I vividly remember laying in my bed asking God Am I dead?

I mean…

Did I die?

Am I crazy Lord?

Is it all in my head…

How did I lose everything?

My powerful career, my fake friends, my apartment, and my raggedy car…

According to Wikipedia heaven can't be far.

I promise I have been taking my PTSD meds.

Fuck what they said.

Is my seat in heaven ready?

My soul is so tender to the touch, I am emotionally scarred…

Where the fuck is my family if they loved me so much!!

I'm so raw and numb.

How could I be so dumb? 

I just feel so empty inside. 

Ashamed, and this makes me feel so embarrassed and I bet this book of poetry makes me look manic.

Please don't call my perfect parents.

Tired of living this lovely lie.

Lord who have I become.

Just let me DIE!

(Sighs)

I guess if I am still alive.

I'm going to chase my wildest dreams, unapologetically.

I know what I have to do. 

FIND OUT MY DEEPEST TRUTHS!

I needed to see myself.

Crystal clearly, I have no other choice.

I need to dig deep. 

pulling all the nasty rotten toxicity laying dormant from inside of me so I can find my authentic voice.

This has been a very long healing journey, to say the least. 

If everything and everyone is dying around me because of a stupid global pandemic my haters will rejoice in my death.

I guess they will have to suffocate and hold their breath. 

I am coming back swinging.

Tell my haters and the non-believers when I come back there will be no more rules left in the war.

On the record, off the record, I had the power to do a lot of damage but I was too nice.

This time around I am coming back to save my own life.

I'm coming for everything they told me I couldn't have.

I'm ripping off this fake ass Halloween mask. 

I'm free to show my authentic soul. 

I am finally a real author who has gone mad.

I am crazy to let the world use me and mentally rape me.

The good kinda crazy just a tad…

Should I call my biological dad?

All my critics are about to really be BIG MAD!

I have made the executive decision to fight for my life. 

I always was loyal, I always did what was right.

Maybe that's why they say the good guy's finish last.

Maybe the good guy lives long enough to become the villain in the end…

Making all my believers proud and my

Non-believers will cringe. 

None of you has-beens were my real friends.

Where do I start where do I even begin.

I haven’t always believed in my poetry enough to call this shit art.

As a kid, I have always had these grandiose dreams!

Why did God give this crazy creative artistic brain to me?

I am questioning everything in my darkest hours.

Eating my food alone, my hair falling out in chunks in the shower.

I have to go back to the beginning of this shit show.

How did I get so low…

Growing up I lived on the lower-income side of town in KC, MO

with 6 other people.

The baby of the family. 

I wasn't the prettiest or brightest peach in the pair, I wasn't considered their equal. 

I was just silently writing alone over there…

I grew up feeling ashamed and unaware, of all our childhood trauma and pain.

I remember being 3…

I would tell my mom to wait a second mama don't go. 

Every time my mother headed to work it crushed my sensitive soul.

Mama replied, “I got 6 mouths to feed!"

That's why I dedicate this survival guide to my mother the real OG. We haven't always gotten along but I'm working on that

My mom holds me to a very high standard and for years it made me upset.

Mama taught me everything.

Everything that has not fully blossomed out of me. 

As a child, I watched my mother put her makeup on her beautiful face perfectly.

Walk with me I'll show you how I ended up this way. 

Exactly right here today. 

I died that night in October when everything went red. 

God made me whole. 

I was reborn again. 

I stopped feeling so alone. 

Feeling abandoned inside my own home.

Too sensitive to play the regular childhood games with the rest of the kids. 

Internalizing my insecurity from all criticism turned into self-hate and being a punching bag and a doormat for several years manifested itself into an adult rage.

I guess you can call me clinically depressed.

For 33 years I have internalized all of my human emotions ashamed of who I truly was.

Maybe that's why I am always in distress. 

It didn’t take much for me to fall in love with a narcissistic user.

All I ever wanted was love.

Somehow that meant to the general public, fuck her and abuse her. 

I'm just craving one of my grandmother's genuine hugs. 

So I would run to the slums for fun.

Women specifically black women never cry out for help. 

We yell out nobody hears us!

Why do they call it victim blame when you are in a relationship with your abuser.

Denying my reality made me so enraged. 

I knew exactly who to blame, myself.

Self-deprecating, drinking, and eating my emotions away.

If I was going to fight back I had to get some real emotional and mental help.

