Krowned: The K-Series (Part One)
My name is Kacee M. King and I suffer from PTSD. Don't trip. I'm still magical AF.
“WAIT. I’m not the same, can’t find no peace. I sacrifice my world to the world that ignore me...Black men in therapy, ‘cause white terror don’t sleep. I got to roll up my leaf, might stop the PTSD.” -Wale #WOWThatsCrazy
The earliest memory that I am able to recall is that of a sexual nature. My parents, (although I am certain that they are inclined to disagree) were having sex in the back room of the small two-bedroom apartment that was home to my mother, the youngest of my brothers, random family members, and my eldest brothers as they rotated in and out of jail. I didn’t have a bedroom per se; my brother slept in one room, my mother in the other and I laid my head in the living room. From what I can recall, the high-pitched noises that alluded from passionate lovemaking awoke me in the middle of the night. My father jumped up with his meat swanging and hurriedly brushed beyond me toward the bathroom. My mother did her best to console me and put me back to sleep.
Fast forward to several years later, I was ten; I think, perhaps younger or maybe even older. Suppressed memories do their best to escape me... what I do remember vividly is that it was the height of the summer. My mother and her boyfriend picked me up from Harlem where I spent the summer with my Uncle-Daddy Asim and my Aunt Jo. I had spent the summer engrossed in the city’s culture, riding the subway, roller-blading in central park, reading any and everything I could get my hands on, eating fresh seafood from the pier, and visiting museums each weekend. My Uncle-Daddy; normally swathed in oils, Egyptian musk for the most part. A less than devote Muslim, he did his best to shield me from eating pork (the birth of my favorite phrase; "no pork on my fork."), swaddle me in intellectual discussion in black culture, African History all while riding a sport ninja bike, a Honda I believe and drinking jack and coke every night before bed. My Aunt and Uncle-Daddy were culture, they were my epitome of black excellence. They were my New York experience.
Much to my chagrin, it was time to head home to our cramped two-bedroom apartment and prepare for school. My eldest brother had just completed his latest bid, fresh home from his release from Cheshire. He was now sleeping in my twin bed in the living room so I was forced to sleep with my mother and her boyfriend. I have always been a heavy sleeper so I didn’t feel anything as it happened, but that morning I woke up and was sore in-between my legs.
Fast-forward to the beginning of my sexual exploration, the one in which I had control over. We were 15...maybe 16, my childhood boyfriend and I. His mom was away for the weekend and as my mother was too. We decided to link and drink thug passion which had become my personal fave as of late. One thing led to another, our teenage hormones took over and seven minutes later my “virginity” was gone. I didn’t realize it then, but sex was the way I found that I could connect with boys. I confused sex with love for the duration of my teenage years and the entire decade that was my twenties. I never took the time to process just how much sexual molestation and assault had impacted me. I hurt so badly from a place so deep within, and I didn’t quite know how to soothe it. I sat around and drank incessantly, I only dated boys who drank and or smoked. I wanted to be numb, I didn’t want any reminders of everything that I had experienced and never dealt with.I had an infatuation with the hood, so I made my rounds with the dudes of the hood. I felt useless, worthless and incapable of articulating the turmoil that existed within me.
Eventually, I muddled through depression just enough to go away to college. I moved down to Richmond to stay with my Aunt and cousin, this newfound sense of freedom provided me with a level of responsibility that I wasn’t accustomed to at home. I had to figure out how to pay for my classes, pay my car insurance, make sure that I had food to eat, pay my phone bill and buy a $90 bottle of Hennesy Privilege every Friday, PRIORITIES. #Dontjudgeme I drank incessantly, like blackout drunk, like I woke up in a hotel one night with my stripper friends in Virginia Beach with little to no recollection of the night’s events. I felt low and didn’t think I could get any lower until my Grandmother and Uncle-Daddy died in the same year. I moved back to Connecticut found a job at a bank, found an apartment and made my way back to the hood. By now, I was drinking a fifth of Hennesy a day. I certainly didn’t think I had a problem, I just surrounded myself with people who drank as much as me if not more. I "dated", I use this term loosely; yet another boy from around the way. He actually drank more than I, we were a match made in casual alcoholism heaven...until we weren't. Eventually, I moved out of Stamford, and up to Bridgeport. Some twenty minutes away from where I grew up seemed to provide me with all of the distance I needed to leave the past behind me...or so I thought.