Assata Shakur said, “I feel lonely and serious. Something has been happening to me, a change that has been a long time coming. I want to be real.”
I’ve read and re-read that statement over a hundred times in the last few days, sitting with the implications of what it means for my identity; my selfhood. I’ve tried to pinpoint what the lonliness is- where the seriousness is coming from.
In 39 years on this planet, I’ve lived no less than 39 different lives. All of them unique and beautiful; many of them messy and tragic. But all of those lives are mine. They all still exist in my depths. They make up the tapestry that is ‘me’ - which makes it hard to detangle each life from the other.
Which 'Me’ will show up today? Will I be loud and fun; floating from person to person in a flurry of bright smiles and grand tales? Will I be serious and contemplative; wrestling with the metaphysical through introspection and solitude? Will I be enraged and bold; pushing against the status quo with shouts of power and sneers at injustice? At any given moment, any of these lives could show up and rule my senses and actions - propelling me into another ‘Me’.
Often times I say, ‘we hold multitudes’. Humans are complex and our complexity lies in variations of us. The intersection of each life that we’ve lived, of each us we become, deserves to exist on its own. Why must I be regailed to one life? Why must I distill down the multitude of galaxies that has been bestowed upon this body to comfort the human need to neatly categorize and box me in?
The ‘Me’ that sits and writes this today has been a long time coming; the amalgamation of 39 lives lived. 39 hearts beating. 39 stories written. Each as important, substantial, and revolutionary as the last. I embrace them all. I embrace all of me. “I want to be real".”
-EAF
#radicalselflove #radicaljustice #antiracism