“I know none of this will matter in the long run, but I know a sound is still a sound around no one.”
Why I Write
I want to write so much that no one ever needs to consult my enemy for how I lived.
Anyways.
In recent years or not-so-recent years, maybe you’ve seen people make magazines of their year, a “get to know me” zine, political zines. Maybe you’ve seen artists release music without the help of a major record label. Maybe you like artists who aren’t being supported by bigger institutions. This is your indie. This is your independent media.
Maybe it’s a slightly disconnected African-American lineage that makes me so desperate to tell people about my life. I’m trying to answer all the questions I have because I can. I’m lonely and I ache to hear stories like mine and brightly remember Toni Morrison saying, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you have to write it..” With a patchy memory and virtual paper, I hope to write my autobiography because I know I’ll be curious, and I hope someone else might be too.
Zora Neal Hurston, one of my favorite Black writers and thinkers said, “If you are silent about you’re pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Inversely, I don’t know that if you’re loud about your pain, that they won’t kill you or they won’t say you enjoyed it.
But I know that his lies don’t become truth. Abusers don’t usually own up to what they do, it’s part of what makes them abusers, but even if the reality is obscured or people flat out lie, it doesn’t make it true. I keep the bear that he got me because it helps me remember it was true. Sometimes without that bear, I don’t remember the details. The product of injustice reminds me of why I made the choices I did.
I’m no stranger to being called crazy or insane. At a certain point, I become humiliated saying, “please don’t call me insane,” and I wonder where they’re getting their ideas from. And being called crazy, always feels like a motion coming from above because it’s usually an effort to disempower, disintegrate, demoralize. But my words and thoughts can be my own against the powers that be. I can’t write everything down, but I’ve kept a journal since 2019.
It’s a greater mission with my scrapbook and clothing to create a personal archive for personal reasons I lay out publicly on the internet because putting it in writing creates a level of vulnerability and for me accountability. I don’t regret anything that people have called me crazy for because I know what happened. Part of holding and valuing that knowledge is saying “It’s okay. I had reasons.” Writing out the word abuse when I know they wouldn’t call it that is still an act of vulnerability, accountability, and even protest.
Since when do we let our oppressor’s tell our history. Anytime they told it “for us,” it was for them. It wasn’t a matter of “letting.” It was a matter of force. I won’t say that the time where people can tell our stories for us is over. (They still try). But there is no single narrative.
Right now, oppressors/abusers are trying to tell our narrative, but we know their words do not belong to us. We’re in an abusive relationship with our government. They’ve (effectively? you decide) isolated us from other alternatives in an effort to keep us continuing the same cycle, but it takes on average seven times to finally leave.
What number are you at?
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