Sometimes I think the city renourished me.
Learning how to survive in the world as a woman, as a man, as a young person trying to capture her youth, or an old person trying to understand the changing times are just continuous lessons to be taught retaugh and learned. Living alone I have found it hard at times to understand my direction, to allow myself to fail and to be the only one I go home to, to fail and fail again. I think growing up in a privalege day world where the meals were made, the sheets were washed, the house was cleaned, in a way formed a detachment of humanity within me that resided so heavily and quietly within the cracks of my very being.
Only when you go to college do you truly know what it is to be at war with yourself. Which is a privilege within all its own: I think this is why there is the establishment of teams, clubs, fraternities and sororities, to keep ourselves safe from the mess of our own heads. To help us deal with how much they change us on such short notice. To allow others to not watch us fail too miserably, before getting food with us and reminding us that we are just human, and this is meant to be hard.
We live in a world where In one month I learned and was coached heavily on such deep issues I had only began to hear about. Issues such as intersectionality, rape culture, the patriarchy, white privilege, alternative insemination. These were topics I had never grown up with, maybe except the internal struggle of feeling like I could never be the girls in music videos no matter how long I straightened my hair, and struggling with the the fact that my brain and heart, were viewed as secondary to how good my ass would one day look in jeans. I remember feeling like I lived within a parallel universe when I would see Jessica Simpson on TV or J lo. Like i would never be a woman like them. A woman who was regarded as special in every way. I still struggle with the repercussions of that.
When I learned about these things, they depressed me. I did not understand them. I did not understand how I lived in a world where these things were happening and all my 21 years alive here I had blindly been worried about my internal issues my sadness, my childhood trauma.
I used to think I understood the world, but there are layers and layers of truths I would have yet to even touch light on. I grew up in a privileged white society; and I always knew this. In airports I talked to men in turbans in line, because I knew that racism occurred and I thought if they knew I as a 13-year-old white girl did not judge them than maybe they might be okay. I used to listen to rap music over and over again, believing that if I just opened my mind up a bit I could understand the deep concepts of self hatred, growing up in low-income housing, surviving and selling illegal drugs to feed my daughter. Themes I commonly heard in rap, but only sensationalized them and not truly understanding the deep roots of the highly oppressed and deeply saturated culture. I looked up horoscopes, and trued to really get into spirituality, I cried at shows that portrayed Down syndrome teens, and I cried when Drake got shot on "Degrassi." I did not understand the brutality of humans, but I know it made me hurt. I could not understand the concept of violence, where it came from and the hatred streaming within us, perpetuated and revered by our culture. I could understand the idea of violence but only the bare minimum that it was entirely human.
Moving to Chicago is when I learned about these things in a way that has left an imprint that may be visible on my heart. I thought I knew my privilege, but I did not know, and I continue to learn, how my privilege shaped my mind, my views, and run all of my relationships. I thought I could outrun stereotypes, I thought I could ignore and not be a part of mass-produced racism indicted by the media, sexism supported by every major corporation and system. I thought I could outrun the world. Simply because I didn't want to believe in it.
I've come far from the white suburbs where I grew up in, where sexism, racism, homophobia and therapy sessions were present in every aspect of everyday lives. I lived in a bubble, and I do not hate how I grew up for that, because back then my mind was tragically ignorantly saved by my vanity and my surroundings. A time I could never go back to now, a time that is only a memory in the chapters of my book.
When I moved to Chicago, everything changed for me. The person I am now is not who I was last year, and the person who I will be next year is not who I am now. I have learned and processed so much new information that all of it at times has shocked, confused and stricken me into a puddle of my own catatonic state. Most information most people do not discover in a lifetime races through my mind as I try to create new rooms in matter of minutes for my brain to put all of the files in.
Was it because I was open? Was it because I was special or sensitive to others? Maybe. But I really believe that if anyone lived in the city, went to an urban arts school, had classes that talked openly about all of these issues and shed light on the darkest reality of it all, this person would unknowingly change as well.
All I wonder now, is how I will go forth in this world. Deciding who I am today is challenging enough because we never really are the rotten person we play in our heads. We are inherently much kinder, but the world does not cater to kindness. This world caters to harshness, and if I had still been ignorant, I would probably be surviving In a bubble that is so safe and so sad to be in. I wouldn't choose that over the immensity of what I have learned. My ear is trained now to pick up slurs stuttered by white women and white men. I can't ignore it.I walk on the sidewalk and I do not move when men walk towards me because they assume I will move. I can see it. I always used to move and now I will walk right into them before they say "sorry" as they take out their ear buds looking at me so confused. As if I was inherently the person meant to move. Not a threat, just a woman. As if I the massive side walk we had been walking on had simply turned itself into an alley, and they had simply just not paid attention. I was silently protesting, and he didn't even notice that he could be moved too. I frown on the streets as I try to convince myself that I don't have to seem "pleasant" all the time. I will not play into my mind reminding myself "That men are never asked to smile." I try to not wear feminine colors because I don't want to be perceived as "weak" for having a curvy figure, white pale soft skin, and youth. I want to be powerful, I want to be respected and loved not for the things I was told that matter for me.
I see men and I wonder what their lives would be like to wear pants, and say anything I want about women, even to the point of her suicidal attempts and not be held accountable for anything. I wonder what it would be like to laugh with my friends, and not be perceived as a sorority girl, or as an ignorant person needed to be controlled by a man to understand my place in society. I sit and wonder how I can be a human without being a female, without being a white female, how to be taken seriously while wearing makeup and having big eyes. I wonder.
Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in this body that is telling the world so many things and not allowing me to speak. I see men and I wonder what it would be like to be considered without effort a Valuable commodity. This year I have heavily considered, "tying my tubes." I have not dated in two years, and I struggle to understand my place within friendships with men, because I know their Value placed on me will diminish by the time I am 30, and mine will never waver. And that clock of abandonment is too much to accept.
I try to be at peace with being 21 living in Chicago, but the things I have learned make it impossible to be at peace with myself. I'm trying to relearn my humanity, and build myself up the way I want to be. My only obstacle is the world.
I can't say I won't get up every day searching for new ways to conquer the world, to be more positive; to see the light, to see myself. That's what Chicago did to me, it made me see the world for what it is. The sidewalks do not cater to anyone, you are who you are when you walk down the street. No matter how many thoughts you have, your body represents you, it is the only structure you have. My eyes are wide open now, even if my heart breaks under layers and layers of hard pent up shields. It has a way of making you feel like what you think is attainable, maybe it just could be.
You just have to get up and walk and feel it, really believe in your steps. You cannot ignore the world in Chicago, but you can alter your place in it. You just have to fight. That's what Chicago has done to me. All the while I never knew what drew me so heavily to it. Maybe I do have a competitive edge and a soldier within me that when I'm at war with myself does not let me give up. A strength no amount of makeup, no amount of black clothing, no amount of self-hatred and scars could even begin show. I can always count on the grey skyscrapers and blue sky that almost seems too beautiful to be wrapped above the hub of the murder capital of the nation, to remind me of the parallel universes within us; the universe within ourselves, compared to the universe outside our bodies. Maybe it's there to remind us all, to challenge us to help us believe that we can dismantle our incredibly tumultuous internal worlds , and maybe, just maybe, come out believing the our self worth is something to believe in. I will never know what men think, what she thinks, what it's like to be black, what it's like to fear your life because of your body. But I know it is a universal fear that our only worth will reside not within the content of our characters and instead the small fragment of ourselves which is our physical being. I encourage you to remember that you never know the warriors standing next to you, wearing pink, with babies in their hands smiling throughout it all.
