Member-only story
Healing is a Luxury and a Necessity: Pain, Race, and Grace
TW: Self Harm
Here I am, sitting on this porch, computer in hand, watching the world move around me. The neighbor beside me has a dog that watches him smoke a blunt and I am not mad that the breeze is blowing towards me. The breeze is forgiving, breaking the heat and swirling around my face. I am one house in a long row going to my left and an alley that breaks me up from the house of my smoking neighbor. I watch the mosquitoes take my blood and half-heartedly try to kill them before I decide they are not worth my time and I cannot see any more death right now. Just having finished a pint of strawberry ice cream, I am looking forward to the donuts I bought too. After twelve days not eating dessert these treats will be my reward after a hard football training. I’m glad I am not wearing jeans because my stomach is ballooning after not only the ice cream but the large burger I inhaled before that. Today is a good day. I have deemed it as such.
I open my laptop, turn on voice-to-text and start speaking. To my surprise and delight, the hand I had clutched around my throat so tightly has loosened. My words flow freely- dam broken and about time too. I write of pain and loss and self and discovery. I write for myself for the first time in what feels like forever. And it is good.
This porch welcomes me in and threatens to swallow me in peace. I wonder how it differs from my own porch. Maybe my own porch does not offer as much peace because it is mine and sees me at my worst as well as best. Regardless, here I sit, submerged but not drowning. I have traveled a ways to be here and I have traveled an even longer time to be me. I was born an ocean away to a family that will never know my name. I was born with Kenyan skies watching over and Kenyan soil beckoning me home. Then, I was adopted and my world changed; I cannot say it is better than the alternatives but it is and that’s what I know to be true. I spent my life flying over the Atlantic ocean, moving between the USA and Kenya and when I finally graduated high school in Kenya I returned to my passport country to live. Ever since leaving East Africa I have been plunged into a sea of white where I am the anomaly. And to clarify, I do not think there is anything wrong with that, but I have had to make space for myself in places that…
