Being human in a dystopian state
In search of freedom and love
This morning, I was in line for a drive-thru at Dunkin’.
The drive-thru here is a bit tricky because Dunkin’ directs you to drive around a whole parking lot to get in line, but there is a shortcut that quite a few people opt to take even though there is signage telling you not to.
I got in line the long way, and an older white woman took the shortcut and got right in front of me.
Typically, I don’t give a shit. I have time.
Today was different.
I beeped for 15 seconds straight. Paused.
Beeped for another 15 seconds. Paused.
Repeated two more times.
So I beeped for a total of over a minute.
The point of this beeping was to tell her to get in the back of the line.
She kept trying to move her car back and forth, not knowing what to do. And eventually she stayed in line instead of getting in the back of the line.
I then resorted to staring at her, and she looked back at me and mouthing words as if to explain herself, and I didn’t understand what she was saying. I lowered my window.
She lowered her window and our conversation went something like this:
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get in the back of the line.”
“Well, this is my first time here, and I didn’t know.”
“Get in the back of the line.”
“Well, I’m here now, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Yes there is. You can get in the back of the line.”
“Oh, you’ll survive. You’ll get your coffee.”
“Get in the back of the line.”
“Grow up.”
“You grow up. Get in the back of the line.” I was shouting at this point.
I also said, “Such a Karen.” I regret saying this last part, but I said it.
And then a Black woman in a van zipped toward us and lowered the window.
She also shouted, “Get in the back of the line.”
And the white woman kept explaining herself as the Black woman got out of her car and walked toward the Dunkin’, probably to order inside.
There was a moment of silence as we inched closer to the drive-thru speaker where we were to place to order.
Just before it was her turn, the white woman got out of the line and drove away. She must have lost her appetite for coffee.
I gotta tell you, I had a justice boner so hard I didn’t know what to do with it.
One thing was very clear coming out of this experience: I am angry.
I am angry as fuck.
After over 73+ million people (and counting) voted against my bodily autonomy and for their delusions and privileges this past Tuesday, it became very clear that I have no tolerance for people who act helpless, entitled, and ignorant as they make decisions that deplete my own resources.
What happened at Dunkin’ was simply symbolic of what happened on Tuesday.
In the face of helplessness, entitlement, and ignorance, I will get angry. As a human being, I will attempt to make other people responsible for my emotions. The very thing I teach others against.
I will be goofy and reckless in the way I relate.
For the longest time, I felt shame around this.
I thought that I needed to be “better” and “take the high road” and “be more wise” in the face of unskillful relating.
But what I have found is that attempting to be “better” than my truth is a sneaky way of abandoning my truth of the moment and attempting to manipulate the other person’s experience of their humanity in response to mine.
Meaning, if I try to “be kind” when that is not how I really feel, I would often do that with an agenda for them to “see me as an example” or to “learn from my kindness” or “heal from my kindness” or some made up story like that.
In those made-up stories, I would subscribe to and perpetuate stories of supremacy where: (1) my kindness was better than my anger, and (2) the way I chose to show up to the conversation was better than the way they chose to show up to the conversation.
For a long time, I wanted to be different from the colonizers. So I would try to do everything that they didn’t do.
By chasing that ideal to be “different” and “better” than them, I would ignore and suppress my truth of the moment.
What ended up happening was that I was doing the exact same thing the colonizers were doing: minimizing and dismissing my truth.
I was ignoring the anger. Dismissing my sadness. Minimizing my grief.
The reality is, I am already different from everybody else. I am not better or worse, but I am already different because I am a human being, and every human being is different by definition.
As someone who inherited this world and its beliefs, I will find tendencies of the colonizer in myself as well as experiences of the colonized. But I will nonetheless still be the only person who has had more experience in my body as myself more than anybody else.
Which means that I have the most authority and sovereignty over my truth, and I decide to be known in my differences from others, my similarities with others, and my humanity as myself.
How the other experiences my words is not my business. I cannot control the way they experience their humanity in response to mine.
But I have control over how I decide to make myself known.
Sometimes, the way I make myself known will not be competent because it will not get me what I want.
Sometimes, the way I make myself known will be reckless because it is inconsistent with how I want to love.
But ultimately, I trust that I express myself in a way that feels most truthful to me in the moment because that is what is necessary for me to experience my own dignity in response to a world that refuses to reflect my dignity back to me.
I must admit, I am late to the game.
I thought I woke up to a whole new dystopian state this past Tuesday, but this world has been in a dystopian state for a very long time.
Black, brown, and Indigenous people, among others, have been fighting this fight for much longer than I have.
I have, in large part, been insulated from the need to put my foot down and stare at colonizers right in the eye because I have been feasting on my own class privilege, light-skinned privilege, able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege, among others.
I am just beginning to experience what Black people and queer people, for example, have been going through as I become more vocal about my polyamory and having children in an open marriage while being a neurodivergent Korean woman.
As I continue to make myself known, I will be putting myself at greater risk.
But I find that, with that risk comes opportunity, especially with the boatload of privileges I carry.
Sure, I will be at risk of being told to kill myself, being threatened to be raped, being sexually objectified, and being isolated from communities I’ve known for a long time. All of this has happened already hundreds of times over the past year.
But even as I witness my nervous system spike in the face of being deeply misunderstood and dehumanized, I can still hear my heart beat.
Despite every attempt to stop, silence, and suppress me, I refuse to do any of those things.
I decide to exist and still make myself known.
I decide to draw another breath.
All because of the privileges I have in being able to do so. This is how I decide to use the privileges that I have.
This is what I decide to do with the power that I have to write, speak, and show up on my own terms.
In the moments where I feel destabilized, I know how to connect with myself. I have not perfected this practice because, like I said, there will be times when I show up goofy and reckless.
But I will never stop choosing courage - where it feels true - to know more of myself and to make known more of myself in a world that tells me to stop.
If I decide to listen to them instead of myself, I don’t know who is showing up to the conversation.
And if I don’t know who is showing up to the conversation, I will remain a hollow existence that continues to fill myself with everybody else’s decision around what I need to do with my body and spirit because I have no access to my own knowing.
That looks more like a triumph for them. Not me.
I don’t find that to be acceptable.
So, I will follow the lead of those who came before to me to fight for our agency to exist as a whole human being who gets to make our own choices.
In this pursuit, I will not forget the privileges I have and the power to make my own decisions with those privileges.
I will remember my humanity.
I will remember my power.
I will remember to love…in a way that feels most truthful to me.