Sometimes I need a break from the boxes, labels, expectations, and my own damn fears…
A break from being misunderstood, feared, then silenced, tokenized, and commodified…
A break from being Christianized with something that lacks… even Christ…
A break from organizing and reorganizing my compartmentalized selves, some neatly taped together at my school desk, but most of me left back home in my bedroom as a glorious mess…
A break from the noise, the distractions, my reality TV insecurities, school books, lessons, and tests with white lies manufactured for generations through systemic giants that stand taller than my brown teenaged body…
Despite all of this…
NEVER do I need a break from my own Blackness, my Girlness, my Youth, or from Myself…
Because it is when I am left alone, (sigh) finally alone…
to sit with Myself…
When my Skin, my Gender, and my Youth are not categorized, weaponized, or criminalized…
When I am left to more than survive the labeled boxes but to step outside of them into the Light of the Son…
It is then that the Voice of God more audibly and sweetly speaks…
WHEN I AM LEFT TO MY WHOLE SELF.
*This piece summarizes how I felt throughout much of my own youth education in traditional schools. It is a part of why I now choose to homeschool my own children. Although I excelled in most of my classes and was well-liked by my teachers, who I hold in high esteem, I cannot deny the burdens of code-switching, racial and class inferiority, and social and cultural assimilation. Especially as an elementary school student, my ability to observe white social norms, culture, and expectations and to mimic them were my primary tools to acquire favor from white teachers and peers. I learned early on that it was white and European history, culture, and experiences that were centered within my education and Christian school theology and therefore assumed that my own history, culture, and experiences were somehow inferior. This is the consequence of absent narratives in education. Either a child is taught at home or at school, this does not have to be a consequence that they must carry.
