EM POC ONLY!!!
This is home for me.
I love all of my comrades on c/em_poc, but I wanna especially give a huge shoutout to @sweet_pecan@hexbear.net for doing a lot to help me keep my composure. I don't know if they quite realize how much I appreciate them!
Each and every single one of you makes me feel less alone through these struggles, though.
I hope all of you are well!
They never got over getting curved by their own people in middle/high school and let that gouge in their mind become their whole personality as an adult. Can't tell me that's not a significant source of misleadership.
EDIT: What still fucks with me sometimes is I absolutely fell down that rabbithole growing up. I was the lil brother whose poetry never rhymed or metered enough to fit a sixteen in middle school, never found my innate rhythm until I learned how to play bass in high school, gravitated more toward peeling computers layer by layer than going up for sports-- then I left my hometown and had to reckon with the fact when I'm not surrounded by as much whiteness as I was, I started flourishing. My pull magnified and expanded by leaps and bound when I left home; and all that aggrieved blerd shit stopped making sense.
Like, I'm not even gonna go thru the whole 'seek therapy' canard; 'cause I got past it without. It just requires a few levels of self-awareness and awareness of the spaces you inhabit.
For real! So many of the big "black excellence™℠®©" types really ooze with that sort of insecurity. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it truly did a number on them in your youth, especially back in the day. I don't discount that, however I do think at a certain point (especially those with greater means) you continue to victimize yourself by not letting yourself move past that.