Fear
If I can’t see what’s ahead for 2 miles, I’m definitely going in to defensive granny mode. Especially at night. I’m one to slow down for every shadow and unseen curve.
This has been pretty true of the way I move throughout my life everyday. I have a comparably low tolerance for uncertainty and chaos. I love spontaneity but only when it’s at a controlled pace. I want to call it caution but it’s really just fear; fear that can sometimes cause me to forget how beautiful the chaos of life can be. And how often that chaos brings you to a person or thing that you love.
Over the last few years I’ve been trying to learn how to manage this fear. It started with a public speaking course I took in college as one of my last few credits on a Rhetoric and Comm studies degree. The world was still in awe of Obama’s first campaign and I had just began to feel comfortable enough in my small southern hometown to start to explore my identity as a Black woman. My work at the time was focused on identity formation on this new online space called Black Twitter in the wake of the 2014 protest summer. Much like now, life was fragile at the time but full of possibility. The brewing revolution over social justice, race and capitalism had burst through the surface as a result go the Black Lives Matter movement. I remember feeling electrified at the time as a student, as a Black woman as even as Black American, as someone who could imagine and redirect the course of this country to new and meaningful places. I learned to use my voice, exercise through classroom debates and presentations, to give life to the issues that most plagued me. My words offer a shelter and a shuttle for my fear and anxiety about the world around me. Rather than a limiting force, fear became an energy that I could channel into power through my words. I started to step out a bit more from my fear induced cocoon by speaking about the communities to which I belong and the issues most central to them. I learned that part of my mission would always be to speak to, with and about these communities and to serve as a bridge between them and those who could help uplift them.
After 2 years of fellowshipping in research and communications in New York, I was hopeful that 2020 would be a year where I could be more intentional about the work that I take on. In a way, this year has lived up that projection, even in the midst of a global pandemic and a country being undone by its own persistence on racial oppression. As a result, my once imagined intentional and purposeful job search has become an often times desperate search for full-time work and financial stability. This free fall has shown no evidence of slowing down as the country’s leaders continue to edge us towards disaster. But even as unending as this darkness seems, I’ve been able to find light. My fear, now more omniscient than ever, has been my constant companion. I’ve learned in some ways to live with and channel my fear into a personal power, a motivating force to continue to seek ways to actualize my purpose.
