What do you need to say?
I need to say, “I love you.” I don’t believe I’ve ever said those words to myself in earnest and I don’t know how long it will be before I believe them, but it seems important to say them often anyway.
I need to tell my younger self that she deserved so much more compassion than she received. I should tell her I am proud of her, and if I could, I would make sure she knew that we would turn out just fine. If I traveled back in time to show her a highlight reel of the life she was about to start building, she would probably look at me like the stuff of dreams. Maybe I could use a pep talk from her.
I will be a published writer someday- I need to say that. I will own the big piece of land and the tiny little cabin style home that I dream of. Eventually, I will work for myself, on my own schedule. I’ll stop waiting tables and pursue work that fulfills me and I’ll grow vegetables in my spare time. I will pay off all my debt and build a healthy savings. I’ll rescue a whole shitload of dogs. I will snag a second home somewhere warmer so I can live out my snowbird fantasies. I will learn to dress like someone who believes she is a bad bitch. Maybe I’ll open up my own business. I’ll continue traveling and do more long-distance hiking. I’ll gain more confidence. I’ll keep becoming a better version of myself. I’ll heal.
I need to say that I am sorry to the girls who hurt me in high school. You wronged me but I wronged you too, and I need you to know how much I regret that. I loved you all so much it horrified me, because at the time, all I knew about love is that the people I offered it to most freely would inevitably be the ones that I lost. I suppose that in holding on to that belief so tightly, I became my own self-fulfilling prophecy. I know I was a lot to handle, but I cannot apologize for that. I never will. Still, I can understand why it was easy to fall out of friendship with me. I am ashamed that you all befriended me at a time when I wasn’t able to be a real friend to anyone else. I still wonder if you got a sense for how jealous I was of you. You invited me into your beautiful homes, I ate dinner alongside your loving families, and I would have given anything to have had lives like yours. I wished I had your hair and your clothes and your cars and your complexions. I envied your healthy relationships with your parents, your money, your emotional stability, your normalcy. I wanted to be you all so bad, but it was clear I never could be, so while I loved you with everything I had, I also hated you for everything I was not, and I did a poor job navigating those opposing feelings. For the part that I played in the destruction of those relationships, I am so deeply sorry.
I also need to apologize to every little brown girl and boy I pretended I was better than, because I benefited immensely from my proximity to whiteness. I went to white schools, lived with white parents, spoke with a white affect, and performed well within the framework of academic and values-based success established by a white power structure. I wore these truths like a badge of honor, a means of shielding myself from the reality that was hidden from me for so long. I used these accomplishments to shirk the shameful implications of my own brown skin, and that internalized hatred is something I’ll continue to answer for. I still don’t know how to make sense of the duality that exists inside me, especially when one half of who I am feels like it has been so hidden from view, but I think I ought to start by offering apologies and gratitude to my ancestors, my heritage, and my history. I want to do better.
To all the friends and family throughout my young life who helped to reinforce the shame of my brownness, I need y’all to know you have been complicit. I’m talking to the girls who sat behind me in class freshman year and often loudly cackled “THE BACK OF YO HEAD IS RIDICULOUS”, and I’m talking to the girls in eighth grade who made a game out of flinging ramen noodles into my curls at lunchtime. To the friends who called me “blackie”, who referred to me as Mexican when you knew I wasn’t, who made fun of my upper lip hair, who said I looked like a gorilla—
To the people whose parents were suspicious of me, who thought I was a corrupting influence, that I was likely to steal their valuables or coerce their kids to do drugs, I will say this; mom and dad might have been dead on about that last part, but I still ask you consider that it high time to start having that conversation with your folks.
To everyone who ever told me that I was whitewashed or that “they didn’t really see me as a brown person” and phrased those comments as compliments. To the people who raised me to believe that I was white, and that I just “tanned easily”, as if the truth were something to be ashamed of. To every white male in my university Political Science classes who ever pulled the devil’s advocate argument out of their back pocket, as if the lived experiences of people of color were just objects up for debate.
I want each of you to know that your actions have been harmful.
To all the Black friends I have ever had, I apologize for never having been a worthy ally. I apologize for othering your unique experiences when I should have worked to understand them. I apologize for treating you like you were no different from all the other friends I knew, when being different was exactly what made you you. I want to apologize for the jokes I made. I thought I was being funny, but I was out of line, and I was unacceptable, and I know those kinds of behaviors do not earn forgiveness until they beget improvement. I apologize for the mistakes I continue to make, for the blind spots I still have not uncovered. I know I owe each of you a specific and individual apology, I’m sorry that I’m so late with those.
The last thing I need to say, is one final thank you, fuck you, goodbye to that and those whose presence in my life no longer serve me. I understand that most people come into our orbit for a reason or a season, but it can still be tough to let go of something we once loved. To these people, those old habits, the lingering feelings I have no use for anymore; I appreciate having had your company and I send deep gratitude for any lessons you taught me and all the richness you once added to my life, and then I release you. I release you to make room for something better.