Track 20: His Heart

Trigger Warning: There is dialogue around r@p3, svicid3, and domestic violence. Strong Language. Reader discretion is advised.

Like most men, I think with my meat.

I saw Shobe in my “People You May Know” on Facebook in December 2015. I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking at this 90s fine, bald, and bearded man. He was light bright and fine as fuck. Wasn’t my usual chocolate or caramel norm, but he looked good enough to eat. So I slid in his DMs and told him he was handsome. That was it. Just attraction and audacity.

After he finally hit me back, in early conversation he told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship. He had just gotten out of a long-term relationship. He was healing.

I’m like, cool. I ain’t looking either. And he lived in Columbus. I was in PG County. I wasn’t doing long distance again. So life moved on.

A few months later, life humbled me. My uncle died by suicide. I was jobless and living with my grandmother and mom with no car and a curfew, lol. Life was goofy as furq!

That March, I was chatting with this thick 6’10 dude built like a country Ralph Angel from Queen Sugar. We were flirting. Nothing serious. I was planning to move to Raleigh for a better chance and a fresh start, and he said he lived there.

He actually lived in Clayton.

At the time, I wasn’t looking for alignment. I was looking to escape the DMV. In my head, he was just going to be somebody I could fuck when I got there. That was it. No relationship. No future.

One night, he and I were on the phone, and my grandmother knocked on the door and told me I needed to find somewhere else to go. Not when I had a plan. It was giving immediately. Now.

And your body doesn’t ask permission before it goes into survival mode. He heard it all as it was happening and said I could stay with him in his guest room until I figured things out.

When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, you don’t interrogate kindness. You accept shelter. So I got on the Megabus and left my mom with tears in her eyes.

Me staying in the guest room turned into the same bed. The same bed turned into “trying” a relationship. And before I knew it, I had convinced myself that a relationship wasn’t that bad. It also helped me feel less like I was using him and more like making the best of the situation. That’s what my Carpe Diem tattoo represents. The moment I had to seize the day.

The longer the situationship went on, the “worser and worser.”

Fourth of July, fireworks weren’t the only thing going off in Clayton. We argued, and he pushed me through a wall like the Hulk. I remember calling my mother crying. Angry enough to want to fight back, but restrained by his size. Restrained by my dependence. Restrained by the truth that I needed him more than he needed me.

Later that week, I left for my cousin’s wedding in Virginia and told myself I wasn’t going back. Packed my essentials. Tried to plan an escape.

But when surviving 6’10 depends on you needing the person you needed sanctuary from in the first place, escaping isn’t as simple as packing a bag.

So I went back to Clayton.

And when I got back, he forced himself on me. As if it was make-up sex or something. And then tried to frame it like I was playing hard to get.

That’s what broke me. The mental gymnastics of feeling like I was that 17-year-old being gR8ped all over again. On top of everything going on… his manipulation, his lying, his control, he took the one thing I had control of. My body.

Something in me shut down after that. I stopped fighting him and started fighting myself. The thoughts got heavy. At this point, I’m not even sleeping in the same bed. I’m on the floor in the guest bedroom. I felt like nobody would really notice or care if I wasn’t here. It’d be business as usual.

I tried to swallow enough pills to make the noise stop. Not because I wanted to die, but because I didn’t want to feel owned anymore.

When I woke up from the meds wearing off, I realized I wasn’t successful. At first, I was hurt that I survived. I was already feeling like I was a failure before the attempt. Then I felt like, damn, I couldn’t even do that right. Then something in me clicked.

I got my fight back. My will to live. I realized that now I’m able to get back up and be the captain of my own fate.

In August, when he was at one of his church conferences, I left and went back to PG. Thankfully, I was able to stay with my Aunt Lisa. Got a job. Started making my own money again. Started rebuilding my footing. During this time, I started getting back to me. I ain’t want to need a nigga for shit.

Somehow during that process, Shobe and I reconnected. I enjoyed chatting with him. We kept in touch. Conversation continued to pick up, and he invited me to come visit. I ain’t gon lie, I was a bit nervous because it felt like I was going in circles, but I convinced myself that it was nothing more than a cute little trip to see his world. I didn’t run into Shobe’s arms looking to be saved. And I definitely wasn’t trying to be in another point where I needed a nigga for anything.

Me needing someone had almost killed me. So I decided if I was going to build again, it was going to be from a place of choice.

That’s the version of me that got on that Greyhound.

I didn’t know what Columbus was going to bring. The bus ride was quiet. And what scared me wasn’t fear. It was the absence of it. After everything I had just survived, I wasn’t afraid that something was gonna happen to me. I wasn’t operating in a place of fight or flight.

When I stepped off that bus and saw him standing there, my first thought was, this nigga is fine as fuck. I’m going to marry him. It’s giving delulu, but it’s my truth, lol. And I was hungry. Maybe it was hunger talking and not love at first sight.

But what I didn’t say out loud was that I felt safe. Not controlled. Not monitored. Not managed.

Safe.

My shoulders dropped. My breathing slowed. I wasn’t scanning the room for escape. I wasn’t shrinking myself. I wasn’t trying to be digestible.

I was just there.

The next day (10/30/16), we made it official, and we started manifesting and planning our future.

In hindsight, this is so unhinged, lol. But something in my gut said not only is this different than Clayton, it’s different from every serious relationship I had been in.

My first relationship was after I found out I was positive and figured this man wanted to love even me, so let him. And that was also the reason I stayed. The relationship after him was proof that I’m still desirable while being positive. The one after that was someone who was crazy over me and didn’t treat me like I was replaceable. I felt more than desirable. I felt worthy. And then there was the fight-or-flight situationship built out of survival.

Shobe wanted to know me. And be with me. And love me. Not my meat or anything else. Just me.

