Reading the Bubble Over My Head

One year ago today, I created my blog “from the desk of the black girl.” I dedicated my blog to my Mom and her love of writing. The quote “she writes herself into freedom” from social commentator, essayist, and feminist theorist, bell hooks, frames my blog because writing, for my Mom, was a revolutionary act. Writing provided a way for her to express some of her deepest emotions, fears, victories, pains, and dreams, away from the critique and shame that framed much of her life and many of her decisions. Putting her thoughts on paper was a daily ritual. Today, on the seventh anniversary of her death, commemorating her life and legacy of writing, this is my tribute to her.

Over the years I’ve developed many entrepreneurial ventures, some I pursued, others I let fall by the way side. Having countless interests can become problematic for persons who suffer from multi-potentiality (see http://zerototravel.com/podcast/multipotentialite/). But, my tee shirt business, “the black girl enterprise” has been a constant. I haven’t made much money from it, yet, but, whenever a facetious thought comes to mind, from some likely or unlikely interaction, I will inevitably walk away with a quote that should be on a tee-shirt. That’s how “If you could read the bubble over my head” became a tee-shirt.

When I find myself listening to boring people or people who say ridiculous things, and for a plethora of reasons I can’t respond immediately, I look at that person and think, “If you could read the bubble over my head.” The conversation, in my bubble, is the equivalent of a Toni Morrison character, having multiple conversations going on all at once. Wait, what? “Oh, my God, this person is so boring.” “Read my face. Can’t you see that I’m not interested in what you are talking about.” “Why are you talking to me?” “How long before this is over? I am dying a slow death.” “Does this person really believe I believe what they are saying to me? And, one of my all-time favorites: “Why does this person feel the need to lie about something so trivial?” One of the reasons I prefer “the bubble” has everything to do with not wanting people to know what I really think, how I really feel. But, it also has a lot to do with not wanting to hurt people’s feelings. I want to tell people the truth, but I believe that truth-telling needs to be tempered. I have a lot of people who support me and are fond of me without many of them even knowing what I really believe.

The other day while at my part time job, a customer wanted me to hurry up and do things the way she wanted them done. I was taking my time folding her items while the cash register was updating her sale, when she asked, “Can you do that,” meaning folding her clothes, “after you finish with the register?” I turned around and politely said, “We have a way of doing this.” To this, she replied, “I spend a lot of money in this store.” I didn’t understand the correlation so I chuckled, in her face. But, the bubble over my head had a full-blown conversation, “You are not the boss of me.” “Calm down, crazy lady,” as I finished her transaction.

After this incident, I started thinking, I should let people in on some of my inner conversations, allow them “in” the bubble over my head. I’ve learned that our internal conversations are just as important as our external conversations. Our “talking to ourselves” can either free us or imprison us. Internal conversations are recorded messages playing over and over in our heads, encouraging or discouraging us. They either tell us that we are enough or that we are not good enough. Many of us land somewhere in the middle, on any given day, depending upon an assortment of variables. Most of these recordings happened long before we are even aware of them. For example, if you grew up hearing “you are just like your daddy.” That message can have positive or negative implications, depending upon what your daddy represents. If your daddy is/was a responsible, supportive, kind, and a caring person, it is a good thing. But, if your daddy is/was the opposite, hearing that message can, probably, will, have detrimental outcomes. I am by no way saying that you can’t change the outcome, but, you might be pushing a boulder uphill, aggressively trying to overcome some unreal, predetermined ending that you had absolutely nothing to do with. It took me a long time to come to grips with “you are just like your daddy.” My daddy had an ardent disposition, a sense of confidence that bordered haughtiness, and a wittiness that could have landed him a job as a comedienne, along with so many other characteristics that some might have perceived as negative. My mom often referred to my dad as a mean man; he was abusive to her. I never saw that side of him. He was the first person to affectionately call me “Black Girl.” But, my mom made sure that I understood that I was never to accept abuse from any man or any person for that matter. I often tell people, I am my mother’s daughter (a thinker, kind, thoughtful, and generous), but I have my father’s persona. I was able to take what many believed to be a negative about my father and turn it into a positive about myself. It’s all about perspective.

