Ramblings of a Dark-Skinned Girl in a Sea of White Shadows

#1. I am the dark eyed girl. I am the pariah by force. I am the other by force. I am self-critical by choice.

#13. I am a phenomenal woman, but sometimes I question my confidence because of the look on your face. It says I don’t belong. It says I’m unattractive. It says I’m not worth your time.

#6. I’m pretty for a dark-skinned girl, but sometimes I’m “not your thing”. This shouldn’t hurt, but today it did.

#99. I wouldn’t change it for anything. “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.” I have risen, I will keep rising, and your standard of beauty will mean nothing to me. I have the blood of giants running through my veins. You will not take this from me.

#24. I do not want to be your exotic vacation destination. I do not want to be your sexual exploration. I refuse to be your step outside of the white male hetero-normative box.

#40. I am strong. I am independent, but sometimes I ache for the agency that you don’t even have to define, the privilege that you don’t even see.

#63. Don’t be fooled. I do not wait for your pale skin to label my dark skin as an acceptable form of beauty. I wait for the day when I no longer have to assume that black women can be ignored and assume correctly.

#7. I yearn for the day when my beauty does not come with a condition of color.

#32. Sometimes I hate caring. Being a woman is hard. Being a black woman is harder. And a lot more lonely.

#4. What do you do when you’re not one of the well-known black party girls? What if you are? Why did I even put “black” as an adjective, like a qualifier? What does it mean that even I do this? Shit.

#50. Maybe my greatest tragedy is never knowing what it feels like to be that pretty black girl. Maybe I’m worse off for even considering this.

#1. You don’t get to matter anymore. I am self-critical by choice, but I am beautiful, fearfully and wonderfully made. I wish your pale skin could have had the chance to understand my complexities and be enveloped in my graceful black beauty and black strength and black love and black struggle and black pain and black laugh and black God and black intelligence and black blackness. I’m not sure you were in the right place, and I don’t have time to wait. I truly wish you the best and the brightest and the future and ten more advantages over the ones you already have. Maybe one day I’ll see you again and you’ll see me and I’ll see you and you’ll just know. Until then, walk peacefully and sleep gently, surrounded by the soothing curtains of black darkness.

Different is a loaded word, it carries a lot of meaning. If you ask me if I’ve ever felt different at Davidson I will jump and say YES with all the air in my lungs. I would normally advocate for the stance that there is no such thing as “normal” and that everybody is different in their own way – hence we shouldn’t feel like victims when we say we are different. Yet, let me be selfish this time and tell you how my “different” is one of those types that most people my age don’t think about, and won’t even come to know until their 40’s or 50’s.

I have a special type of health. It is not bad, because all my blood tests, scans, x-rays, MRIs etc. say I’m as good as new. I do not bleed, I’ve never had a broken bone and I’ve never spent a night in a hospital. I am one hell of a healthy young adult. Almost. I am sensitive to pressure, to touch, to pills, to people, to light. And I have pain in a different part of my body every single day of my life. I’m alive, I’m in college, I am happy. But, lordy I am different.

Different in how I hibernate inside my dorm in January because I am too sensitive to cold. Different in how I have more dietary restrictions than you know exist. Different in how do weird poses every 15 minutes because I need to stretch. Different in how I’m non-functional beyond 11pm every night. Different in how I cannot lie down on chambers lawn and read a book because my low back hurts. Different in how I can’t do contact sports cause if you hit me, it hurts like hell. Different in how I have at least two medical appointments a week. Different in how I go back and forth to my room several times a day to change my books because I cannot carry heavy weights. Different in how I often stand up when others sit and sit when others stand up. Different in how I keep a mini-drugstore in my desk drawer. Different in how I complain about studying not because I’m lazy, or hungover, or just procrastinating. I complain because studying causes me pain.

I feel different when people ask me what I have and they don’t know what the word means. And I wish they knew that in America, this disease is as common as diabetes; more than 10 million people have it. I wish they knew it doesn’t have a cure, nor one treatment, nor one doctor or clinic that can put an end to this. I wish that they didn’t place a value only in what major, minor or concentration I have, nor on how many internships I’ve done or on how many organizations I lead. I am fighting a huge battle against it -something which doesn’t have a title nor which can go on my resume nor which I can talk about in job interviews. I tell myself every day that I am valuable because of all that I am and not because of what I do or because of how many titles I have. And its been a long way, but now I DO believe my own dialogue.

