I am acutely aware of my insignificance. It is clear that I matter not in a well established racist and sexist system that is stacked firmly against me. This makes me even more determined to kick and scream and shout even louder for my demands to be heard. I demand humane treatment; I demand an apology in the form of accountability; and I demand a course of redress that works.
For whatever reason, winning is forcing them to acknowledge me and answer for their misdeeds…even if “I lose” the case and no money flows to me in an award. I have stomped my feet and dug in my heels, demanding someone sees me and the harm they’ve caused.
I’m functioning, but I am stuck cowering. Trapped even.
It’s been three years since my road to recovery enough so that I became functional, and mostly optimistic. But then I got slapped down again, and it damaged me. Two years later I’m a withered hallucination of my former self hooded and silenced. My throat is dry and my tongue is parched…but I protest on.
Whatever this is – resistance, change, fight – it keeps me…satiated.
They can go right ahead and dismiss me. Laugh at me. Pity me. Demand of me more than I am able to give. But I will not give in.
NO, I am not resilient, I do not have the strength to “push through” beyond torment. I accept my fragility and exist in my brokenness. I still kick and scream because my nightmares haunt my waking and my precious few moments that I do sleep. I can’t think or wish my way out of this.
I am my ancestors’ but I am not my ancestors.
They exist as light.
I am vengeful, sunlight, weightless. An otherwise unremarkable grain of sand. Happy to be one of many building an avalanche against the abyss.
Colour in International Development 