Integrity versus Despair

I don’t know what you have to do to get your thinking right l’il sis, but you gotta do it.

It doesn’t matter if they hated you behind your back. It doesn’t matter that they did anything to keep you out of the competition. Realizing this doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over.

That’s what you struggle with, isn’t it? That’s what hurts your feelings.  A long line of relationships with people either using, abusing or refusing you.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

This review of your life is making you cry. You lie there, like a baby in your bed. You don’t want to move, you don’t want to feel, you don’t even want to heal.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

They lied to you. They closed ranks against you. They did it consciously and maliciously. You were going to stay out of competition with them. They knew they didn’t have a chance against you.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

And what did you do? Oblivious, leaning into the patriarchy, believing you could make it change, believing you could make it better. You thought you were making progress. They laughed, they laughed so hard at you. They looked at your back, never to your face, and they laughed.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

So here you sit, trying to make sense of it all. Integrity vs. Despair, your life in review. Enlightenment only hurts. You sit on despair as if it is your favorite pillow, a treasure and comfort to a long life.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

It was your sisters who pushed you out of the race, it was your sisters who sought to disqualify you. It was your brothers who laughed at you. It was your brothers who shrunk away from your brain.

So you lay there, trying to make sense of a life in review. You cry, because you know, now you know all of it. You thought you fit in, you thought you were part of the world. But no. Truly you were marginalized. Swept to the side to make space for the truly incompetent and louder mouth.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

Who are you to say that you aren’t enough? Who are you to say that you didn’t live your life right? Who are you to say that it could have been anything different than the way it was? The way it had to be? The way it was, no matter what you did to change things? Your agony today changes nothing, rearranges no thing in the past of your life.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.

You did as you would, you did as you could. You didn’t know that choosing integrity would take away your paycheck. You can’t be sorry now for that series of decisions that brought you here. Be here to be here now, not to be here then.

L’il sis, you got to get your head on straight, you got to start thinking right.