I am different because I will come out of Davidson with a set of skills different to those of the average student. I will come out as a kid who has learned to be different in many aspects and disregard the opinions of others.  I’ll do what it takes to feel well, I will explain it to you with a smile and – I will not care. I have learned to find my identity in what I AM and not in what I do – or can do. I have learned to live my life striving to be happy every single moment, accepting things as they are – with or without pain, sun or rain, C’s or A’s. And I’ve learned to put ME and my wellbeing above anything else – especially above any imaginary and self-impose standard of excellence I might have had in the past. I study because I choose to study, because I want to and because of the joy I find in learning . And if studying is too costly at any time, I’ll just turn around and pamper myself, because a grade is not worth any pain. Don’t get me wrong: I am no victim and I put high effort into my academics, I just have a different perspective on them.

A long time ago, I used to hate my diseasedearly, but this year, I have learned to like it. And I thank my disease, every single day. Not only cause I have learned so, SO much from it – but also because it makes me UNIQUE, because it has made me grow in my uniqueness and simply because holy shit, being unique is freaking awesome ☺.

I’m in the business of life and death. Recently, when I was on the phone with my best friend, we realized that we’ve dealt with more situations that walk that fine line, like a tightrope over the Grand Canyon, than most people can even imagine. This was sparked by her telling me that her Friday night consisted of her finding one of her closest college friends about to commit suicide. Something tells me that finding your friend sobbing on a floor with a knife is not exactly how she planned on spending her night. Her exact words to me were, “At least this isn’t the first time we’ve done this.” And sadly, that’s more true than I’d like to admit. By the time our sophomore year of high school was over, our other best friend Meredith* had attempted suicide three times. Just the thing every sixteen year old should be worried about, right? The sleepless nights, waiting for the phone calls that sometimes came, but not always. Stupidly sworn to secrecy, we bore this burden for too many years. Eventually it broke me. I realized I had given up everything for someone who in the end didn’t care if I didn’t eat, sleep, or do homework. If she was going to end it, it didn’t make a damn difference what I did. We’re still haunted by those years, seemingly always found by people who need us in this way. It never seems to escape us. I still don’t sleep some nights, and my eyes are always open to anticipating another Meredith. I’m unfazed by the petty problems of college: the boys that don’t like us, the homework we have, the day to day stuff that really doesn’t matter. I find myself so emotionally removed from situations, often causing me to not enjoy life, because I’m sometimes so focused on the end game. I’ve seen the end game. I’ve been on that tight rope, pulling someone back in, and once you find your balance, it’s hard to remember life without that danger. It’s a constant game of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everyone wants to belong. However, it seems like when we find our niche at Davidson, many of us are judged. Some groups more than others. Our school lets the religious, athletic and PCC organizations have their support systems without everyone saying that they segregate themselves, but when I chose to live substance free or hang out with first generation students, LGBTQIA students, and STRIDE I am seen as segregating myself. I chose today to say you need to know the stories before you generalize the group.

My first semester at Davidson was a culture shock because I never had to think of myself as different until I came here. Being a natural dancer, I was bluntly denied dancing at a party with many white men because of my race. “I am not attracted to black women,” guys have said to me in their drunken state. I also was exposed to the phenomena of other races of women wanting to touch my hair and pull it to see if it’s fake.  Adding the fact that I was going to be a mother and was broke, I was the “poster child” of what many people saw as “those people” (aka the urban, low-income black girl). How was I supposed to be happy here? The first support system I developed on this campus was STRIDE, my hall and the counseling center. So when I began talking to my support system for STRIDE, I was surprised to overhear conversations about how I was segregating myself on my hall.

Fast forward to today, I now have another support system in the LGBTQIA community on campus. I have had countless men and women of privilege question me about this. I find it offensive that a person would even question why I need to attend weekly meetings with that community. Although my closest friends may not identify with these groups, it is always great to know that there is someone on this campus who understands what I am going through. I do not see men the way my girlfriends do, so talking about guys 24/7 with them gets boring. I need to know the best hang out spot to meet people who I would potentially date, develop friendships and relationships with other students who are like me because just like anyone else, I want to enjoy my four years of college.

