Skin Colour, Toilet Paper and Choice

Writing has always come easily to me.

I remember nights tucked away both slowly and furiously scribbling pages and pages of words. 

Words written in joy, in indescribable pain and everything in between.

Words so charged with emotion I could not fully decipher them the next day.

And it didn’t matter because their destiny was often ashes.

I burnt entire books of half formed ideas, photos, memories, secrets, truths, lies and my take on what I knew of the world.

Writing has always been my way to make sense of the swirls within my mind, to release and let go, but for this I have no words.

In my heart I know we are all just doing the very best we can.

I believe this.

Still.

But sometimes that isn’t enough.

There are many things I am not qualified to write about and never will be, being black is one of them.

I saw the videos, or at least the small snippets of them that popped up on my Instagram because I was too sickened and too cowardly to watch them in full.

Knowing the way these things would have once consumed me and derailed my life, perhaps I didn’t allow myself to watch.

I talked with friends, colleagues and family.

To remain silent felt disrespectful.

Everyone had an opinion.

I made up things and at the same time listened patiently as others made up things.

None of us knowing anything.

As I spoke and as I listened, I knew full well the lies we were creating as we tried to make sense of that which did not, does not make sense.

So far from my reality, so far from the way I lived my life, I didn’t know how to comprehend let alone help in any meaningful way.

And my desire to do so felt feeble and pathetic.

I didn’t know how I was to fight for something that shouldn’t need fighting for because it shouldn’t exist.

I am sorry this world could not keep you safe.

The system put in place to protect you let you down.

We let you down.

I let you down.

I went to work and saw my own 14-year-old confused and tired eyes from all those years ago reflected back at me in the eyes of this 14-year-old girl who had the weight of the world on her shoulders and whom the world was hollowly trying to reassure she had nothing to worry about.

I saw her clutching for purpose, meaning and somewhere to belong as she teetered on the edge of expectation to enter this confusing, contradicting and cruel world of grown ups.

I saw her yearning to know her future had some certainty.

It would be easy to say it didn’t but the truth is amongst the distrust and cynicism, it did. 

It does.

She is a diamond. 

Her future is going to be amazing and I do not question this because sitting with me she has the opportunity to learn and experience what those who harm and hate do not get the chance to experience. 

She has the chance to change everything.

She will change the world.

Behind those eyes and that smile which took work to earn, she is already changing the world. 

I didn’t want to despise myself for being white, middle class, thin, blond haired and blue eyed and yet, a part of me always had.

For many years, most of my life in fact, I felt a deep and pervasive self-loathing for my “privilege” and at the same time a confusing mix of guilt and shame for feeling this.

I had and still have a relentless desire to be seen for more than my physical body and circumstances.

And I cannot begin to imagine what it is like for you.

For many years, most of my life in fact, I starved my body.

Hoping to fade into nothing.

Because maybe, just maybe with the distraction of flesh and hair, boobs and bum gone they would finally see me.

Many times, and perhaps no more desperately than this past year have I wanted to shout “please see me!”

To think you may never be seen for more than the colour of your skin destroys me.

I cannot hope to understand.

For many years, most of my life in fact, I starved my brain in a desperate attempt to cope. 

To numb that which was otherwise intolerable to my spirit.  

And this is all I can ever offer my clients, the ability to experience purpose and joy in life even despite the hard and unspeakable things.

Not to take it all away but to become a solid, whole and certain being who does not collapse into the pain and fear but instead lives a true and meaningful life amidst it because when we all have the opportunity to do this we will heal the world. 

And my life is committed to that.

I am loudly and unapologetically committed to being a part of creating a kind and meaningful world in which we are all proud to belong.

Life on planet Earth can be another way.

If the man who suffocated another man, his brother, until he died had had this, both their stories would have been different.

And both their stories deserve to be different. 

George Floyd deserved to live his life.

His full life. 

I thought about the people hoarding toilet paper.

Through the salt tang of my tears I thought about all the jokes I’d heard because there was more than one way of asking and answering the question “what kind of person would do something like that?”

A person who was deeply mistrustful of authority.

A person who felt unsafe.

A person who did not believe we would show them kindness if things got tough.

And in this time when we desperately needed to feel safe, unified and protected one man of authority instead confirmed our fears.

Do I remain silent out of fear of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time or do I offer what I can, even at the risk of it being taken wrong?

What do you think?

It is a question for you.

It is a question for all of us.

A question with more than 7 billion answers, because life is not black and white.

And when I showered I thought of your hands on my hips and your breath on my neck and my own breath caught.

I gagged and scrubbed harder.

Trying to remove from my skin and my mind those things water could never remove. 

All my life I’d forgiven.

All my life I’d given second and 40^th chances because I wanted to prove that the world was good and kind and trustworthy.

I was sick of cynicism.

I know now by doing so I simply taught people that disrespect and harming others because they themselves had been harmed was ok.

I made up justifications and excuses for horrible actions because I didn’t want to believe human beings, my own species, were capable of the things I’d had done to me, seen done to others and knew had been done to others.

I know now, through doing this I have contributed to making the world a scary place.

The very opposite of my intentions.

I forgive past me.

She did the best she could.

But I would not forgive present me if she continued because she knows better.

It’s time to be louder.

For as long as I remember I’ve wished the world to be a kinder and safer place.

For as long as I remember I’ve wished that things were different, that we saw the human light in everyone and treated one another as such, that we coordinated resources so no one had to starve to death, feel alone, disconnected and afraid, accept abuse in place of love or frantically build “protective” walls of hate and mistrust around themselves.

Perhaps you have also wished to live in a better world.

Now is your chance.

Now is our chance.

I am not going to tell you how, because I believe you know.

Each of us knows for it is not the harder option. 

It is human nature.