Embrace Your Inner Unicorn
Unicorns are in. You don’t have to look far to see them in pop culture. These mythical creations have captured the imagination of the public. It isn’t hard to see why. We all want to believe in magic, that there is something more to the world than the life we see. It’s probably why children are told fairy tales full of impossibly wonderful things happening. Heck, even adults love going to Disney World.
As farfetched as it sounds, I am a unicorn. Let me explain.
Unicorns are creatures that we want to believe in but have never actually seen. In other news, the majority of my existence has been marked by others surprise in my existence. Consider:
· I was the only black child at my primary school
· When I joined my secondary school, I was the only black boy in my year (and one of 3 in the school)
· I was the only black boy at my rugby club (and first black captain)
· I was the first black man in my family to graduate university
· I was the only black teacher at my school
· I am the only black student among the 150 students doing postgraduate English at my university
The majority of my existence has been spent as the proverbial ‘black face in a white space’. When that is your existence, it is easy to perpetually feel like an outsider. In my case, my grammar school accent had my majority black basketball team accusing (or was it questioning?) why I ‘spoke like a white guy’. Other kids at school couldn’t understand why I loved Enid Blyton and Busta Rhymes. In my first year at university I was invited to a Sunday roast and wondered where the rice and peas, macaroni cheese and jerk chicken were. For a long time, I felt like there was a war raging inside me, the ‘double consciousness’ that W.E.B Dubois talked about. The problem was that, in trying to live up to the expectations that other people had placed on me, I hadn’t really stopped to consider the expectations I had for myself.
It was only with the intervention of fate that I considered what I wanted to be. After an operation gone wrong, I spent a period of time in hospital, where for about 20 hours a day, I was in a small room with no human interaction, the tick of the clock and the intermittent beep of a machine that let me know I was still alive my only companions. What was I? I was a fairly decent classroom teacher, a good rugby coach and a serviceable cricket coach. I worked at a good school, the kind of school that would draw approving nods around a dinner table, the kind of school that allowed me to kid myself that I’d made it.
Thing is, that wasn’t true. Not by a long shot.
Laying in the hospital, I realised my life was a pantomime, a performance. I’m a creative person and I’d allowed that essential part of myself to be slowly erased. Having escaped death, I resolved that I would live. What did that look like? In real terms, I quit my job, applied for a postgraduate course and started my own website. More importantly, I let my inner unicorn out.
I am living my dream. I study. I create. I am at peace. I am a unicorn.
