Under The Sunset Series: Topaz

I’m having trouble sleeping. I lay down at 9pm. Have me a cup of sleepy time tea. I silence my phone and turn off the TV. I turn off all the lights too except the light from my diffuser. I let the diffuser mist all night with the Lullaby essential oil blend. I got a new weighted blanket. One that heats up. I read a post on Facebook about weighted blankets helping people sleep. So I bought one. It does everything but help me fall asleep. I just lay there weighed down thinking about random stuff. Most times a rerun of my life will stream through my mind. Shits better than Netflix imma tell you, but I never get that 'are you still watching' notification, you know? 'Cause I don't wanna watch no more. Like the shit never stops. Before I know it my 6am alarm is going off and I haven’t gotten any sleep. As a result I’m drained most days. My whole body is tired. Even my fingertips. I looked on Web MD to find out what was going on with my fingertips and they said that it could be my kidneys. My kidneys are malfunctioning. I could have diabetes. A vegan diabetic? You mean to tell me I change my whole lifestyle and still get diabetes? Shit is crazy! I wonder which one of my doctors injected me with diabetes? Probably that Dr. Samuels with his ugly ass. He used to read my BMI numbers like he was running a bingo game for senior citizens on a cruise ship. I hated his skeletor looking ass. Can I get disability for my fingertips? I don’t feel like doing anything let alone logging onto the computer to fake good mornings on Zoom calls full of simple minded human robots who only care about themselves. I don’t feel like getting dressed anymore. I don’t feel like putting on clothes made in China for pennies that I have to buy on a credit card in America because prices are inflated beyond my tax bracket. I gotta pay my rent, utilities, car note, and student loans. My entire paycheck is eaten up by bills! Hell, I had to pay you a $40 copay just to sit here and watch you look at me with glazed over eyes, shaking your head, and writing in that book. Why do I have to pay $40 every visit, huh? I’m already paying for health insurance! You a healthcare provider right? Why aren't my sessions already paid for if I'm paying for health insurance? Obamacare my ass! Shit should be called Financial Prison Care! It doesn’t make any sense. I get no relief on anything. Nothing. It’s like what’s the point of...

Topaz pauses.

What’s the point of living? There I said it! What's the point of living in this hell hole we call life? You probably going to go ahead and write down in your book that I'm crazy right? Gonna tell me I’m depressed again, right? What medicine you gonna put me on now? Another antidepressant?

Topaz reaches into her bag and pulls out a bottle of pills.

Let's see what we have here shall we? Escitalopram. Yeah you prescribed me this shit said it would help me. With what exactly? It don’t work! Matter of fact I looked it up and the side effects were nausea, dizziness, sweating, and guess what? In-friggin'-somnia! You pumping me with meds that are causing me not to get any damn sleep and then act like I got a problem? No, you the problem! Oh and it lowers your sex drive. Ya'll medics always trying to have control over the Black woman's body. 

Have you taken Escitalopram before? No? It makes me feel like death's 1st cousin. Like, I’m being dominated by an abusive puppeteer. Constantly dictating what I should do. What I should feel. I’m not taking this shit anymore! So you can have it back and I want a refund. Y’all so worried about suicidal ideations, you take that shit so Esi can show you what a suicidal ideation actually feels like. I don’t want to be on any meds. I don’t need meds. What I need is for the world not to be such a fucked up place. What I need is to be able to walk out my front door and be a woman in the world and not constantly have to worry about somebody trying to steal my womanhood and my sanity from me. I need people to care enough to mind their own damn business. I need people to prioritize being better humans so that I can fucking breathe without being judged! This "I can’t breathe" shit is real! There ain’t a physical knee on my neck but it damn sure might as well be.  

So many intentional roadblocks. 

Modern day slavery. 

You hear bout those baby girls being kidnapped in Nigeria? Over 300 baby girls! They can’t just let us be can they? Putting us right back on the auction block! It’s like damn, we still selling our own people to the white man? Again? Like damn! Ya'll ain't learned ya'll lesson the first time? You don’t love yourself enough to see your momma, sister, auntie, grandma in that baby girl eyes? She don’t have a right to have an unbothered childhood? To be carefree and untouched? Evil. Pure evil. Y’all need to put them evil muthafuckers on Escitalopram. That'll set they asses straight! Yea, let them take it and get they evil asses right on up out of here. I will never understand monetary gain off the backs of human lives. Evil. Sheer evil. They sayin' the vaccine will make you infertile well gimmie that shit because I don’t want to bring a child into this sick world anyway. I want to save my unborn daughter from being snatched up and violated. I want to save my unborn son from being used for target practice. Give me that damn vaccine! Make me infertile!

All of this mess, this inhumane shit, is torture!

Topaz leans her head back in the chair and looks up at the ceiling.

What Pac say?

I've been trapped since birth, cautious, 'cause I'm cursed
And fantasies of my family, in a hearse
And they say it's the white man I should fear
But, it's my own kind doin' all the killin' here.

She whispers to herself, only God can judge me. Topaz gets up and walks over to the couch and lays on her stomach.

I logged off from work yesterday and turned on the news and seen Biden talking bout Black History Month and bombing Syria in the same damn breath. What I vote for this nigga for man? We the people need these bogus ass stimulus checks you 'sposed to been sent! We need some student loan debt forgiveness! But you got your ass all over in Syria’s lane bombing and shit. I’m tired of these mortal kombat ass politicians man. I turned off the news so quick. Made me a camomile tea, rolled me a spliff, and sat on my balcony. I was trying to catch these views you know? Watch the sunset and shit. Ms. Chen started yelling bout she called the cops on me cause I ain’t have no clothes on. I was on MY damn balcony! She stay all over in everybody else’s apartment! That's why I can't rally round the Asian community. All the crap they being dealt right now is payback for how they treat us Black folks! Black folks stay rallying round and supporting our oppressors. I’m stopping that shit at the doe!

Officer came banging on my door and fined me $1500. Something else I gotta pay! Said he ain't arrest me cause of corona. He was typing using this 5G device and I ain’t have no mask on cause I was in my house. Nigga ain’t care that he was tracking corona all up in my house using that 5G device. He just wanted more of my hard earned money tied up in his damn pension. 12 killing us and we pay they damn salary? Where they do that at? That's why I ain't paying the IRS till the police stop killing Black people for no damn reason. That officer wanted me too. Looking at me like I'm one of them rotisserie chickens at Costco. Salivating and shit. Talking bout protocol says he has to ask me to put a robe on. He know damn well he wanted to handcuff me to my headboard and bust a round of that Aryan blood up in me, like they did great granny. I don't rock with 12 so he couldn't have gotten so much as a sniff even if he tried. I would've shanked him and threw his ass over to Ms. Chen's balcony since she wanted him there so bad.

Can we normalize nudity? Hell, legalize nudity should be on every billboard everywhere! Tell the GOP to run that ad!

I want to stand naked under the sun forever.

I feel closest to God when I stand naked under the sun.

Being close to God is all I really want anyway.