'Unsure of what the balance held...'

Unsure of what the balance held, I went into 27 overwhelmed of the tasks I was and are to perform.

What I do know is that at 27 it is expected that I'm to have half the things in my life figured out already. Sadly, it is not so, the only thing I do know is that I am completely grateful for another year of life. Grateful for blessings bestowed upon me:- food to eat, clothes on my back, a house over my head and family and friends who love me. I am grateful to have made whatever impact or imprint on certain lives and those who have made a tremendous imprint on mine. I am grateful for this voice, for these eyes, for my one dimple, for this smile. I am happy that I am a God-mother to the sweetest little girl in the world and Aunt to three cute little munchkins. 

I am however, sad at certain things I've had to experience to get to this stage of my life but every trial has made me a stronger person. I've learned that age means nothing when you live in your parents' household because certain rules will always apply. I've learned that I will strive when I become a mother to not have a double standard amongst my children to avoid certain problems I would've gone through myself. 

I've learned how tough living in this country can be especially when you cannot support yourself and must therefore depend on others. I've learned how to handle disappointments because they are ever most present within every life and almost every day. 

I've learned that as special birthdays are to me, others just don't feel the same way. 

I've felt my heart break into millions of pieces continuously and I've developed my own mental instability, this does not mean that I am crazy, it just means I pay more attention to the mental health of myself and you my brothers and sisters. 

I've lost friends and gained new ones along the way, happiness is in the hand of the those who wish to possess it. That's my wish for myself and my wish for you.

I've met my own struggle and it's now a matter of coming out of it on top. 

I can't stop and I won't stop, I am destined for greatness and so are you.

Unsure of what the balance held I trod into 27 with mixed feelings but tears in my eyes. New Vernée? Not really? Different Vernée? Definitely. 

Love and Light.

Birthday Girl. xx

Having a Coke with You

I once re-wrote this piece of gem for a certain person. At the point in time he was the love of my life, and we loved having Fantas, so I re-titled it 'Having a Fanta with you', based on my own personal experiences with him. Yes.. back in the days where I consumed sugar, but sadly, it was hand written, a love letter if you please and he isn't even here for me to get it back to see how I re-worded it. But to this day, this piece sticks with me, even though I can't have Fantas with him any more, and I no longer write love letters and there is no love left, Frank O'Hara, you are a genius.

Frank O'Hara: "Having a Coke with You"

HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

—Frank O'Hara

Love and Light

'May the road rise to meet you'

LabellaVee a.k.a Vernee 

Does my life mean nothing to you?

22 years old and I am stabbed several times. By who you may ask, a man? I am out with my daughter and I am stabbed by my ex lover. I am in my home and killed by a man I knew who also tried to set fire to my home. Me and my friend are stabbed by my lover, I live but he thinks he's killed me so he kills himself. Need I go on?

Does my life mean nothing to you? As a woman, must you continuously hit me, rape me, abuse me, confuse me.

Can I not walk through a party in a camisole, long pants and sneakers and not get harassed by every man I pass. Can you not see my broad bumper and refuse to touch it, or pull my hand to yank me to talk to you? When I give you the 'I'm good' response, must you verbally abuse me as though I have no feelings? As though I am nothing?

Does my life mean nothing to you?

Women, do your lives mean nothing to you? Must you continue to walk around scantily clad, begging for this and that, and then wonder why men treat you the way they do? Can you not see they will only take the power away from you if you let them?

Call me feminist, call me old fashioned, call me a geezer, call me career and academic oriented, but DO NOT call me a slut, DO NOT call me a whore, DO NOT project those labels upon me for me to internalise them and then turn into them.

Does my life mean nothing to you?

Would you rather kill me because you can't have me rather than move on with your life? Plenty fish in the sea pooksie, someone else will want you. But they won't take the abuse from you. So what you dish out to them, they will return ten times fold.

'Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn'

Does my life mean NOTHING to you?

Love Is A Loaded Word

Ahhhh, to be grown and bitter. What a lovely combination! 

He said love is a loaded word. Ha! Or an excuse to get what you want? But what is love? Really what is it?

Why should I wake up every morning with anger in my heart, why should tears pour out of my eyes almost every day? Why should I feel abandoned and alone? Why can't I find someone to accept me for all of my flaws and goodness and run with them? 

But Alas!

Love is a loaded word.

