how does it feel to be forgotten?
intimacy without admiration is one of the loneliest experiences a girl can go through. growing up i felt that most girls around me have the opposite problem. they'd get hyped up all around town, but no one bothered to see them for who they were. this was very confusing for me as a black teenage girl who (like most other teenagers) worried a lot about my attractiveness. that,
+
the hyper-over-sexualization of my body my entire life
+
my precise attention to perception and details (trauma response)
+
proximity to whiteness
=
a girl who caught the eye but not the heart.
i grew up in a very small community of pipeline, expensive, and exclusive private school systems. coping with the trauma at home meant only letting my true self (bubbly, silly, friendly, curious) shine at school through social interaction. those factors i added together above resulted in my being surrounded by and a part of lots of laughter, dialogue, and people. my lack of proper love at home (which i had no idea was abnormal at the time) caused me to fall into what i then called “love” constantly. this love of my peers of mine felt like falling into a bed of roses or running in slow motion in the rain or any and all rom-com movie ending tropes. i loved it.
yet, i'd no idea that the majority of the people around me were operating at an emotional and romantic frequency completely different from mine (if one at all). i was forced to grow up so very quickly and this is a rare trait of a child in the communities i meandered. most had stabler home lives. don't get me wrong, all colors and shapes of people can have some crazy and chaos in the household; but unlike me, their experience of being a child wasn't weaponized, rushed, denied, nor policed so heavily.
therefore, they couldn't meet me where i desperately wanted them to. close enough to see me, (rarely) close enough to reach out and hold me.
this made me feel that those who grow up white often understand racism incorrectly.
here’s what i’d tell the people i wish understood:
usually, racism is not about what you did. it is what you did not do, did not think about, did not care about, did not notice, did not acknowledge, and did not say.
the worst racism i ever experienced was being forgotten.
