Blaming
Luvvie said it best: No woman is to blame for Kanye’s behavior, not even Kim. Not even his mama.
After Kanye’s South Carolina “political appearance,” so many people are saying Kanye’s downfall/poor mental wellness is Kim’s fault, and that Donda’s death caused his never-ending downward spiral. And while those things may have added to the situation, those are not the root.
Let’s be clear, Kanye is a 43 year old man. A grown man. An intelligent, wealthy man. Not a dummy by any means. But his rants, drug addiction, bipolar diagnosis, lack of self worth and plastic surgery were not caused by any woman. It all boils down to mental wellness (and he is not well). A simple complexity.
Too often women carry a lot. A lot. And many times, it’s other people’s stuff. But a man’s mental stability should not be one of them. So let’s not blame anyone for Kanye’s mental space. Mental wackness happens to the best of us, but it becomes a chaotic decline when emotional circumstances and trauma go unchecked. And you can only tune in and tap in to any of that through reduced ego, a paramount level of vulnerability of self-awareness and maturity. But here’s the thing, the tricky part about mental stability is that it’s an individual thing. No one can do it for us. Not even our therapist (they simply stir things up in us so we can arise to our potential). But be clear, nobody can do the work for us. It’s our work.
So I say all of that to say, the things we’re watching play out for Kanye are years of unchecked trauma before Kim, the rest of the Kardashians and the death of his mother. And it’s even apparent in Kanye’s South Carolina “political” video that there are many layers to his issues. There are issues of anti-blackness and misogyny within those layers (there’s so much I could peel back but that’ll be for another day). There is a lot of pain and resentment and hate. And to add favoring to the already complicated creative, no one but Kanye can get him through it. So that’s why trauma, and the process of healing, is so heavy and exhausting. He has to be responsible for his own healing. So no matter how much help Kim is allegedly pleading for him, Kanye has to actually follow-through. And from the looks of things, there a lot needed.
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot get him to drink. As adults, we have to own our shit, and all that becomes even more complicated simply because there’s work in the work, and that’s on top of everything else we have going on.
