Yet and still

Considering my place on Substack

I’ve been sitting in the liminal space where I am still me and also the other me’s from long ago and soon to be and I am feeling, hands darting wildly in the dark, murky water, searching for the place long ago in my life where fragments started to break to dust, and where I knew I’d never reintegrate. I have been reformed a thousand times over, but the places where the edges and curves have crumbled, now impossible to reconnect or make whole, threaten what I have become.

The barrage has been constant, relentless. All of us have said so, many of us still smiling between our shifting teeth, gritting and grinding hard enough to wear them down, tightening the mandibles, bringing headaches and cramps in our necks and shoulders.

One of my favorite Black-lady expressions is, “being called everything but a child of God,” when being insulted and let me tell you that being a Black woman in this declining experiment is to be called everything but a child of God. And I have learned how to bear it as we all have since we were girls. I’ve told you.

But what may break me finally is knowing that a nook I carved for myself and my friends and this community of souls who are exhausted and running on fumes, yet still telling one another tales, passing codes, smuggling hope in and out and over the lines, is the unapologetic platforming of hate groups, sexual predators and traffickers, while condescending to those of us arguing for protection and safety. The free speech of the misogynistic soldiers of the patriarchy continues to drown out the oppressed, the marginalized, and the abused.

I am sitting with this. Please know I don’t consider this lightly and that it would break my heart to leave this Substack for what it has given me and shown me about myself and others in the world. I found my voice here, gave myself permission and grace here, and have been triggered by the casual violence and disregard shown to so many of us who are close to drowning in two inches of water. It doesn’t take much to go under. After swimming up from the depths of sexual violence, the shudders of physical and psychological, cultural and emotional abuse racking our bodies, we see the bullies and tormenters still lauding over us.

Thank you for reading and following.