Remembering you in high school
While on my work break. I have to go now. Clocking back in.
This is the work break I have here at this job.
To save money.
Hopefully it edits itself out sooner than later.
And I can move forward from environments I am in.
The truth is that I feel like such a failure in comparison to my siblings. I do not have my life together in the same way, and I am older than a few of them. And old enough to be together with things. I do not feel comfortable wearing my oppressions and story where I know I am so small relative to them. But this is my superpower I think, my smallness. How to channel it when the feelings are so bad.
Hopefully my younger sibling, one of them, will call me back, since I called so many times today. Younger brother.
Another thing, the story of Michaela DePrince, a ballet dancer from Sierra Leone — someone I can relate to because she is African, and when you are bicultural, seeing an African American dancer isn’t enough to give me identity since I am a minority within a minority. Even with the mess I come from.
My sister suggested I learn more about Misty Copeland but that is an absolute miss, not absolute, but not close given my story. This is my oppression too, to be related to someone who wouldn’t get the nuance of our bicultural identity because they identify more with being African American. And then that I told her about how I didn’t feel good enough around light-skinned girls sometimes in college, and she is older and could have connected with me melanated sister to melanated sister rather than calling me insecure. Go figure…
Was it too much to find a darker skinned ballet dancer to mention at the very least? Or consider that we are African, too, and that might impact me?This is what I mean. But she feels I do not see her, and I don’t think I do, really, so I have to go back and reassess the past to bring things up to speed. I hope that I can start to see her. This is more important to me.
To today’s point…
Godwilling, God, please give me the courage to own this smallness with my siblings and be open about my struggles like this. Just being a Black girl, nothing special, yet special. Can both co-exist?
Anyway, this is to go over memories with my older sister about high school when I was in early elementary school. Please let me come out and be seen.
Memories
- You played one of the girls in the singing group in Little Shop of Horrors.
- You went to prom with a boy named Larry.
- I waited for you to pick me up on the benches outside. For a while, and eventually either you or someone came to pick me up. I don’t remember. Just being small and six compared to high school students was cute.
- You were on the drill team.
- Were you on student council too? I think so, and very, very social.
- I played Oregon Trail on the computer in your library. The screen was green against a black backdrop, very pixelated. I think I was waiting for you and C**** too. C**** introduced me to this game. I would say something else here but there are certain topics that I will only address with a like-minded person in private. So not here, no, not here.
- You played the saxophone. And my father, your stepfather, pawned it. Why did he pawn your saxophone? That was awful. And that hurt I know. I’m sorry.
- Also were you in a Senior Superlative — I feel like you were.
- I actually don’t remember you graduating and wish I did.
That is it. Let me get to the next thing. And regardless if she sees me, let me see her and let this be the point. And let me develop the courage to stand in this with other siblings, and find this small voice that gets silenced so often. Please let this rise and be a leader even if I believe I’m not.
Onward. Gaa n’ihu.
P.S. This will eventually get deleted. It needs to hit the ether so I can get answers to how to deal with this situation at hand. On top of the already many that aren’t even noted here. Onward.
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