A while ago I posted a few words on my Instagram . It was an expression of how I was feeling. Heck, it is an expression of how I have been feeling my whole life!

If I go back to when I was still a little girl, I remember always feeling different from everybody around me. Sure, I was this black girl who moved continents to live in this big strange white world. Aside from my own mother, no one looked like me. But that was not it. There was something deep down, something on a mental and emotional level.

Decades later, I still feel some sort of disconnect. As if I vibrate on a different frequency. On many different levels, people, close and distant alike, have found and told me that I make too much noise. That I can be rather intense whenever I choose to speak my mind. That I care too much, too long and too often. That I just should quiet down and let go.

But here’s the problem for me. If we choose to stay quiet about things that matter, how are we ever going to make that change? Me staying quiet about my sexual abuse was only beneficial to my abuser and his facilitators. Me staying quiet about my mental health only puts out an image that pleases the comfort level of others. Me staying quiet about injustice is me turning a blind eye. A blind eye to my true self.

This week I realized, in order for me to learn to love myself, I have to be free and willing to be myself. I am not for everybody, I am for Me