I haven't posted on here for a while now, and I feel kind of guilty about that. As someone whose ultimate plans are to write and blog for a living, I'm not doing so great at the whole "consistent posting" thing. I guess I should explain myself, and then I can get to what I really want to talk about today.
For the past few months, I've been going through something very difficult. I've dealt with depression and anxiety in the past, but everything really hit its peak at the beginning of April. I'd never felt quite so low before, and it really threw me off. Every day was a constant battle with myself to keep going, to keep breathing, to keep helping myself. I started therapy (not for the first time) and doing yoga every day at the local Sivananda Ashram, and that changed everything. I finally started to see myself as myself, not just the distorted carbon copy I had been looking at for 21 years prior. To use a metaphor that my therapist gave me towards the beginning of our talks, I decided to dive through the wave in the ocean that is/was my anxiety/depression/tension, instead of letting it overtake me completely. You see, whether you dive through or get swept away doesn't matter, because either way, you will eventually get out of the wave--but it's a lot more pleasant if you just take the plunge to begin with.
Anyways, a culmination of stress about grad school (btw...I got into grad school!), a fear of grad school and starting a new chapter in my life with my boyfriend (we're moving in together!), nostalgia about moving away from my childhood home for good, and a whole mess of baggage from my youth all led to a very low point in my life thus far. It affected me physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I was exhausted. I'm finally starting to feel like myself again, or rather, I'm finally starting to feel like the new me, the me that's emerging from this experience. I'm okay now, but I'm not expecting to never feel low like that again--however, I know now how to handle it, and how to use it as a tool for growth, rather than as a weapon for destruction. Obviously, I'm still terrified and stressed out about starting this new and exciting part of my life, but the feelings aren't negative, nor are they unexpected or unwarranted. So, things are good.
But here's what's really eating at me right now---despite the expected nerves I'm feeling about grad school (i.e. Will I like it? Will I make friends? Is it going to be too difficult? What if, at the end of everything, I realize I don't want to be a journalist/writer? Am I going insane???), there's another fear that's holding me back:
What if nobody believes me when I tell them that I'm mixed, and that I identify with my blackness very, very much? What if, like in elementary to high school, or in undergrad, people choose to ignore, or deny my race? After everything that I learned about myself and my family last semester during the independent study that started this blog, will I be knocked back down, turned back into that self-loathing, white-looking Black girl that I was in high school? I'd like to think that I won't, but it's a hell of a blow when your peers reject an integral piece of your identity because of their own personal biases or ignorance.
Leaving the town I grew up in for good is stirring up so many memories of elementary through high school: being called an Uh-Oh Oreo, having my best friends tell me I "wasn't Black," witnessing racism firsthand...and I am wishing, praying even, that graduate school will be different, that people will be more open-minded, that they won't reject me at face value. The cynic inside of me is gently reminding me that wherever I go, there will be people who will be unwilling to open their minds to unfamiliar circumstances, people that will reject you no matter how eloquently you may write about your racial background and experiences. People are always going to hate, that's just a sad, sad truth. The optimist inside of me, on the other hand, is reminding me that by pursuing a Master's degree in journalism, even by occasionally writing on this blog, I'm putting my experiences out there for people to read and judge and experience for themselves, which may open a couple minds, maybe even changing one or two of them along the way. I think I'm just struggling to find the balance between the cynic and the optimist right now. I don't know.
One thing I do know is this--I missed writing like this. It was time to come back, and though I'm making no promises right now, I'm going to try to keep this little thing updated as grad school progresses.
For the past few months, I've been going through something very difficult. I've dealt with depression and anxiety in the past, but everything really hit its peak at the beginning of April. I'd never felt quite so low before, and it really threw me off. Every day was a constant battle with myself to keep going, to keep breathing, to keep helping myself. I started therapy (not for the first time) and doing yoga every day at the local Sivananda Ashram, and that changed everything. I finally started to see myself as myself, not just the distorted carbon copy I had been looking at for 21 years prior. To use a metaphor that my therapist gave me towards the beginning of our talks, I decided to dive through the wave in the ocean that is/was my anxiety/depression/tension, instead of letting it overtake me completely. You see, whether you dive through or get swept away doesn't matter, because either way, you will eventually get out of the wave--but it's a lot more pleasant if you just take the plunge to begin with.
Anyways, a culmination of stress about grad school (btw...I got into grad school!), a fear of grad school and starting a new chapter in my life with my boyfriend (we're moving in together!), nostalgia about moving away from my childhood home for good, and a whole mess of baggage from my youth all led to a very low point in my life thus far. It affected me physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I was exhausted. I'm finally starting to feel like myself again, or rather, I'm finally starting to feel like the new me, the me that's emerging from this experience. I'm okay now, but I'm not expecting to never feel low like that again--however, I know now how to handle it, and how to use it as a tool for growth, rather than as a weapon for destruction. Obviously, I'm still terrified and stressed out about starting this new and exciting part of my life, but the feelings aren't negative, nor are they unexpected or unwarranted. So, things are good.
But here's what's really eating at me right now---despite the expected nerves I'm feeling about grad school (i.e. Will I like it? Will I make friends? Is it going to be too difficult? What if, at the end of everything, I realize I don't want to be a journalist/writer? Am I going insane???), there's another fear that's holding me back:
What if nobody believes me when I tell them that I'm mixed, and that I identify with my blackness very, very much? What if, like in elementary to high school, or in undergrad, people choose to ignore, or deny my race? After everything that I learned about myself and my family last semester during the independent study that started this blog, will I be knocked back down, turned back into that self-loathing, white-looking Black girl that I was in high school? I'd like to think that I won't, but it's a hell of a blow when your peers reject an integral piece of your identity because of their own personal biases or ignorance.
Leaving the town I grew up in for good is stirring up so many memories of elementary through high school: being called an Uh-Oh Oreo, having my best friends tell me I "wasn't Black," witnessing racism firsthand...and I am wishing, praying even, that graduate school will be different, that people will be more open-minded, that they won't reject me at face value. The cynic inside of me is gently reminding me that wherever I go, there will be people who will be unwilling to open their minds to unfamiliar circumstances, people that will reject you no matter how eloquently you may write about your racial background and experiences. People are always going to hate, that's just a sad, sad truth. The optimist inside of me, on the other hand, is reminding me that by pursuing a Master's degree in journalism, even by occasionally writing on this blog, I'm putting my experiences out there for people to read and judge and experience for themselves, which may open a couple minds, maybe even changing one or two of them along the way. I think I'm just struggling to find the balance between the cynic and the optimist right now. I don't know.
One thing I do know is this--I missed writing like this. It was time to come back, and though I'm making no promises right now, I'm going to try to keep this little thing updated as grad school progresses.