The fact that it is the marginalized groups on campus that receive hell for providing a support system is the type of ignorance that puts us behind our peer institutions. This needs to stop. There are some aspects of my life that I only feel comfortable talking about with people with shared experiences, because they know where I am coming from and where I should go next. It is not an “us vs. them” situation. It’s more of feeling like you are not alone. My best friends on this campus look nothing like me, are heterosexual, not first generation or low-income and are from the most rural places in the United States. Ever since I came to Davidson I have been surrounded by people who are different from me, many are my friends, but they have their own support systems to help them get through Davidson and they are proud of it. So just because my support systems happen to be marginalized groups, I am not allowed to be proud of what makes me Ricki? I encourage students to think before they call these groups cliques because I prefer the term family. The way you see your bible study group, sports team, eating house and fraternity/sorority is the same way you should view my “marginalized” support systems.

If one has ever wondered why people do not mix, it is because we are like oil and water. Water, the majority in this world claim to be progressive and accepting, attempting to prove it with statements such as, “Oh, I’m not __, because I have a __ friend” or “How could you think that about me? I’ve been around ___ people before.” So for a short while, I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, in our current society, that people are growing, and views are changing for the better. Yet, each time, I am quickly brought back to the realization that they are not. I have been in numerous situations where I am in a room full of people who claim to be accepting, but none of them even crack their lips to say hello. So instead, I make the first move, attempting to find recognition and be invited into their conversation, but as I stand there, I gradually see their circle moving closer together until I am once again on the outside not looking in, but at their backs. Not only at Davidson, but in this world, I am, and always will be oil. I realize that no matter what i do, nor what i say will change the stigma around me. The majority is quick to say that we separate ourselves from them, when in reality, it is they who separate themselves from us. Water and oil, they can co-exist, but no matter what each one does to alter its’ identity, they will never mix.

Shaking, I handed the scrapbook to the orphanage director: “This is my family.” As he flipped through the photos I’d compiled, I looked around, soaking in the worn cinder blocks, sagging red drapes, and chipped floor tiles; I read and reread the shining gold letters that rested across the archway. They spelled: “WELFARE INSTITUTE.” My mind raced as I glimpsed into a life that could have been mine, absorbing it all as if it were my reality. It was my first trip to China since my adoption. That April, the visit was n’ot about visiting Terracotta Warriors, trekking to hidden caves in Guilin, or hiking the Great Wall. It was an exploration of the past and a new perspective onflife’s connections and journey.

Ever since I was young, I have loved being organized, cringing when my pencils are not lined up, my notebooks are not arranged by color, and my sweatshirts are not tucked in meticulous rows. But in that Chinese orphanage, walking among the maze of metal cribs and scattered plastic chairs, it became clear: life is not as simple as a newborn’s laugh. Instead, life is composed of layers that can be peeled back to reveal the truths underneath.

At Davidson, the layers of individuals are even more apparent. We are scholars but there is no shortage of parties. We are cognizant of our peers and their sensitivities, yet we sometimes speak without a filter, causing pain.

Everyone has an exterior, but also a façade that conceals one’s true self. At first glance, people absorb my Chinese exterior — a stark contrast to my Caucasian family. Others observe the Star of David pendant. It is harder at Davidson, where no one knows my history. No one knows the struggles I encountered in elementary school, or the pain I endured during my early teens. When I admit that I know limited Chinese or that I am Jewish, people shrug and nod, but their eyes tell a different tale. Toddlers, teenagers, and adults — they all stare and wonder. Sometimes I stare back, to prove my outward strength. They question but never ask; they don’t care to learn the true story. We come into Davidson with a clean slate, but we must also be responsible for asking questions and learning about the depths of others.

Life is full of contradictions. While I am a dedicated major league baseball fan, I cannot stand playing sports. Even though crowded airports make me anxious, my goal is to place my feet on every continent and embrace each culture. I cherish every experience whether it has been learning didgeridoo from Aboriginals on a jellyfish-infested beach, feeling insignificant under masterpieces in El Prado, or being swept into the crowded streets of Hanoi. It is the strength of each place’s unique history that appeals to me — flaws and all. The bruises of life are so carefully bandaged they hide characteristics that should shine. At Davidson, we need to continue talking with others. We need to get below the surface if we hope to understand our peers.

