Give me a chance

All my life I’ve been striving to simply be given a chance.

SKIN

For some my skin is too brown, yet for others I’m not brown enough. Herein lies the contorted meanings people attach to my personality and pigment, and the erratic expectations this exposes. Plenty will just never be satisfied, and that’s OK with me for they don’t know much about me + I don’t live to please + entertain them. But not being understood + meeting people quick to judge is hard to live with.

I love my skin, and the energy within. Very rarely does it shine in the eyes of others but it does in mine. Some times this is enough, but there are days when there aren’t enough rays and the dew of darkness overwhelms. I’m tired of the dampness.

RELATIONS

We are born into a ‘family’ with parents and potential siblings. A unit supposedly there to love, support, respect, understand, nurture. Yet my family are my friends who share these experiences with me. I am eternally grateful to have them in my life and endeavour to make this known to them.

I buried my ‘family’, or they buried me alive some time ago and it took me some time + pain to travel different levels of realisation. That journey is done. It’s a microcosm of how genetics may generate some resemblance but little else is guaranteed.

I can relate to the elderly I care for in many ways. Although I may be young in age I have experience in abundance that my peers could never imagine, let alone understand. Also, I appreciate the loneliness many elderly feel for I have forever been alone on my nomadic journey through life.

It’s hard, and I don’t know how I keep going. Maybe because it’s the only way I’ve fully + truly known, like children in an orphanage never crying knowing nobody will come.

As the young precocious teen I was I told my Youth Worker, Jenny, that I wished for someone in my life who I can share things with + communicate, on an intimate level. Nothing lustful, salacious or superficial, just companionship. Was this normal for a teen? ‘Normal’ or common was and remains irrelevant. People have never been vessels or tools for me to fulfil, and this won’t ever change.

I love this about myself, my integrity. Many may not appreciate this, but I’ll start with myself then grow from there.

This continues to be my fuel, for the companionship the teen me craved continues to elude me. I’ve been ghosted aplenty. Uncurled my palms, opened up my arms but been roasted like a medieval chimney. Ogled at like a flare left to dangle in mid air until the entertainment is no longer there they disperse. So many standstills on ignition, seldom interest in peering into my visions. To learn about who I am, even though I am willing to share, they don’t care. Too many have tried to exploit the fact that being caring + giving is inherent to my living.

It hurts, and the pain goes through peaks + troughs, ebbs + flows, and every now and then will crescendo. I am in that maelstrom at this very moment, so I’m letting the agony bleed for my sanity.

VOCATION

Academia gave me a voice, generated choice, enabled me to create with poise. To challenge the very fibres of the fabric we traverse on a daily basis for all the pain, injustice and damage they spew.

But many people in power, who thrive off the status quo, who feed off their privilege and advantage, resist change. So many individuals, festering within institutions care little for wider goals, roles and objectives of their positions, and will prioritise their egos, whims and insecurities under the guise of ‘policy’. It’s a sad facet of existence I have witnessed in myriad forms.

I came up in this world without no silver spoon or guiding hand or manual. I wasn’t taught, I learnt about the world. They call it discovery learning. I am thus self made, which means I do things in different ways to the norm. Critical, creative, innovative. Not necessarily harmful, unlawful, illegal, or even breaking any rule. In fact, openly + officially endorsed.

But offstage difference, something fresh, something new, isn’t acceptable, isn’t amenable, isn’t appropriate. Especially in a brown and bearded male package. There may be a better, much more effective way of serving, delivering, providing, but if it takes an ‘alien’ form you do no belong. You are a problem.

This is immoral + hugely deplorable, yet common. Such discoveries about ‘professional’ life have involved attempts to destroy me but I remain standing, and ready to progress for the greater good. To one day realise + bring to life my vision.

ME

I’ve been cornered + tortured through countless realms + encounters throughout life. Lost count of the occasions individuals + institutions refused to give me a chance. Out of spite, judgement, insecurity, fear, ego, arrogance, prejudice, or on the rare moment it was simply right relation + opportunity, wrong time. Whatever the reason, I may have repeatedly been cornered + tortured, but I refused to surrender + be slaughtered.

No matter what, I will always give myself a chance. I believe in the energy, experience, knowledge, love, emotion, power + potential that is me. I have so much to give, create, experience, achieve! In time, this will come to be appreciated by myself to a greater extent + substance than today and by the few who will always truly matter.