If I Must be in a Box, Let it Be a Woman’s

If I were to tell you that I am a dark-skinned dyke with coloured hair, bleached brows, and several piercings + tattoos, what traits would you expect? Perhaps brash, salacious, aggressive? A player? Depressed? Vegan?

What if I told you only one was true? I’ll let you guess.

This world really loves boxes. So much so that a song titled after one spent 38 weeks charting 1st on Billboard!

This temptation to categorize people makes sense. Humans have evolved to be incredible at picking up patterns. They exist throughout flora and fauna, and have historically, quite literally, been the difference between life and death.

Sabre tooth tigers don’t threaten our every day anymore people. Something has got to give!

I have often been the “gotcha” friend. As in whatever you need, I gotcha. It felt nice in the beginning, I’ll admit, I even leaned into it. Being labelled felt like getting marked with a star stating “this one is important!”

What happens when the funny friend isn’t funny? What happens when the chaotic friend relaxes? I’ll tell you. Any attempt to open up results in laughter because apparently, all that comes out of your mouth is jokes. People plead with their eyes “please perform that thing, you know, the one you’re supposed to do. Please. I am not prepared for this. I don’t know how to be around you if you don’t.”

I spent a lot of time neatly chopping myself into bits so that I could fit the shapes people expected. This quickly proved to be a problem when everyone required something different. Sometimes I was brash and bawdy, other times studious and wise, another devout and virginal, even dense. It was a Herculean task, trying to hold so many identities at once.

Then came my final trick; turning into an adult with no self concept and a chronic case of burnout.

By the time that I reached the age of 20, I was permaexhausted.1 I remember looking at my peers in awe. There they were, sometimes silent, often laughing unmeasured, or simply existing. As if they were actually free to be exactly who they were in that moment. How was that allowed?

By then, I had known for nearly a decade that I couldn’t “just exist.” Being black and weird (re. autistic) just didn’t make sense to people (re. white teachers and classmates). Lengthy silence followed everything I said, often accompanied by visible disgust. I spent my days alone, bogged down by the weight of my shame. Years passed where I was so silent people questioned if I was mute.

“Why is everyone else likeable but me?” I pondered.

I hadn’t the faintest. But I was determined to find out.

Thus, my intensive studies began. Spare hours and summers were devoted to consumption of media. I memorized the way characters interacted, what made people laugh, cry, frown. I got deep into psychology and personality types (y’all remember MBTI?). Any unpolished parts of myself were shoved so deep even I was convinced they didn’t exist. Being normal was my magnum opus.

The summer before university kickstarted the real plan. Cut my hair, new styling, go by a nickname.  No one would ever know that I had spent my youth being a social pariah – at least, not without it being a quirky anecdote. There, I’d be cool.

I pretended to like kissing boys. I shared my own sordid secrets. I was girly as can be. And it worked!

At last. My sacred undertaking from 10 years old was achieved. “Good job,” I thought to myself, “you did it. You’re finally likeable.”

For awhile, I managed to ignore the fist in my gut. It felt good to be a part of something. Who cares that there was a stranger looking back from the mirror, I belonged!

Then came my second year.

Post lockdown, the amount of students in dorms tripled. The façade began to crack. I said the wrong jokes around the wrong people, and silence began to stretch once again. I tried to study, but it was too hard, too much. University was a whole different beast. There seemed to be no script I could follow that worked with all the people I had met.

I found myself growing quieter and quieter. I was often reminded of my early days, before learning the scripts. Tired and embarrassed, I began to drift into the shadows. Nobody noticed. The fist had begun to yank at my intestines, and I was no longer sure where I ended, and that hole in my gut began.

Every single day felt like breathing underwater, so I stopped going to class. I barely passed the first semester.

Three months later I was packing up to move back in with my parents.

When I got home, I removed almost every single person I had met from my socials and vanished. None of them bothered to reach out. Of course they didn’t. Who would bother checking in with a stranger?

“I just feel like I have no fucking idea who I am,” I moaned to my therapist later that year, “I dread being asked about myself, I seriously don’t know the answer.”

It’s painfully humbling to be grasping at facts that most people produce effortlessly. I began to feel even more behind my peers. All that time studying, all that people pleasing, and not a single thing to show for it. I had sacrificed so much of myself to that black hole, and for what? Burnout, social anxiety, and my only confidante being someone I had to pay? Damn!

Learning that I would lose in all situations was the hardest pill I’ve ever swallowed. Both required a sacrifice; either myself, or another. One choice is far more expensive. Besides, belonging acquired through donning a mask never satiates. So what was the point of it all?

I wish I could go back and tell young me that the very thing I was running from was what I needed. That allowing myself to confuse, to exist in contradictions, to destroy the boxes I’d accepted, was the key to gaining the belonging I craved. I had to choose myself. What a fucking cliché!

I’d be remiss to call the journey of self discovery easy or complete. It’s uncharted territory, and I am afraid of the dark. I still don’t have the connections I wish I had. I often feel the loss of years I spent in hiding, wondering who I would be, what more I might know if I could only get them back.

But I’m trying. When I leave the house, I am no longer afraid people will spot the cracks in my façade. I can be loud and quiet and expressive and stoic and timid and outgoing. I can be boring and fun and exciting and dull and shallow and deep. I am masculine, I am feminine, I am neither, and both. I hold these multitudes all at once.

Sure, I still feel afraid. Of course I do! I am only human, after all. But fear is outweighed by the craving for freedom. I’ve become addicted to it, I am afraid. Every time I choose her, even trembling, she welcomes me with open arms.

I now know the face that reflects back at me. The fist in my gut has loosened. When I hold my heart, I am not ashamed that our silhouette is of two black women; I am profoundly grateful. The breath that I have held for over ten years has been released. I’m still working on that black hole, but it’s much smaller now!

It’s difficult for me to reflect on my child self without casting judgement. Why had I been so insistent on being chosen by people I didn’t even like? How much farther ahead would I be if I hadn’t burnt myself out? But then I recall what it felt like to be a young black gay girl in a predominantly white religious institution, and the tension loosens. I just wanted to be loved. How can I fault myself for that? I can’t. Neither should you.

Be gentle. Forgive yourself for what you did with the knowledge you had. Forgive yourself for all the mini self betrayals along the way. You can choose differently, starting today. I promise, you are not too far gone. If I can make it? Tuh! Anyone can.

Sincerely,

The Everything Friend

AKA

g.o Achieng

1 A word that I have invented. All words are made up, so why can’t I? Permaexhaution is a state of such bone deep tiredness you can barely perform basic functions. In my case, I mean it mentally, but it could also be used physically