In that dimly lit orphanage, instead of feeling lucky, I felt guilty that I’d been given a chance. Those sniffling, trembling babies — I was once one of them. Despite the emotions accompanying such awareness, I a’m not a fragile “China doll” that shatters under the slightest pressure. In fact, my inner strength has grown from my experiences; there are many different layers of my life. I cherish the moments that I spent in China and feel fortunate to have the love and support of my family at home and my community at Davidson. Sometimes, it is hard to locate myself in this greater world, or find my purpose, but I am proud to be me.

The first time I saw the word “asexual” was in a biology textbook.

(Asexual reproduction. Something amoebas do.)

The second time I saw it was in an online article about an asexual woman dating a
heterosexual man.

(Anonymous: “That guy got friend-zoned so hard he made it into the news.)

The third time I saw it, I was typing it into Google’s search bar.

(When a boy puts his tongue in my mouth, there’s supposed to be a “spark,” isn’t there?)

The fourth time I saw it was in me, when I finally understood how to define myself.

(Asexual. Noun. Someone who does not experience sexual attraction.)

Where I didn’t see it was in my mother’s understanding, when I told her what I had
learned.

(“Oh honey, there’s nothing wrong with you.”)

Nor did I see it in my friend’s acceptance of me when I opened up to him.

(“Maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet.”)

I didn’t see it in my perfectly regular hormone balance, no matter how many times they
asked me.

(“Have you had your hormones checked?”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Isn’t there a pill for that?”)

I didn’t see it in the Davidson 101 Sexuality poll either.

(“Q” for “Questioning” since everyone tells me that’s what I must be doing.)

I don’t even see it in LGBTQIA, which is always cleaved down the middle because too
many letters—too many identities—is unpalatable to most.

(“A stands for ally!”
“LGBTQIA? That’s a bit too much, don’t you think?”)

And sometimes—
I don’t see me.
Because being 1% of the population makes me negligible.
Because seven hundred thousand people worldwide don’t really count.

And when I don’t see me,
I have to pretend I’m not me.
Because it’s easier to pretend than it is to explain.
And it’s easier to fake it than it is to hear someone say that I am broken—
that I am lacking something inherently human.
Or worse, for some stranger to tell me
that I will never truly understand how to love another person,

if I’m not fucking them.

Amen

Bow your head.
Be thankful.
Do what they say
And to heaven,
You pray,
That’s the place to go.
But you don’t know
Where you might land.
In dirt,
Or sand?
On the beaches and fields,
See the power he wields.
Look to him.
You know its all in the hymns that we sing
And what tomorrow might bring.
But what about now,
And what about how?
And that we’re flying through space
At a million billion miles
And a zillion trillion more
Till we reach that front door
On the palace of Jesus
And Buddha
And a priestess
Muhammad
And Krishna
To find that we missed them.
Cause they were there all along,
But we couldn’t get along
With the life that they gave,
And we thought they would save us.
From what?
Maybe ourselves.
To take us off the shelves,
But maybe we never were,
And why would you ever want to be sure?
Cause I sure wouldn’t.
I would just like to live.
And I don’t know what to believe . . .
I know I believe
In the spirit and the trees
And the bright, stinging bees
And how they save the flowers.
Cause they show me what life is:

an Eternity . . .
. . . of Stillness

Imagine lying on the ground without
moving or opening your eyes and
imagine how long it would take you to
starve to death

I’d say it’d be . . . forever.
So we really do have time
To learn, and to grow.
And we won’t ever know.
But that’s not for us,
It’s for them.
And that is why I say amen.

I received all my education at public institutions. I came from a middle-class home. There are times when I sense that others–particularly faculty, but sometimes students as well–sniff a little at the notion that I’m “merely” a public school “product.” Sure, I sat in a few 200-student classes—in fact, one of the first convinced me of my future profession. I also had a number of small classes—and you know something? I was able to learn in every format.

There is much that is wonderful about the Davidson bubble, but I worry when I see both students and faculty feeling, as the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live used to say, “just a little bit superior”* to those poor blokes who had to make do with public schools, bless their hearts.

