All the Feels In The World

Last week was really hard for me. Not in the usual homesick "white out" kinda way but a real visceral hard that made me question everything that I have done for the last six months. Listen, Vermont, for all of its natural beauty and unhurried ease, is the kind of place that makes me remember that this world has been designed with Whiteness in mind. I mean the kind of whiteness that isn't that nasty explicit "Nazi" hate-riddled Whiteness, but the kind that subtly reminds you that you are not White. The kind that makes you keenly aware of the need for safe scared Black spaces and the sense of cultural and historical community. While I will be forever in the stands yelling the race is a social construct, I understand what it means to take what you have been handed and turn into something magical. I didn't ask for my Blackness but I am damn sure not about to trade it in for a slow and subtle cultural erasure of who I am. Say what you will by there is so much affirmation in seeing Black and Brown people revel in this thing that has been handed to them. To rise above all negativity attached to it and make it shine brighter than anything anyone intended. I love my Blackness and even when I become liberated enough to shake off labels and linear thinking, that wont change. But when that thing creates the heaviness of being other, its only reaffirmed through community. I am longing for community in ways that I cant even begin to describe, You never know the power of a nigga nod or someone crowning their sentences with a long drawn out "gurrrlll" until that magic is missing from your daily interactions. There are days that I thank God that there are social media and smart phones to keep me marginally connected. I can't tell you how many days I spend watching videos of people dancing, singing, just plain fellowshipping in Blackness. What makes this situation even more perplexing is that there are Black people here, but they seem scared to connect in ways that have sustained us for centuries. I wonder what goes through their heads, navigating this environment? Some seem completely at ease, smiling with the kind of resolve that assimilation provides, but this is speculation as I cant even get them to speak. Sometimes I think that its also my very apparent Southern sensibilities that cause this rift. While that might be true, I have been in other places where this theory is riddled with holes. I can go to California and even my time in the Midwest and there is not one beat missed in terms of cultural support and affirmation. But here is a different kind of hegemonic way of being. Its so homogeneous that any kind of difference is noted and instantly treated as a novelty. Its such a foreign feeling that I spend a lot of time debating whether its me and I am simply imagining and projecting my own hang-ups. But as I start to not place judgment on people, seeing them neither as good or bad but rather connected or disconnected, I see that its not me. My feelings are valid and what I am experiencing is a real truth. There is something to this idea of giving myself permission to feel and trust that process. Its a stark departure from my inclination towards logic and reason but its the only way that I can make sense of this space in which I now find myself. This past weekend, I had to sit with the feeling that maybe I am in the wrong spot yet again and if I am I worry that there is not a spot yet made in this world for me. This would indicate that there is more work to be done on my part, and my space will be one of my own making. Honestly, I shudder at the thought, but you'd think that someone who has often found herself on the lone side of the square more times than not would be ok with forging my own way. Maybe Vermont was meant to serve as reminder of the long road I will be towing for the rest of my human days? That doesn't negate my need or desire for sacred community. Today my cousin reminded me that we weren't designed to be islands; our need for connection is stronger than we give it credit for. I can attest to this and its deeper than skin color. Its a cultural tie; an inner kindred pull. My light seeks your light.  Right now, I feel as if I am stumbling around in a dimness... and all I have is a bunch of feelings that I don't quite what to do with in this moment. So I sit and wait.