Sunken

I am stuck. Stuck trying to write my blog for class. Trying not to sound repetitive talking about Blackness in a class that is centered around Blackness. I’m stuck because I’m thinking about a multitude of things that have happened.

This past month has been a headache, I feel like I am in the backseat of my own car, watching myself drive. I am wondering how I am doing both, or if I really am doing both. Maybe the real me is sitting in the back seat of the car, watching my doppelganger drive me to my destiny. Like the Truman Show, my life is a fabrication. It is a made-up story where everybody knows what is going to happen, instead of me. All of the characters in my life are just a part of the game.

I’ve been here before. Three years ago.

I’ve been in the “Sunken Place”, which is what Jordan Peele calls it. I’ve been in the back of my mind, sinking, screaming for help, watching my world move forward without any of my permission. The Sunken Place is more than just the prison industrial system. It’s everything derived from slavery. It’s emotional, it’s mental, it’s physical. It’s the lack of everything functional. It’s about the fathers who thought just their presence was enough, after years of not being able to be there. It’s about the matriarchs who had no support but still did what no one else wanted to do. It’s about children who never saw their parents. The children who were never taught discipline. It’s the education system that teaches you everything and nothing you can apply in the real world. It’s not thinking you’re good enough or pretty enough or thin enough. It’s always trying to prove your blackness if you don’t look it, play it, or “fit” it.

It’s tiring.

Why me?

Why do I have to go obtain all the degrees? Why do I have to run the extra mile? Why do I have to prove that my blackness, that this body is worth something; that I am valuable. Valuable to them? Valuable to me? Does it really matter, what I do in this life if it’s not worthwhile? But, I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams. I am just existing, just like they dreamed of.

But, I am not existing for me. I am existing for you. I am in the Sunken Place, falling into darkness while I perform everything this world thinks I am good for.