My first drumline director was Mr. Clayton Paul, with the Colony High School Band. We were a very competitive drumline, and the directors treated us like military recruits. They wanted their damn trophy to feed their fragile egosâand they didnât care what kid they damaged to get it.
Narcissistic white boys.
I made the Colony High School snare line toward the end of my 8th-grade year at Lakeview Middle School in The Colony, Texas. I was stoked. We started practicing that summerâand thatâs when the hell on wheels began.
I was the first and only Black girl (at the time) on that drumline. My parents couldnât support me the way I neededâthey were too busy fighting each other, using me as leverage. I was the scapegoat. They punished each other through me. And all I wanted was to survive my own struggles: being a Black girl on an all-white, ultra-competitive drumline in 1990.
They hammered traditional grip into us. We celebrated the scars on our fingers like war wounds. A sick endeavor for kids, honestly. But what made it worse was Kennan Wylie.
He was my private lesson instructor in 8th gradeâand that man hated my guts. I donât know if it was racism, sexism, narcissism, or all of the above. Probably all of the above. But he made it clear: as a Black girl, he didnât think I deserved the talent I had. He discounted every ounce of hard work I put in. He assumed it came easy for me because I was Black. It didnât. I spent hours each day practicing. Just drums. Just hands.
When he was hired on as assistant drumline director to Mr. Paul my freshman year, he finally had the authority to abuse me at willâand he did. My parents let him. So did Mr. Paul. So did Mr. Dick Clardy, the head band director. Wylie wasnât even a permanent staff member, but they let him destroy me. And my parents? They let it happen. So I was left aloneâtraumatized.
The summer before freshman year, my parents got into a huge fight after a family reunion in Orlando, Florida. What shouldâve been a beautiful time ended in a nightmare. My father left me, my sister, and my mother on my grandmotherâs porchâher single-wide trailerâand drove off. I was stuck there in functional freeze with my mother.
My father, meanwhile, returned to the Colony High School band hall, dropped off my marching snare drum, and left a note saying I had moved. Just like thatâI lost my spot. I had no idea. My father punished me for something my mother set me up to do.
Hereâs what happened: My mother told me my father was on drugs. And in 1990, that meant something terrifying to me. All I could picture was that âThis is your brain on drugsâ commercialâyour brain as a fried egg in a cast iron skillet. I thought I had to save him. I had to save our family. So I asked her, âShould I write Daddy a letter?â She said yes. Then I asked, âShould I write, âDaddy, if you love us, youâll get off drugs?ââ And she said yes.
In 2021, my mother admitted to me that she used me to hurt my father. She said it with a smirk. That moment forever severed my relationship with my father. She said yes to that phrase because she wanted to knock him off the pedestal I had him on. But it didnât knock him off the pedestalâit just shamed him. And he took it out on me for the rest of our lives.
In retaliation, he gave away my snare spotâthe one I worked so hard forâbehind my back.
So by the time my mother finally got us back home, I showed up to 4th-period band classâmy first day of school, but the second for everyone elseâand the directors looked shocked to see me. Theyâd already reassigned my spot.
I was ready to fight to earn it back. But there was Kennan Wylieâwaiting to eat my lunch. And thatâs exactly what he did. Nobody stopped him.
By the end of the year, I was a shell of myself.
Luckily, the following year I transferred to Sam Houston High School in Arlington, Texas. It was a healthier school. I was loved there. I opened up a little⌠maybe. I also fell in love. And that became another traumatic storyâbecause of my prior trauma, my quietness, my misunderstanding of myself, and the toxic shame I was carrying.
Iâve done a lot of EMDR therapy since then. Iâve been working to undo the trauma that doesnât even belong to me. That trauma came from other peopleâs bullshitâthe stuff no one protected me from.
They say Black girls arenât protected like we should be. But Iâm not supposed to accept that as some kind of fixed truth. Bullshit.
Itâs not just that weâre unprotectedâitâs that we are often surrounded by weak people who buy into stereotypes that white America projected onto us. Stereotypes that stem from their own insecurities.
And insecurity? Itâs dangerous.
It breeds envy.
It breeds narcissism.
It breeds racism.
It breeds heartbreak.
Until the world truly heals from insecurity, I will continue to practice fierce boundaries and the therapeutic forgiveness I talk about on my YouTube channel.
I am still here.
I am still healing.
And I am reclaiming every beat they tried to silence.
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