Breathing in Water

I have always loved water. As a little girl I would float. I would float in pools. I would float in tubs. I submerged myself and became unmoving, still alive but not vital. I wanted to be in that in between place, the place between life and death. Sorta like sleep, except in water I was in control and somewhat conscious. But oh when I swam, and moved through water I became something else. There was so much beauty there. I got to hear people ooh and ahh over how at home I was, at how skilled I was. The water was my home and it showed. As a little black girl being able to swim was almost subversive or perverse, depending on the viewer of the act. But honestly that’s expected from a sun sign Gemini and moon sign Scorpio. People were bound to feel some type of way around me.

Being a young black girl is seen as an unnatural act in america, zodiac signs aside. We are children, but we are black and female, two things that are frowned upon in the young. This meant that I was never allowed to live freely and be joyous in the way that children should be. I clearly remember being yelled at for daring to frolic, be happy. and carefree. What does this do to a person, never being able to go through the stages development? Never having a childhood? This is something unexamined or ignored, depending upon your interpretation. We can see it though in the pained eyes of every black person we see. Black men have their own struggle and masks to deal with, something which I will examine at a later time. But what is the struggle of the black girl trodden upon and used to lift up others? We are mothers to everyone and forgotten by all. Our childhoods are forgotten and ignore, we are never allowed to live innocently. We are doubted and sexaulized early. We become the sapphires, Jezebels, or the mammy in our adulthood’s. I recall being in high school and hearing a white male student say to my class that all black girls and women were either prudes or whores. We argued against him of course, but he didn’t get these ideas by accident. Society clearly told him what the black woman was, he was merely the messenger, not the originator.

Being a young black woman means being in constant pain. We are in agony because we give our all for nothing in return. We are forgotten and spit upon, but expected to take care of the world, regardless of our feelings and trauma. What does it do to us, never being a true child? I would argue that we never become fully fleshed out people. We stay with lingering doubts, always lacking something in our personalities. We wander looking for something to fill a void that will never be whole. Some of us attempt to fill it through family, some through relationships toxic or healthy, others never find what they are looking for and choose to just end it. Black women are magic, we are strong, we are joy, but we are also human. We can’t support the black movement in its misogyny and we can’t support the women’s movement in its racism and erasure of us. We are stuck in the middle, adrift, we are ghosts. Please don’t forget us. Let us live free and unburdened. I want to know what it means to taste freedom, to float in the water without judgemental eyes. I want to frolic, I want to be more than what I am. Lets remove the mask, and see underneath, who is the black woman?

Edit

I stumbled across a study, after I originally published this article, that highlights the phenomenon of black girls lost innocence. We are literally seen as less innocent than other children starting at age 5, here is the link for those who are interested