Fasade, freeing myself from labels 🌈
How often do we consider who we are? And I mean, really think about it. Sure, we know in the moment when certain aspects of ourselves are more active or present in any given situation, but to take a step back and examine how our identities interact within us is something I don’t think we do enough. Being a Black, queer, nonbinary person has been the most joyous experience I think anyone could ever hope to have. There is so much beauty and diversity within these three identities alone, and each contains multitudes. I contain multitudes. For some, these identities trail far behind them wherever they go. For me, they show up in every space I enter at the exact moment I do.
For years, they bickered like children fighting for attention. Each one wanted to be the most important, the most visible, the most loved. The older I get, the more harmonious they become; graciously holding hands, allowing each other equal space, energy, and appreciation.
As a Black person, especially one raised in the southern United States, there is so much history and culture flowing through my veins. There is an ancestral strength, grace, and wisdom that I carry with me in every waking moment. My skin radiates the love of the sun that warms my heart and brightens my smile. In the color of my skin, I find grounding, I find community, I find home. I grew up surrounded by generations of inside jokes and secret recipes. I twisted up the hopes and dreams of my community into my locs, a crown I wear everywhere.
Realizing myself and identifying as nonbinary has opened my eyes to the myriad of ways in which my beliefs, for so long, have not been my own. Gender socialization starts before we are born, the second our bodies are captured by an ultrasound image. As it has been in the past, this image determines whether we wear pink or blue, play football or make the cheer team, and become president or vice president. So much of the way that I carried myself for years depended on rules created by someone I didn’t know, enforced by everyone around me, and questioned by no one. I played by the rules for most of my adolescence and accepted them as truths until I was given the space to think about them. I began to wonder if everything I knew about myself was merely given to me instead of chosen by me; I quickly realized it was mostly the former. I actively run from every expectation imposed on me by the gender construct; not because I am afraid I cannot live up to them, but because I don’t want to!
Although I do not care for labels, the umbrella term “queer” resides comfortably within me. From a denotative perspective, nothing about me is strange or odd in the context of the “big picture.” However, from the fisheye lens of the cishet white capitalist patriarchy under which we all operate, everything about me is strange and odd. Once I accepted that instead of fighting it, I began to lavish it. Every day I wake up and ask myself, “how can I show up more authentically today?” and every answer breaks a mold that was designed to keep me small. My queerness extends beyond who I love to who I am. My gender and sexuality are not inherently defined by who I choose to be with, they are defined by me and my internal experience. Who I am when I wake up to myself is someone that only I fully know and that only I can control. That person changes like the seasons and I allow them to without resistance. Who does it benefit for me to shrink myself to fit into spaces I was never meant to grow in?
And from these branches of my experience blooms so much love.
There are unique bonds that I have shared with people who understand my complexities through lived experience. There is a language we don’t need words to communicate in. There is an exhale, an ease of tension, a release of expectations. Sometimes, there is fear pero con tu mano en mío, the fear is but the low static behind a spinning vinyl record. I am love, and love of all kinds finds me wherever I go. Love like gazing in the mirror, love like blowing bubbles, love like cross-country road trips just to spend a few hours together, love like coming home. I have lived many lives through the love that I extend to myself and others. I have seen constellations in the eyes of those who walk miles in the same shoes I do; I see them in my own eyes.
Black queer love joy is my own infinity that I get to create and discover every day. Black queer love joy is my freedom. It begs the question, “who are you when nobody is in the room?” Have you thought about it?