Anyone who knows me knows that every five years or so, I write a personal manifesto. It is a great practice (ritual), a way of declaring my views and how they have changed, or not, over the years. Allowing you to read the bubble over my head marks an opening into my inner thoughts that very few people are privy to. It marks an important juncture in my life where I am opening myself to living my life out loud in ways that I haven’t in the past. There are people who have known me for years and many would say, “You’ve always lived your life out loud.” My response to that is: Not so much, even though it might appear that way. I keep a lot of things close to my chest, as the saying goes. I have only told portions of what I want people to know. Part of this selective living out loud has to do with the ways in which truth telling gets a bad rap. Most people can’t handle the truth. This quote, “Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well,” from Toni Cade Bambara’s, The Salteaters, summarizes the challenge most people are confronted with when asked the truth about their healing, their wellness, and their wholeness, “Are you sure you want to be made well?” Wasn’t that what Jesus asked the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda? “Do you want to get well?” Sitting by the pool for thirty-eight years waiting for someone else to do for him what he could have done for himself. When Jesus encountered the invalid, Jesus didn’t tell him to get in the water, for his healing, instead Jesus gave the invalid a life transforming directive, “pick up your bed and walk.” Imagine, believing you can’t walk, and suddenly, you are instructed to walk. Truth telling and wellness/wholeness go hand-in-hand. Excuses, standing or sitting on the sideline, will never get you what you want in life nor will it bring about wholeness/healing you desire or deserve. As the saying goes, “you have to be in it to win it.”

I know some people equate truth telling with people being cruel. I recently observed an encounter where a prominent, public figure was callous in her truth telling, but not malicious. Many may ask, “What’s the difference?” For me, I tell people the truth when I genuinely care about their well-being; the rest, not so much. If I care enough about you, I take time to invest in our friendship/relationship. I want the best for you, and I hope you want the same for me. Our covenant of friend/relationship warrants that we tell each other the truth, even when it is painful. It is imperative for our growth and well-being. But, I know people who, claim to care about you, will look you straight in the face and lie to you. Even as you know they are lying, you still want to hope that they are telling you the truth. At some point though, you have to do as I often say, “Recognize the BS, yours and everybody else’s” and move on. If you want to be well, made whole, you have to deal with truth – the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God. There is an entire business that is profitable regarding persons wanting to tell their truth to somebody; it’s called therapy.

Recently I listened to a talk where the presenter discussed ways in which many of us “engineer smallness” in our lives. It is the equivalent of Marianne Williamson’s famous quote, from her book, A Return to Love:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Allowing you “in” means that the bubble has popped, and I am going to liberate myself from the fear of not being who I really am to playing small for other people’s comfort. I will not allow myself to remain imprisoned to the whims of other’s people’s expectations or insecurities. Now, you get to read some of the conversations that have existed in my head. “Just so you’re ready, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”

Many of us have conversations behind closed doors that we probably wouldn’t have in the presence of strangers or in the face of people who we are loosely connected to. But, after this year’s election, many of us found ourselves asking, “Did (s)he vote for Trump?” Or, maybe, even, “I know (s)he voted for Trump.” For me, everybody, well, not everybody, mostly white people, became suspect. Even those white people who would identify as liberals and progressives became questionable after the election. Not that I was ever sure where most of the white people I know stood, the election of Donald Trump brought about some hard truths. My distrust of white people was intensified, even as I occupy and share spaces and conversations with them.

The history of white supremacy in this country makes raced relationships tenuous. Even when you believe you have an allied, you can never forget as Toni Morrison says, “If a white person has the option to choose you (a Black person) over another white person, you will be put on the train.” That’s what we witnessed with the election of Donald Trump, white people choosing against their best interests to align themselves with whiteness and what it represents, white nationalism, “Making America Great Again.”

In the face of white supremacy, the best of Black life doesn’t matter. I’ve come to realize that Black people can never be anything enough for white people. This was made real as I watched President Barack Obama’s Farewell Address. I kept thinking, for eight years this family showed America the everyday brilliance, dignity, elegance, and humanity of Black life and most of white America refused to accept its probability. They wanted someone, regardless of what that someone represented, who looked like them. For many, the goodness, decency, integrity, and righteousness of President Obama, forget his politics, and his family was a performance that would give way to America’s stereotype of Black life, because there is no way that these Black people can be this good, and they definitely can’t be equal to us. Don’t forget this country was built on the belief of Black inferiority. At every turn, the Obamas were pictured as animals, terrorists, his presidency obstructed by those who were resolved to defeat everything he proposed, his citizenship questioned, and Mrs. Obama called “His Baby’s Mama,” something that has never happened in the history of First Ladies. I mean, it was unrelenting.

