writing prompt 1.5.20

TENSION. fighting words hit wrong sensitive spot body responds stomach first gut clenches into a fist that proceeds to hit me over and over again as it spreads to shoulders, arms, legs, head.

REPRESSION. encultured response says you don’t deserve that, invalidate it— or — you deserved that, keep yr hard feelings bottled up
EXPRESSION makes transparent my encultured fragility. declares, i don’t want to hear that, and then allows us to face why honestly.

better out than in.

EXCHANGE blows. shake, slam, yell, push, cry, punch. words are sometimes enough but not often enough. moving past the how it was said to get to the what was said even as words feel like wounds puncturing our (highly personal and complex) traumatized psyches.

remember you’re white before you jump to retaliate, but don’t simmer silently, plotting yr way back to pride. tell the truth that it hurts. then hear the truth about why you need to feel that feeling, feel the disgust, anger, rudeness of the responses you activate with yr actions, yr words.

this is not a diminishing of yr humanity, it’s a full frontal confrontation with it. we are not born deserving trust and respect. and unless i can understand why respect and trust in me is hard-earned and easily taken back i simply perpetuate the mythology that white people are inherently excellent people.

we’re not. but anyone is capable of cultivating excellence in their life.

TENSION. punching walls, pulling yr own hair, maddened that you cannot find an easy politic to fall back on and say, i shouldn’t have to take what yr telling me. i stay because i’m invited to leave if i decide i feel abused, and i don’t. abuse would be me showing up — white — in relationship to black bodies, and asking not to be injured, critiqued, raged at, mistrusted, when i manifest my enculturement.

CLEARING. say the hurt, look at it, adapt. tell someone the whole story, not just yr story, of hurt reciprocated. swallow what you want the other person to swallow: that even if we’re loved, we don’t deserve unconditional acceptance. no, if we want continued presence, continued negotiation, continued collaboration, our presence must be earned.

WHAT IS THE WORST THING HE HAS SAID TO YOU? is it any worse than yr most honest self-critique? can you let his reflection in? can you stare yrself in the face standing inches away from him eye to eye?

he never asked you to mutiliate yr self-love, he asked you to hold it to a higher standard.

THE PEARL: when the tension strikes: when anger flares and takes over our nervous systems, i meditate on an oyster who is the fist in my gut. like metal splinters to a magnet i summon the rage and all that feeds it, summon them to leave my arms, legs, chest, neck, head, and come meet my fist.

with steady pressure — unseeable strength — i mold every shard together into a silver pearl: smooth, unbreakable, weighty with the promise of what we can be in the acknowledgment and honoring of our conflicts. my body releases denying, ignoring, justifying, vilifying, honors what is. the pressure exists, still, but in a form my nervous system can take, a form that remolds me into what i need to become to love myself fully.

that is, be what he needs to feel liberated and loved.

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