This did not make me weak.

This made me stronger than everybody else. 

I was tired of tattooed tears smeared on my perfectly made-up face.

I cried my eyelashes off walking to my car when my AGM died from suicide that warm April day.

An emotional mess.

When you feel that low about yourself it doesn't take much for you to become undressed.

I'll take whatever I can get.

I knew it wasn't true love.

So I would pretend.  

Reaching for love in all the wrong places.

I shut my heart off just to become basic.

I was so much more than this.

To love my face and block out the hate in its entirety. 

The fake ex-boyfriends.

Protecting My fragile family. 

Working in corporate America.

I guess I did alright. 

Throughout the years I made over 350 thousand dollars drowning in my own tears every single night.

Where did all of that money go…

I guess this is my plight.

I watched it all disappear when the plague hit. 

Lost more than my career.

Completely fell from grace.

My so-called friends made me face my inner circle of hate. 

My apartment was once a revolving door but no one would come over my place anymore, because I was deemed as dirt poor.

The world called me terrible names. 

A fake. 

A fraud. 

Once the money was gone so were you.

Why does MY truth scare you? 

I will fearlessly go chase my wildest dreams. 

I mean…

I moved up the corporate ladder to the top of my career field at 28. 

I was determined to be the best. 

I got a shitty deal. 

GM’s title but no salary increase. 

Was I a fraud?

Or was I just afraid?

The clown at the circus you came to play?

Don't push me off the deep end.

Water is my element.

You might just drown.

Soft enough to cleanse you strong enough to bury you in the ground. 

When I get upset I am not heaven-sent. 

I can go from Mother Teresa to John Wayne Gacy real quick.

I do this for the girls that got overlooked in school and were constantly told it is all in their heads.

They were ready to bury me too and left me for dead.

Nothing is really as perfect as it seems. 

My family didn't even know they constantly spit on my dreams.

I was invisible my entire childhood.

When I lost everything. 

I went right back to being invisible old me, dying silently. 

They didn't know I was in so much pain. 

They identified me as a drunken mess, can't get right!

1 DUI will ruin your life!

 An emotional slut.

I'm so sorry you are uninvited…

Out of respect that's a subject, I will not even touch. 

I accepted it with grace. 

I remember I tried to commit suicide back in 2008.

My mom admitted me into the hospital. 

When I could not properly process my grandma's death.

 I couldn't see the big picture.

This psychiatrist diagnosed me with.

“Extreme low self-esteem." 

I wish I knew back then the power that I held that laid deep inside me. 

Because at 18 and 19 I didn't know how to articulate that in poetic form.

A black girl, gifted, and a heart of gold completely torn.

Who knew I was transforming into that bitter angry black

woman scorn.

I knew you could have low self-esteem but leave it to me to go even lower. 

Growing up they called me every name in the book and I believed them I hated myself too. 

They judged me before you got a chance to even see inside my beautiful soul.

So I'm pulling back the curtain.

This time around I has full creative control.

I'm no different than you and you are no different from me.

Now, do you see? 

That all that I am was everything I was never trying to be.

Now those same people cannot keep up with me. 

They always knew I was HER. 

33 years later I’m profiting off my pain.

Someday you will have to ownership of being mentally disengaged. 

My mother tried her very best to work 3 full-time jobs in a full-time relationship she was over all the stress. 

She was 21 and took legal guardianship of my 3 male cousins after my aunt's tragic death. 

My grandmother had a brain aneurysm in 2006. 

As a family, we barely survived. 

The residual trauma lives on silently inside of our minds.

I remained voiceless for 10 years of my life. 

Everyone's trauma feasted on me.

I wouldn't tell my truth to protect my entire family tree.

This is a poetic story of the survival of that girl with extremely low self-esteem. 

Gentle steps of a giant who decided to live instead of what the world told her what she could NEVER be. 

The beauty beneath my tender soul is not being considered beautiful enough or even sane.

When I was deemed successful I still could not make sense of all of my pain. 

Physiological manipulation on another level made me drink my feelings away and fade on my off days.

This book is a love letter to my wounded inner child.

Baby girl, it's time for you to grow up now. 

I am done covering up mistakes with reckless behavior and money.

I ran from the pain because My mom told me to let it all go and leave the pain in the past. 

What goes on stays in this house.

Mama this same shit still makes me so sad.

I started leaning into the turmoil, sorrow, and pain.