I no longer know what it means to love. Well, that kind of love. I love my family, I love my friends, and I want to love ALL people, even the stupid ones, but that must come from love within right? So, finding love within. Finding love that dwells inside of me, finding love about and encompassing me. Makes you wonder, what now? 

Love is a loaded word. 

Love is a loaded word.

Mmm, love is a loaded word.

My 2 cents in a sea full of Men....

Pros and Cons to legalising Marijuana

Many can argue that smoking marijuana is tearing down the moral fabric of society, but what we need to think about is why they would say that. 

There's the stigma that it causes more bad than good and that's what we're here to argue.

Yes it can be said that marijuana leads to societal ills, can cause chemical imbalances, damage brain cells and the biggest topic at hand, the fact that it fuels an illegal drug trade and a lucrative one at that. In Barbados and throughout the Caribbean, the use and sale of illegal drugs has always been a serious problem, but let us look at certain things.

It might more benefit us to legalise marijuana than to keep it illegal. For example, how is it possible that the plant on which Marijuana comes from, that being the 'hemp' plant is used around the world for manufacturing and that indeed is not illegal? Is it because it's not being smoked or consumed via tea. The fact of the matter is that people love to rebel against the system, i.e. the man, and these things will happen because it is human nature.

Statiscally, marijuana is the most used illegal drug, but causes less harmful effects. Yes, based on the genetic make up of an individual, it can indeed cause chemical imbalances, and my work as a counsellor as well as working with young people has shown that to me. Yet, alcohol, a legal substance has more damaging effects than that of marijuana and most other illegal drugs. It damages the liver, eats away at the stomach lining, can cause cancer etc. A study done by the NCSA amongst secondary schools in Barbados with the exception of one school, as well as tertiary institutions showed that 94% of respondents consume low content alcohol, 79% high content alcohol, 63% marijuana and 59% medium content alcohol, wow, just a 4% difference. Any time a country can have an act as it relates to alcohol that does not stipulate any actual legal drinking age nor has it been changed since implementation in 1957, realising that alcohol causes more health and safety damages than marijuana cannot be thinking about the public health safety of its people. 

Meanwhile it has been scientifically proven that marijuana has more healing properties, saying that it has and is being prescribed as glaucoma medication, pain, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, muscle tension and spasms, insomnia and even to treat depression,(Health and how Stuff works)which is almost amazing because some of these symptoms practitioners will say can be caused by marijuana, i.e. Nausea and depression. If so, why is it increasingly being prescribed medicinally? Why are more countries lobbying for it to be legalized. Ralph Gonsalves stood at this same university, just next door in the lecture theatres a couple weeks ago and said, re the US , 'if they cannot impose federal law within your own country with regards to medical marijuana, how can you tell me what to do in mine'.

Policies are not working, there is no common ground and let's be realistic, legalising marijuana might actually bring about more benefits from a criminological standpoint via decriminalization. The drug trade as it relates to marijuana is seen as a tight end, big fish and pawns in water business. Let's think about it this way, if we legalise it, it means anyone can sell it, ANYONE, taking away from the criminal aspect of it. We minimize the possibility of turf wars and retaliation killings. It's almost as we though take away the possibility of the amount of arrests that arise. Already our prison population as it relates to men and drug traffickers whether female or male, is way too high for our prisons (prisons? wait! we only have one!)to handle. And most offences are those of a drug related nature. Legalising marijuana can take away that pressure and thus reduce the amount of tax payers dollars spent each year to feed and clothe prisoners. 

Also, let's look at Labelling Theory. Don't you think that if you continuously say that someone who smokes marijuana is a criminal, that you project that label unto them thus creating a criminal? Can I then say that we, the society creates criminals and not genetic and biological make up? Yes, predecessors exist, yes we are products of our environment, but we need to learn that we cannot continue from this aspect. 

Shall I delve into the agricultural benefits since our agricultural system is failing or should I leave that to the imagination and how much money could be saved by not only those bring in the substance, but tax payers who pay the Coast Guard and the RBPF. 

To sum it up, in my opinion there are more pros than cons, from both a criminological and psychological aspect. Yes there will always be that fear of the chemical imbalance and what it can do to those who consume it psychologically, but at any rate on the whole, we need be wary of the mental health of our people, whether young or old. This is the age of modernisation and globalization. Anything can happen. Anything.

