This is the Heartbreak
If I wrote the piece I am scared to write it would go something like this:
I was adopted into a white family that claimed they had unconditional love. I was brought up in white communities and even lived in Oregon, founded to be a white utopia, for a brief spell. And even when I lived in Kenya, I lived on the school’s compound where most of the teachers were white and therefore were my neighbors. These spaces, families, and communities loved me. There is no denying that. But the love was conditional for many. Only when I did not expand past the space they allocated for me, I had their support. But as soon as I started evaluating whiteness, as soon as I started to unlearn the anti-blackness I was taught, I was then accused of being divisive.
The cute kid adopted from the orphanage grew up.
I. Grew. Up.
So here I am now, an ocean away from home in another home, clutching a loved US passport and making the best with what I have.
(Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for where I am. But my need for survival doesn’t cease just because I am grateful for the good. And I hate how I even have to say that I’m glad so the rest of my words will not be discredited under the tropes of the ungrateful adoptee, the disgruntled American citizen, or the angry Black woman.)
