So many things have been clashing around my head in the last couple of weeks. To turn a rather crude phrase these things have “touched me on my studio” for the lack of a better phrasing. I have been trying to find the words for what I am feeling and how best to articulate those feelings to the people around me. I have cried, prayed, cried some more, drank my feelings and grudge purchased. It is hard to discuss what is happening in the world right now without thinking about storms and hurricanes. The thing is we are beyond just Covid19 now, this is not the only storm we are in the eye of. 

There isn’t just a single pandemic we are now with multiple storms and each of those storms are colliding and bringing us into the eye of a perfect storm. It’s been particularly difficult for me to figure out how I clear my mental head space when it comes to the things that’s happening around the world and here at home. 

The karens and their no masks

The number of Covid19 cases keeps climbing and  we seem terribly unprepared to deal with it. I have friends and family members who are essential workers, who work in the healthcare system and they are dealing with the brunt of these. The emotional and mental toll that it’s taking on them is something that I am a front row witness to and that’s hard.  It’s hard to try and help carry a burden that you cannot truly or fully understand. It’s hard to watch them carry that burden with so little support from institutions that are supposed to protect and take care of its citizens. 

There is a sobering kind of breaking that happens when you watch someone you love break; and know there is nothing you physically can do to help. However the  truth is we as a society can do something. We can each take precautions, we can each listen to the guidelines and we can do what is necessary to stop one of the biggest health crises that has ever hit us in a long time. The mentality of how we are handling this is both baffling and somewhat insane. We are thinking about this with selfish lenses, we have bodies of authority who in some cases are trying to do their best and in other cases are actively trying to dismantle an already fragile healthcare system. The no mask Karens and their friends moving around the world with stupidity that could kill someone or intentional cruelty is terrifying. 

The work that healthcare workers are doing is commendable but there are not enough funds to support this crisis.  Not enough funds to protect healthcare workers or to even provide basic healthcare for people and for me, that’s trauma. It is a new kind of trauma that is building within us. 

By the end of 2020 I predict that psychologists and psychiatrists will begin to come up with new names and diagnoses for the things we are feeling, all these new emotions, we’re unable to describe. The senses that are rising in us, these feelings that we don’t have words for, that we don’t have names for because there is a trauma that is rising within us. A trauma ingrained in what we’re going through right now. 

400 years of genetic memory and pain

This is the year of new and old traumas. A secondary pandemic that has been going on for the better part of 400 years was forced to its crisis the murder of George Floyd. All of a sudden the whole world decided racism was an important issue to address, big enough to take notice. And in my head, I keep asking the question where have you been for the last 400 years? Where have you been for the trauma that black people and people of colour have endured? The trauma that is born out of people locked in cages in ships, stolen from villages? The trauma of witnessing the loss lineage and identity? 

When commercialized slavery was dismantled and became institutionalized because that’s what happened. Slavery ended and racism was given a new far more sinister direction, one where slavery was dressed up as freedom. It was built into systems that were specifically designed to discriminate. Systems that we happily participate in without question, without fight and our freedoms get lost in conformity and peacemaking. 

So here we are in 2020 and the world all of a sudden decided to wait a second and ask the question: What’s wrong with this picture? Now for all us Black Lives Matter. But I keep thinking about my genetic memory. The fact that I cannot walk the length of Gorée island or Elmina Castle without my heart breaking, without panic rising within me. The fact that I have lived a trauma that I wasn’t quite sure where it came from. The fact that I have nightmares with pieces that I don’t understand because I am living the genetic memories of my ancestors. And here we are in 2020 and people still ask the question is there really racism. Where microaggressions are still explained away as a bit of fun.

Things keep getting worse in the eye of this perfect storm because we keep witnessing on a large scale a disappointing lack of accountability. As black people not only we are living with this racial trauma. Now we have the added component of the coronavirus. 

But for black women, there is more.

The rise of gender-based violence since lockdowns began around the world is staggering and creating a bundle of nerves around us. Another trauma that as women we have lived with our whole lives, a trauma of more angry discrimination, a trauma where we are taught to bend, conform and contort our bodies for the comfort of men. 

In the first week of lockdown, the South African police service recorded 2300 gender based violence complaints. Somehow it is our fault that he got angry, our fault his range turned murderous, our fault because he couldn’t control himself. They kill us and somehow it is our fault. So we live in fear of our lives and innocence.

We move with great discomfort, masking ourselves so that the way we are does not trigger men into behaviours, that is not right. Why is it my job as a woman to behave in a way that will not trigger a man? Why is it not the job of the man who needs to behave with decency and grow up with decency?

I need to change. I need to dress better. I need to mind my behaviour. I need to mind my words. 

What I feel is irrelevant, who I am is irrelevant  as long as the men around me are comfortable. It’s the same with race, what I feel as a black person, as a black woman is irrelevant as long as the people who are non-black around me feel comfortable with my presence. I’m not allowed to bring my whole self in any room that isn’t full of people that look just like me. I don’t want to be seen as  too aggressive or too brash. I don’t want to come across as agitating, my truth is never fully true. 

I’m asked to be strong and to bear it because that’s what black women do. But no one is asking: at what point does a black woman break?