What was supposed to be a quick trip of getting flewed out on a Greyhound bus turned into me never leaving. Not because I had nowhere to go, but because I had a man who didn’t want me to leave.

A few months later, he got shingles. Baby was down bad. Nerve pain ripping through his body from head to toe. I watched the people he called best friends, decade-long friendships, and close family disappear.

I had been here four months.

Four.

And I was the one making sure he was good.

That’s when I realized his heart was so big that everybody benefited from it but him. In that moment, it felt good to be there for someone instead of staying because I needed him to save me.

That’s when my love deepened. Not because I needed him, but because I saw his heart. I saw how much he gave and how little he received back. And I decided I wanted to be someone who poured into him without limit, without pause, and without wanting anything but him in return.

By October 2017, he proposed. The kicker is we talked about our past before speaking life into our future. He mentioned that he was the one who had been proposed to in the past, and I was the one who had done the proposing. So we made a deal that he would propose. By August, we had already found a venue, put down the deposit, and locked in the date for the wedding. The proposal wasn’t a surprise. I knew it was coming, but it was confirmation that this time, he was choosing me. I wasn’t trying to survive or make something work and call it love.

That November, we went home and I got to glow. My friends and family saw the difference. I was so excited. We already had our wedding party, but it felt like something was missing. I wanted my sister to be in our wedding. When I talked to her about it, she declined, but I could never have predicted what would happen next.

At my mother’s 55th birthday party in March, she asked me to come outside. Instead of celebrating our mom, she began preaching at me. Condemning me. Framing my marriage as disobedience. Speaking to me not as her brother, but as someone she believed had strayed.

When Shobe and I got back to Columbus, she sent a long message saying she could not associate with someone who claimed to be a Christian but disobeyed Christ. Or, as she called him, the Sovereign.

That wasn’t disagreement.

That was exile.

And what I loved was that Shobe didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t guilt me into mending it. He didn’t minimize my anger. He let me feel it fully.

In spite of my sister and others choosing not to be there, we decided to choose each other to infinity and beyond, and we got married July 8, 2018. One thing I appreciate from my sister is that she was honest about it. She didn’t walk us down the aisle or sit in the audience pretending she cared for us, only to tell people later that she thought I was a gold digger controlling Shobe.

Anywho, we immediately started seeing people fall off. Their access to him was lessening. Not because I was controlling him, but because I created a space where he felt safe to choose himself and what made him feel good without hesitation. He started asking the question: Who are these people in my life when they aren’t needing me, using me, or draining me?

From there, most of you met us.

The wedding.

The photos.

The Body Posi+ive campaigns.

The music.

The timeline love.

But that public love was built on private choosing.

In 2020, we bought Shobe’s childhood home. We bought our fur babies, Coco and Chanel. And then the world shut down.

COVID entered the chat. Hubby was laid off, and then the world caught fire. Police were killing us in the streets with no regard for our lives. I came up with the idea of doing a march instead of having Pride that year, and he just supported the idea and said, let’s do it. We organized a Unity March and received death threats while trying to fight for our people. He rolled with the punches and stood by my side.

Money got tight. Stress was high. Everybody was on edge. My mom came to visit while life was just unstable as fuck. She had grown attached to our fur babies, and we missed her.

While she was there, tension boiled over between Shobe and me. Two dominant men under pressure don’t argue softly. We said things that cut and couldn’t be taken back. That threw me into my head. I started thinking that everyone would be better off if I wasn’t here being a burden.

I walked down Lamson Avenue thinking, I’m so tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of begging people to see me. I remember thinking, I hope my mom will be okay. He deserves more than me.

I stepped toward an 18-wheeler.

And he stopped me.

He literally saved my life.

But what matters more is that he stayed after.

He didn’t shame me. He didn’t weaponize it. He stayed while I figured out how to live again.

Later that year, The house all had COVID, but Mommy had it the worst. He made an executive decision.

She’s staying.

Not because I begged. Because he understood what she meant to me. And he kept doing things that continued to choose me and what mattered to me.

In March 2021, we said the hard thing. We weren’t sexually aligned. We were two tops who built our relationship on everything but sex.

And instead of letting ego destroy us and everything we built, and we chose honesty. We decided to be open, and we never turned back. We continued to evolve and choose each other every day.

In 2023, my father died the day before his birthday. I spiraled, and he stayed. He managed to find a way to be my light during the darkest time of my life.

In 2025, we filed bankruptcy and forfeited his childhood home. I watched him carry that loss without turning bitter, without turning cold, without turning it into something that hardened him.

That’s when it clicked.

This man doesn’t just love in celebration. He loves in collapse. He loves in embarrassment. He loves when the lights are off and nobody is clapping.

He didn’t complete me. He expanded me.

He didn’t create my greatness. He protected the space for it to emerge.

If I’m alive to see who I’m becoming, it’s because he stopped me on Lamson. If I’m thriving, it’s because he stayed long enough to see me become.

I slid in his DMs because he was fine.

I married him because his heart is the safest place I’ve ever stood.

That’s my nigga.

And this is my love letter.

If you’ve been following our journey you’ve seen a lot unfold under discrete release because it wasn’t nobody’s business, but I realized a long time ago that God continues to pulll me through because he blessed me with different gifts to share that testimony with others. And while I pray that others are ministered to by my story, I hope with this post y’all see Ta’Shobe Kindred-Williams.

So many see us at a glance on their timeline and see the pictures and make up in their heads what they believe. Some are inspired, some can’t wait for it to fail. But most never see the struggles we face in private and survive to shine like we do on your timeline.

I said all of that to say, I’m still here because of his heart. This is my love letter to the safest place God gave me to dwell and thrive and survive.