If Fear is All You Have To Give

Talking nowadays can be so challenging. I think that the world is in such a constant ,omnipresent state of chaos and confusion. Everybody is playing guesswork and we’re reaping the benefits of a society that says one thing, means another and pushes enough discord to encourage polarization. It makes for some very loaded conversations and unsurprisingly Covid tops the list. One aspect of these conversations that always exhausts me is contending with people who are filled with such anxiety and so much fear that it starts rubbing off. There’s people who take Fauci’s word as gospel and follow every single piece of detritus that is put out there. These people do not even allow for the possibility of differing opinions. And it comes down to my beliefs are more “right” than yours. Who can ever win in a conversation such as this? What becomes the purpose of our back and forth if you operate from a position of moral and spiritual superiority? So I posit this, if all you have to give is fear and anxiety and to encourage it with an overzealous set of virtue signaling, please don’t talk to me.

I think that on some levels to be in a state of fear and anxiety requires privilege. I think that and not to minimize pain and suffering ,its a helluva lot different in these so called first world countries with our fear and our anxiety vs people from more disadvantaged countries. And of course as should be common knowledge Black people experience fear and anxiety different from the mainstream. And us trans Black women, our lives are an everyday battle ground of battling forces that wanna keep us down and dead. And we catch that from everybody. I can be reaching and I never mean to speak for all of us or even a fraction but I know just spiritually with all the things we deal with that we use fear and anxiety differently. It can feel like your back is against the wall and when you in this world and people constantly mis-gender you, when you can’t get a job or housing or family funny and friends non existent and you tryna become that woman you know yourself to be and they trying everything to shit on your shine and making it means going to dark, ugly ,scary places then yea I know for a fact that us transwomen can have fear but our responses to it can be very different than others.

I walk through the world conscious that if my shit ain’t a certain level of correct then I may be mis-gendered, I may have slurs thrown at me. Depending on the level of savage you deal with ,it may be some violence involved. I know that people laugh at the violence and scorn thrown towards women like me. I know that to be a Black transwoman ,I don’t have the privilege of thinking any of my fears will be assuaged or that I may even have the right type of comrades with enough range to hear me out and understand. Ours is an esoteric experience. And I bet all of us Black transwomen have had to spiritually grab balls so to speak and navigate the roughest climates ,often alone and knowing that if shit get real nobody have ya back. It breeds a bravado and maybe it’s presumptuous of me to make any assumptions. But I know what I know . And if fear is all you have to give me, Don’t talk to me.

But I’m not a bad ass. I have fears. I cry. There are times when I don’t know what to believe or what to trust. But I do know to question. And I do know that there is power in trusting your gut and relying on your intuition. When I haven’t had places for answers or needed to feel something or someone out, I’ve relied on my gut. And as I write I think of how contrary , how almost of a betrayal it is to my young Black boy growing up in Harlem self, to give in to the idea of being in fear. To acknowledging it more. To recognizing when, what and why it comes up.