And it’s weird to hear some students talking about spending huge sums–as in, more than my total salary when I started teaching–on spring break adventures and parties and the like. I ache for those of my students who have to think about going out to eat or buying texts or all those expenditures that so many seem to just take for granted. And there are times when I find myself in a curious mixture of envy and annoyance.

Moral of my story: building yourself up by putting others down, even without realizing you’re doing so, only belittles you in the process—and it blinds you to the wonderful commonalities and differences that we could explore together.

There is a legend in Northern New Mexico of the spirits of the desert the natives call skin-crawlers.
The emptiness of the canyon sands lends space for haunting spirits to stand and wait to create monsters of human skin; if you walk alone by the riverside at night, they say, you’ll hear the woman who screams in grief for having lost her children, in a drowning, the sound haunts the hallow mountains in harmony with coyotes crying out beneath the full moon and all you can do is pray to never be found by their hungering bodies.
Late one night, as we spoke tales of the supernatural by the waters of Lake Abiquiu, a seventeen year old boy named Matthew told me of the times his grandparents, his parents, and he himself heard the jarring screams of the skin-crawlings late in the season down by the stream. That night, I had a dream that the spirits hovered over the waters of the deep in our souls, lost spirits longing for a place to come home, like stories wanting words to be told. As the sun rose I prayed that the clouds would lift and everything would be okay.

My father loves to tell ghost stories. Ever since I was young, he told me of his parties in Gettysburg in his fraternity house, the times when the soldiers returned in their war uniforms to make the doors slam and the wooden steps creak. I can’t tell you how much he believes thanks to the gin and whiskey. But I do know that all I have to do is walk by SAE, my father’s alma mater, and I smell childhood memories of Budweiser; it doesn’t matter that he was a happy drunk. I avoided drowning by finding adventures with books in my room. I played emotional hide and seek, hiding from a couch reeking of beer, and seeking escape from a mongering fear that I would be abandoned. As a child, alcohol was a demon of falling out of my father’s arms and now, its ghosts are haunting me with Saturday night court parties, bed sheets twisting me awake in my sleep.

Last Friday night, I saw skin crawlers for the first time. They wore sheets of white, flooding down the crowded streets, the moonlight casting shadows upon brick buildings towering over the ghostly fleet. Craving midnight heat, they paraded through the court in hoards of young, fresh bate awaiting the spirits to take them away. Their eyes were glazed over in a hungry gaze for skin, a desire crawling up their legs as they became mindless and wasted – hastened for some connection to cure the infection looming in their minds of deadlines and the bell ringing at 8:30 on Monday morning. The sirens and the ambulance cast red shadows on the black streets until everything started to bleed together, the music blaring and the shots and the screams and the war scene that is men on a stage with paint guns. I can’t tell you what it’s like to be royally courted at this type of party, the drinking culture isn’t my scene not because I’m too pious; in fact, I’d give anything to be able to try it but I can’t. my body won’t frolick in the way others do; my liver is haunted by generations of alcoholics.

I can’t run from this any longer, the sea of togaed bodies hoping to escape. I feel ashamed to be witnessing the collective intelligence of the human race being drunk away, the eyes that I knew and trusted during the day now parading a mask of Dr. Jekyll over the pain that they face. I feel anguished, an anthropologist witnessing an ancient mating ritual of gyrating bodies on tables and floors, hallowed alcohol-bearing flesh making me crave something more. The soft animal of the human being is easily devoured by the power of addiction, the self-medication of seeking salvation through some intoxicating love, a thrust into another’s arms that never feels like enough. It’s painfully lonely to be sober, to sit with the trees and listen to the echoing screams, to taste heartache amidst hundreds of bodies trying to put their feelings to sleep, to leave feeling haunted by lost intimacy.

All I want is know the dignity of my own two lips, to share a hammock when we’re not tipsy, to rock gently to sleep to the sound of the crickets and our hearts beating and know that this is real, you’re not a skin crawler, you’re not my father, you are a heart of beating flesh and wounds longing to be held. you have found my heart, longing for its wandering spirit to come home, to have its story be told in poems written across the skin. and as the sun rises over the lake, we will know that everything is okay, we will wake sobered by that drink that strips us bare – we will remember the sweet moments of surrender, drinking that invisible love that we share.