As I have thought about how much I want the Obamas to have some time for healing, away from the venomous eight years they experienced as the first Black President, First Lady, and First Daughters, I was reminded of an exchange I once had with a colleague in class. In an effort to “keep me in my place,” he wanted to make sure that I understood that there was nothing I could do in the face of white supremacy. Sitting in a room full of white people, I bashfully agreed with his sentiment. But, the bubble over my head had an entirely different conversation going on. Dumbfounded, I kept thinking, this is a guy who is raising a Black daughter. How could he possibly instill confidence in her and in her Blackness, in the face of “his” white supremacy? What will she be able to do “in the face of white supremacy” when it is her everyday experience? She lives with it. Because white supremacy is so insidious, it believes it can promote freedom to “its” Black people while denying that same freedom to other Black people. It is similar to the white person who says, “I’m not racist because I have Black friends.” This guy would say he isn’t racist because he is raising a Black daughter.

There have been so many instances when I’ve refused to allow people “in” the bubble over my head. But, in an effort to live out loud, my bubble will become more verbal. I understand I can’t say everything that pops in my head, thank God, but having access to “my” bubble will give you a glimpse into how I really feel and what I really believe. It’s time for me to allow the chips to fall where they may. I have long cared more about the “we,” instead of caring more about my “I/eye.” The “we” keeps us in this perpetual cycle of believing “we” shall overcome; the “I” already knows “we” never will.

In May 2015, I defended my dissertation, “In Search of “For Black Women Only” Safe Space: Ida B. Wells Entering, Occupying, and Disrupting Public Segregated Space during Jim Crow South.” My dissertation argues the spatial politics Ida B. Wells used to navigate spaces not reserved for her or for other Black women. In one section of the dissertation, I make the claim that Black women navigating spaces not reserved for them was more behavioral than spatial. When one of my committee members questioned me regarding this claim, I fumbled. Instead of stating what I had written in the dissertation, that Black women in these spaces had to make sure white people never felt uncomfortable; that white people never felt threatened by Black women’s confidence; that white people never felt that Black women were exerting any kind of dignity that would say to white people, “I am equal to you,” and Black women always needed to make sure that white people believed they were in charge of Black women’s bodies, movements, thoughts, and lives, I gave a shallow response, “It’s about laughing when nothing is funny, scratching when you are not itching.” Afterwards, I was so disappointed that I wasn’t able to tell the truth in the face of white supremacy. It brought back that day in the classroom when my colleague said, “You do understand that there is nothing you can do about white supremacy.” Even as I had spent years researching and writing about the white supremacy of Jim Crow and all the ways it reduced Black people to being fearful, paralyzed, shuckin’ and jivin’ Negroes, I realized on that day, I was the fearful, paralyzed, shuckin’ and jiving Negro. By not telling the truth, in the face of white supremacy, I perpetuated a kind of thinking in white people and some Black people – that there is nothing Black people can do in the face of white supremacy. Even though I know it is not the truth, white supremacy makes you, wants you, to believe it is.

With so many white people there to support me, I didn’t want them to hear me say, out loud, what many of them probably knew I believed. Instead, I downplayed the importance of the moment by protecting “my” bubble. I didn’t want to share any of the inner conversations that I’ve had for many years, with friends, behind closed doors and in spaces “For Blacks Only.” I didn’t want them “in” my bubble.

“Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.” My healing, wholeness, and wellness is no longer up for grabs. In the face of oppressive structures in society, people saying stupid stuff in my face, listening to boring conversations, and those who expect me to “stay in my place,” I declare on this day and every day forward, I will let you read what my bubble writes. Just as writing for my Mom was a revolutionary act, writing will be my revolutionary act. In the face of white supremacy, I will “write myself into freedom.” And, that’s doing a whole lot.