Off the record on the record, 

none of this was inscribed in vain. 

I stopped drinking my pain away. 

Tears I have cried emotional strength I have gained.

I'm really not supposed to be here today.

I beat the odds…

They say you turn into the person you always needed growing up. 

You know what the old folks would say...

“Spare the seed spoil the rod”. 

I looked over at my therapist and she politely nods. 

I explained to her with a shake in my voice. 

I won’t leave this pandemic defeated I don't have a choice.

I turned into someone I could believe in. 

I got my fight back. 

I let go of long-time friends. 

My therapist sat back and would applaud. 

The 1st person to genuinely cheer me on.

Since my grandmother passed away. 

Therapy cleared out all the emotional fog.

I told my therapist about the bond between my grandmother and me. 

A bond of the truest soulmates she was my twin flame.

She set my soul on fire.

She died 2 days before my high school graduation day. 

I was emotionless, the pain was adjacent from my soul.

I ate uncontrollably to feed that longing for my grandmother's emotional support. 

Let's be clear.

I retort.

Nothing. 

Sue me.

I guess I'll see my enemies in court.  

This is the final revelation I truthfully reveal.

The layers of me that were born broken.

I took a calendar year off in a global pandemic so I could emotionally heal.

I am a woman who deals with survivor's remorse constantly on a daily.

I buried 3 of my friends to suicide, domestic violence, and drugs 

Maybe…

It could have been me.

It gets very dark and lonely at the top I finally know what that means...

I guess you can call that PTSD.

I take Zoloft to fight flashbacks for my depression a narc's favorite treat. 

This pandemic wasn't any dressed rehearsal recital.

It was the jungle it created me into a monster a beast. I have flashbacks I remember looking out at the beach in San Diego feeling suicidal…

Nobody got me.

Like I got me. 

I couldn't let the devil win.

I couldn't let the devil in.

Who knew success brought up all of my pain and would turn true best friends into rivals. 

I'm not doing it for the mass appeal, I have a story to tell.

I'm not doing it for the likes!

I'm doing this to save someone's life!

My journey helped me develop a spine.

You deserve to be FREE.

Now it's all on me…

My therapist saved me from myself. I learned how to get out of my own way.

I shredded my thin skin and I had to do the work in the process of healing I lost everything I owned. 

I'm no longer“Hiding from Shee'”

Once a childhood game the older kids would play.

I can hear their laughter.

Leave it to me to transform my misery into another beautiful disaster…

I am no longer hungover the morning after. 

I got my head on straight.

It was another day at the office for me. 

Just not with shape tape concealer, Iman full coverage foundation, drag queen lashes, lip gloss and 

red lipstick.

Wait, I can't forget my wig and contouring this nose.

I was a  fucking clown and everyone knows.

I was putting on a show for a very cold corporate company 

My soul longed to be free artistically. 

I was so far gone way before the pandemic hit.

Working was my favorite excuse not to make it to a family event.

Had to talk to someone because I was losing my mind and I literally had no one to run to.

Every man would leave.

My family was so depressed. 

I was outgrowing friendships holding me back.

Holding it all together with this invisible string. 

My therapist gave me a sense of self-worth that 

Honestly gave me chills.

I started doing the real soul work.

She taught me about attachment styles.

She told me my Mom should heal.

She told me about gaslighting.

How most people in this world.

Will somehow project onto you their 

Insecurities and unresolved childhood pain. 

She cheered me on and said you are the truth JonShee'. 

She said people will call you a radical.

Your decision wasn’t quite mathematical.

You took an 8-month sabbatical.

To tie off some loose ends. 

You reconnected with yourself. 

You learned how to be gentle with yourself it taught you to be

your own best friend.

We laughed and I told her I am going to be really pissed off if I finally got my shit together and the world ends. 

She told me seriously you have felt disrespected, neglected, and rejected but it’s okay you are built to win!

I am realizing it's not always about me and you.

You will never truly find peace until you

lean into the TRUTH.

It’s about having a servant’s heart. 

Which I still do.  

No career could ever take that away.

It may not make sense right now but it will all make sense one day.

Each day gets clearer.

As I organize my own third eye inside of my mirror. 

I know I am divine. 

Do you hear that…

shhhhhhhh. 

I truly fell in love with the broken parts of me.

That doesn't mean I don't make mistakes now and then.

