Quirky Black Girls: we are worth the ocean

Sunday, July 25, 2010

we are worth the ocean

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

we are worth the ocean

via Leaving Evidence by Mia Mingus on 7/24/10

i used to be steady. i used to be steady as a rock. nothing could move me, rattle me, shake my vision. sometimes to a fault.

i miss her, i miss my fearless self. she was younger, stronger, braver–so sure. and now i feel like i have become a bundle of fears, worrying about other people more than myself, and seeing where i'm wrong. and maybe this is what happens to women of color, we get our strength beaten out of us by a world that would rather see us as shadows. maybe i am mourning for something that will never come back. maybe this is better, now i can see all sides of something. almost too well.

what am i afraid of? maybe this is what happens after you've lost some things. and that losing never really leaves you. maybe this is what happens after you've seen the damage that fearlessness can do. maybe.

but still, the question bubbles up inside of me, rolls around my head, slinks behind my every move: what am i afraid of? there is nothing left to lose now, except the thin illusion of the shell of safety. i am standing by the ocean asking it to promise not to drag me down before i dare to enter. that is not how the ocean works. it is not answering. it is laughing at me, mocking me, pittying me.

and the horizon lies in front of me, the land at my back. or is it the other way around? how do you know when it is time to leave? maybe that's where she has gone, my fearless self, maybe she has gone to the horizon. maybe she is not lost at all. maybe she is just waiting for me. calling me to come back to her, after all, she must miss me, as she rides the sea foam of each wave. she must miss the rawness of my pain and the thunderous beats of my heart.

i miss her.

she is worth swimming against the current for. she is worth the ocean. we are.