What I learned on a Tuesday Afternoon

Last night I left the house for about a hr and a half. I was at least five minutes away from home and could've come back at anytime. Either between that hr and a half I was gone, or the time I came back home and my father clearly in his sleepy state couldn't be bothered to remember to tell me, but my biological grandfather passed away. This was a man of whom I knew yes, but had absolutely no relationship with. By my recollections, even though only meeting him when I was 11, he had never called me by my actual name. A couple of years ago, he was sick and when I visited him in the hospital with my mother, he didn't even know who I was. This troubled me at first, but to be honest, I couldn't have been bothered because he was never the man I knew as my grandfather. In my eyes, for the 26 years I have been alive, my grandfather has been my grandmother's husband, because he was there, because he did and does all the things grandfathers do. Out of respect, (and mostly because I didn't know what else to call him) I referred to my mother's father as granddaddy, and because calling him Willie just never sat right with me. 

To be honest, this sounds absolutely horrible but his death does not affect me in any way and that's mostly because he was a horrible father to my mother and my Aunt and in speaking to my cousin, grandmother, mother and the one other person I normally vent things like that to him about, I have learned something today. We all have a legacy we want to leave. I want for my life to be reflected as one that people found peace within me, that I affected them in great way, that because of me they said to themselves they could. I want my legacy to be one of greatness. There will be some who have crossed my path that I might not have seen eye to eye with, but for others, I want to impact my people, my brothers and sisters, no matter what race, colour or creed.

I have no idea what legacy Willie has left, nor am I the least bit bothered, but then it brought me to the thoughts of my own father. The kind of man he is, the lessons he instilled in us and the type of people we are today. My daddy and he will forever until death do us part will be yes DADDY not dad, or pops, or father, but daddy, is one of the best fathers someone could have asked for. He is supportive, kind, lackadaisical, downright hilarious, sometimes completely immoral but genuinely genuine. Papa Smurf might have made errors in his past and he might have 4 children from 3 different women which could classify itself to 'Village Ram' syndrome, but what makes it stand apart from that, is that he has been married to one of these women for 33 years, and that none of my brothers, the oldest being 37 can say that their father has not been a stellar one. 

What I learned on a Tuesday afternoon, is that while we are so consumed with the way we live our lives, we must also be aware of the legacies we leave behind, whether it be our own, or those of our children. I have learned that fathers NEED to be an essential part in the lives of their children especially their daughters, to be their protector, their confidant, their knight in shining armour. I have learned that blood is just that, blood, but you can find even more happiness in those who are not your blood, but those that treat you as though you are their kin, as though you were and are part of them. 

'Fathers be good to your daughters, for daughters will love like they do, girls become lovers, who turn into mothers, so mothers be good to your daughters too'.

With many words left unsaid...

Love and Light

'May the road rise to meet you'

Plain ol' LabellaVee

It's A Mad World

So many young people have committed suicide within this country in the past two weeks, that it's beginning to get absolutely scary. 

Without divulging much about myself, I suffer from mental heath issues and I've chosen to seek professional help to deal with these issues, but what about those that we leave by the wayside? What about those who desperately seek someone to talk to, or someone to be around? What about those who seek attention and love? 

Hearing some of the stories behind these deaths are alarming, because these people just needed someone to reach out to them, to help them, to be there for them. Now I know what it's like to have endless people around you and rooting for you and still feeling like there is no reason for you to exist, but at the same time, it was a cry for help. A cry for someone to notice that I wasn't well and that I needed treatment.

I have a friend who's tried to commit suicide about 10 times thus far and has not succeeded any of those times, but that was her cry and to a certain extent she still hasn't gotten the help she needs. We need to encourage our young people to talk to someone, even if it's a friend, even if it's a doctor at a polyclinic. We cannot continue to let our young people fall by the wayside in feeling that their only way out of their problems is death. 

I urge you, my fellow people, not just for me because I know what it's like, but for every Barbadian youth who is growing up in the age of technology and not face to face contact, to reach out to anyone that you see is having a problem. Don't class it up as, 'oh, wha know she head ain good', or 'man she/he would gotta know', or 'dem would be only be an idiot to kill themselves'. Talk to them, help them, let's avoid another senseless death, because when we all die out, who will be left? 

With many words left unsaid, I was here. 

Not LaBellaVee, just regular Vernee.

'May the road rise to meet you'