It means I found the courage to follow my 

God-given purpose and childhood dreams. 

There is no one here to break me.

No one to let me down.

I am fearless - I am a whole healed woman now. 

I have been knocked down so hard.

Now I am so emotionally resilient.

I will continue to go far into another stratosphere I can feel it!

I am a superstar and so are you.

I decided to live my life and heal all of my emotional scars 

GO HEAL.

I DARE YOU TO!

Welcome to ….

EMOTIONALLY SLUTTY…

A SAFE PLACE TO FALL...

My soul is left without a single expression.

Behind my big brown eyes form storms of depression.

Stuck in a mental state of regression.

Why am I ignoring what I know I have to do?

I am struggling with so many fears!

Being your personal puppet for many years.

I let my conscious mind disappear.

In the midst of your grief.

Why couldn’t I formulate a thesis?

I needed a reason to gather up all the pieces.

The perception that was merely my own creation.

Watching your bittersweet formations.

I could not blame you for my impatience.

While you constantly salivated over me hating what

My reflection captivated me.

I continued to pursue your guilty pleasures.

I did anything and everything I thought would make you feel better.

Jealousy was your favorite treat.

The nasty deceit hangs too high

Neither one of us could ever fully reach.

I saw your ugly without your disguise.

You broke me down I allowed you to victimize.

The person you wanted to be… 

Me. 

I hold myself accountable I never knew you

Could be doubted though.

No tears you will see.

Crying is overrated when your

Mind and your fuckin heart is being

Manipulated.

Conceptions of a monster.

I executive produced the final fabrication.

I even nursed your wounds prevented the incision.

Now I am forced with my own permission

To reveal your hideous face…

Walking alone through the valley I developed a sense of peace. 

Walking away from blood-sucking vultures conquering the

Make-believe.

What my reality didn’t want me to

See.

Destroying the foundation of my sickest creations.

I stand alone finally free.

The ashes of an entourage of monsters that no longer

live inside the heart of me. 

Apology tour...

Making good decisions come from making bad decisions and learning from your mistakes. 

I think I found my cure who knew in 2021 I would be on an apology tour...  

If hindsight is 2020 

32 years of torment and being emotionally bullied...

I hate I had to get so mad. 

I hate I had to show the weakest parts of me.

Which is my rage. 

Pain.

Punching the air. 

For four days.

Let me paint this picture of the darkest place on earth.

I murdered my ego and the mourning never came. 

Each morning I was in more and more pain 

I was completely pushed to my breaking point completely off the deep end. 

I didn’t know how?

Whiskey seemed like a better remedy than having fake friends 

Pushed me to the brink.

I accepted so much bullshit over the years.

Sometimes I tend to…

Overthink.

Over drink.

Overeat.

Over blink.

Is my aggression a form of protection? 

You can no longer hurt me. 

They beat my soul.

Until it was black and blue.

I could finally be myself no longer afraid to live my truth.

Now I’m free.

I am waking up happy abundantly.

No man to tell me I’m fat or he hates my hair. 

No family to judge me for being rare.

No entourage to gas me up and continually make me sick.

Left me for dead now it’s time for me to move. 

They thought I would lose. 

I pressed snooze on my own potential. 

We can have peace like Gandhi 

Or we can wage war.

I still love you.

Look up at the scoreboard.

I refuse to do this anymore.

This is the end of my apology tour.

The news reporter reported the sky is falling... 

The apocalypse is among us... 

People are so frantic because humans are disappearing like earth's fungus. 

Summer is officially canceled. 

No school since March 15th.

Everyone is wearing masks mandated by the state. 

Tomorrow for you.

I’ll take my blessing today. 

8 months later still no vaccine that I trust.

Is it all in my head? 

Word to the DIY rapper Russ.

I can't stop watching the news. 

 No need to put my alarm on snooze. 

Because the world is completely shut down. 

I just touched down from Las Vegas and we are living in ghost towns.

Fuck Donald Trump and fuck Dr. Faccui.

Fuck you Covid-19.

Word to Cardi B, this shit is so scary. 

Because everybody is dyinggggg!!!

My homegirl buried her entire family and bestie who was really sweet. 

We are all just trying to escape world war 3. 

Living in the last days is hypocrisy. 

Unemployment skyrocketed and is still on the rise. 

If the entire world is understaffed please be kind.

As the entire world sits at home isolated 

As we silently feel like we all could die...