REFLECT[ION]
Staring at the mirror image in front of me, I was disappointed. I just looked at myself and wondered, why me? Per usual my mom knocked once, then proceeded to barge into my room. “I wish I was white,” I said as I turned towards her. She gaped at me for a few seconds before she spoke, “Don’t ever wish to be something you’re not, you are a beautiful black girl, although it may be difficult, at times impossible for you to understand why we go through the struggles we do, I believe God knew you could handle the trials this skin entails.” She looked at me once more then quickly shut the door, but not before I saw a tear escape from her eye. While I continued to stare at myself, tears began streaming down my face. As my eyes bore into the reflection looking back at me, the next words came out as a hiss, “I hate you.”
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That night I laid in bed thinking, thinking about everything that has occurred, trying to convince myself that wishing I wasn’t who I am, was okay, because when I was in kindergarten, kids refused to play with me because I was black, because when I was in third grade, a boy said he didn’t like me because I was darker than everyone else in our class, and because as I got older, I would hear black boys say “I don’t date black girls.” Which caused me to wonder, was there something wrong with us…with me?” What differentiates us from others, besides the color of our skin?” That night I fell asleep with lingering thoughts and unanswered questions.
Awakened by the calming rain I heard in my dream, I peeked out my window and saw that the skies were grey and the clouds were full. My parents had left for the day so I had the house to myself. Noticing a book on Harriet Tubman regarding the Underground Railroad that I hadn’t read since I was in elementary school, I rolled over to the edge of my bed where my bookshelf was standing and picked it up. I read it cover to cover and once I finished I was blown away. From reading that book when I was younger, I never fully understood how important she was, what a big impact she had, risking her life to free our people from slavery. I began looking up quotes by Harriet Tubman and the most well-known quote, the one that kept appearing again and again was, “I freed a thousand slaves, I could’ve freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” My eyes grew with realization, seeing that she was talking about me, not directly, but people like me. People that are apologetic for being black, who suppress who they are. Even though at that time slaves were petrified to journey with her, they believed they were more secure at the plantation. As long as they did as they were told, they would be taken care of. All around me is white, white dolls in the store, white families on television, white models on billboards, even the history in our textbooks is white. Wishing I was white, hating the skin that covers me, I was falling for what they wanted, they did not want me to love myself and they did not want me to love my culture.
In that moment I decided that this would be the day that I would start loving myself for who I am. I did not want to be a slave to this world any longer, letting myself be ignorant to the history that keeps repeating itself. Being able to contemplate the world around me, recognizing the change we needed; by beginning with the change that needs to transpire within myself, because by creating this change, I can help others who have the same ludicrous yearnings I once had. So they can learn to love the black skin they are born into, so they know, we matter too. I walked across my room, closed the door and then positioned myself in front of my mirror. Slowly looking up, staring at my reflection I took a deep breath. Looking back at me this time, is a different girl. One with a small button nose, big bright brown eyes; medium length straightened hair that concealed the beautiful, natural curls beneath it when exposed to water, and caramel colored skin that never faded but always became golden with the aid of the sun. Peering straight into the depths of my soul, a single tear slipped out as my lips parted, “I am successful like Madam CJ Walker, I am disciplined like Martin Luther King Jr., I am fearless like Rosa Parks, I am strong like Harriet Tubman, I am a beautiful black girl, I will never wish to be anything else. I am them. I am me. I am We.”
