This post is more of a brain dump for me; I'm not gonna try too hard to organize it. I'm treating it like journal or diary entry.
Dear Diary,
I felt guilty a few days after writing my last blog post. Although I have wanted to adress hypervisibility for a while, something about that post felt wrong. I felt wrong and silly for telling an entire culture of people that I hate a word in their language. Although that is absolutely true, I really have no right to do so. Although I feel guilty about it, I have an I'm sorry, but not sorry feeling too.
I'm sorry if any Korean person was offended or attacked, but I'm not sorry if it made you think twice about the way foreingers are treated in this country. But even writing the previous sentence feels stupid because I chose to live here. Nobody forced me to come here. Yet, I didn't ask to be treated like a zebra standing in a herd of horses.
On Monday I felt extremely heavy hearted and down after learning about more Black men being killed in America. And by the end of the work day, I finally realized that I had allowed my heart to become hard and I was not processing my emotions. I hadn't reallly allowed myself to feel anything, I was just ingesting a plethora of images and information. My anger and sadness was displaced. Perhaps my last blog post was my way of placing the blame anywhere that I could.
But who do you shout at and cry to, when you're watching people who look like you die unjustly over and over again?
I got home and I cried. I could actually feel the pain in my chest, and even crazier I found myself gasping for breath like so many of us who have been killed.
As a writer and a poet I looked for the words to say but none came. So I let it go. I just keep listening to "The Mask," a peom by Maya Angelou.
I aslo made the descision to stay logged out of Instagram, indefinitely. And youtube keeps recommending video about people who stopped using social media so I think I'm doing the right thing. Its been a week without it and I feel better already. There is more time in my day and less currated thinking in my head. My desire to stay off of social media is less about the uprising happening in America and more about wanting to keep something for myself. I had gotten into sharing everything from music I was listening to, food I was eating, and mundane thoughts. Nine years ago I quite twitter for this exact reason and I haven't turned back sense. It had gotten to the point where the minute I though about something I had to tweet about it. And then I wrote "Anti-Social Media," A poem in my first book about all the things I hate about the "fake" culture of social media.
And all of this while I am trying to finish my novel. I'm dizzy. While I was being so active on social media I could not tap into the creative thoughts I needed to write my novel. So it's been about two weeks since I've written anything significant and I'm doing an okay job of not beating myself up about it. I'm thinking thoughts about my characters again, And I may be in the right mood to write again soon after I post this.
The story I am writing is a bit of a family saga so I have been doing so much research on toxic families and the effect childhood trauma has on adulthood. As a result I've been peeking into some realities about my own family and familty relationships. That's all I'm gonna say about that...
Just yesterday I finished "The Last Dance" docu-series about Michael Jordan and the 6 time NBA Championship team of the Chicago Bulls. It was such a beautifully produced and directed work. I learned so much, as I was only six years old when the Bulls won their final championship in '98. The most valuable thing I took away was Michael Jordan's ability to give no energy to the people who were determined to put dirt on his name. At one point he says, "These people don't love me. They're not my family."
I'm at least thankful that I acknowlege my unhealthy desire to be liked/loved by everyone. And I can be a bit gullible in thinking that most people have good intentions. When people don't like me I feel the need to fix it or change myself to make them happy. And that's not fair to me. I have to take care of myself first. That means not giving any energy to people determined to only see the darkness in me.
In my last year at college I became great friends with a lovely Haitian woman who was earning her master's degree in Marriage and Family Counseling. I often visited her in the library building where she kept a table often promoting aspects of mental health and therapy. One day she said to me, "Have you ever considered that people are intimidated by you?" I laughed. That sounded insane. "People find us intimidating."
She didn't mean in the scary, angry Black woman way. She meant in the beautiful, powerful, queen Black woman way. There are people who desire my intelligence, confidence, and beauty. But most of the time I'm just trying not to make a fool of myself. I often don't see myself in this light, but sometime I ought to. I'm thankful that I had her to remind me of my power.
But sometimes I fail at two of the Four Agreements: I take things personally and I make assumptions...(Because I still haven't actually read this book). This does nothing but use up energy I could be using to write my novel or anything else more productive. I made assumptions about what Koreans are thinking when they stare at me which were all negative because I feel like I have zero value here. But then I started teaching classes again this week and realized how much my students appreciate me in the classroom.
And I've had to extend an extra hand to a friend who recently suffered an injury, and sometimes I was not the mood to run extra errands. But I unfurrowed my eyebrow and did it with a smile. Because I was gonna do it anyway so I might as well change my attitude about it. And it is nice to be needed sometimes, and I do believe she would do the same for me.
