To laugh. To cry.

“The injustice is inescapable. So yes, I want the world to recognize our suffering. But I do not want pity from a single soul. Sin and shame are found in neither my body nor my identity. Blackness is an immense and defiant joy.”—Imani Perry, Racism is Terrible. Blackness is Not.

I’ve been challenged lately. Because I’ve been forced to think about my intersections. I am a woman. A Black woman. I am a wife. A mother. I am all of these things at once and sometimes singularly--depending on the day and the space I choose to occupy. And I wonder what it means to exist as all of these things and be rewarded for none. Acknowledged for none. Occupy a body and space that is considered none. Not even zero--that is still considered something-- neutral, natural. My life, my womb, my skin all come with a price that oftentimes I cannot afford to pay. Shouldn’t be required to recompense; every piece of me and none at the same time is accounted for. To whom do I owe the pleasure, the privilege, the sacrifice? 

The nature of the Black woman--all the ways in which she chooses to exist in this country is fraught with contradiction. I am both enemy and friend; healer and broken. We are lauded for our unrelenting ability to love, silenced when we demand it be reciprocated. I am insatiable. I desire intimacy and touch. We want all the things. Who knew the extent of our humanity? The depth of our corporeal desire?

All of this is of none effect. I am indebted only to myself. I owe it only to my singular being to live in the spaces, make peace with the slashes--offer myself up, if I so choose, to the intersections--knowing that I can be all things to all people and still win none. And perhaps that is ok. Or it will have to be if it means that I live fully and authentically for myself and not at the behest, the request, the force of a nation state that belies my existence.

So. I choose joy. When sorrow sits at the corners of my eyes. Joy at the thought that my demise will be the world’s undoing.

And I laugh. And I cry.