learned to build boundaries. I walked away from roles I was ill-suited to play and restructured the familial roles I was assigned to. Now, I prioritize myself without feeling guilty. I started to go after what I wanted out of this life according to my own timeline. I’m still learning to exercise my freedom, as no one can stop my movement but me. 

I’ve made a habit of telling myself, “I can have whatever I want,” and it’s been my 2024 affirmative manifestation. I used to ignore the power of manifestation because I used to believe it wasn’t of God. I thought it was unattainable. It wasn’t something I believed I could have without enduring some kind of trial. I was used to sharing or making myself and my desires small, appropriate, and palatable. But my world is mine to shape the way I see fit. To think independently and live freely is my radical act. To exist as I want to. I allow myself to move in whatever direction my heart leads me and my heart led me to the conception of this magazine. What was initially a passing idea became a canvas on which to share my truth with hopes to embolden and release anyone who feels trapped in an iteration of a life they don’t fit into. The journey won’t be linear, but the path is worth exploring. There are moments when I feel like I’m chasing time, playing catch up, mourning the loss of opportunities, information, and experiences.  In spite of it all I’m grateful for my unique experience and I am excited to see how it serves me as I continue to paint this new life for myself, once black and white, now full of color.