IDFK

I was watching something about spirituality and tuning in to that parts of ourselves and it made me think about a bunch of things. What I am unhiatus’ing for is to speak on imagining life to be.

I’m going to be honest and say as a Black woman in America of particular life/LIVED experience that it is hard to imagine a beautiful life here. A life that FEELS great or at least real to who I am as a person. Society here is thick. It is a thick, dense oily cloud of shit constantly speaking on what one must have to be happy or successful or comfortable and creating systems that put us in constant pursuit of that thing and moving the ‘mission accomplished’ sign further and further back as we try to move forward.

I say it is oily because even when you rise above the damn thing, the residue lingers. Sure, you might not give an actual damn about name brands, but life here definitely has a price and the prices gatekeep the quality and the quality matters, sometimes.

The bills, the care and products to uphold care, the debt, fun of going here and there all has a price tag. Nothing wrong with that but how does it really feel? Will it still be good after the experience is over? When the food is digested? The product is discontinued? The clothes dont fit? The shoes are worn?

Does it still FEEL good when things that made it look good fade away and leave you in its wake?

But it is hard to imagine a life that FEELS good in a space that seems stubbornly fixed on making sure certain people dont get to feel good in the ways they exist. A place that refuses to acknowledge it creates and upholds things that harm a lot of people for NO REAL REASON. Where the consequence of exisiting no more or less than how and who you really are can result in being denied safety or advancement or peace or acceptance or the basic respect or consideration that certain others would never have to think about NOT having.

The point of this is I want to imagine and create a life that feels right the same way I can on paper but reality feels…sticky. It feels permeable and yet…like trying to get water through concrete… And I am tried of being in a water drop situation where it will take millennia to make a dent. I want pressure washer, no, water cutter levels – a free and unencumbered flow through my tiny little presence in this big world, carving away.

I don’t know.

D. Ondria
07082023