There are so many remarkable, odd and universal things about being a human being. We are beautifully multifaceted, but one of my favorite things? Any time we think too hard about how incomprehensible our existence is, we enter a spiral of sorts. An existential crisis, if you will. Gazing into the abyss, asking
What am I doing here?
Typically, before my creeping nihilism seeps into my mind any deeper, I find myself coming back to two things: empathy and storytelling. This ever-lurking potential for crisis is one of my favorites because if you can push past the fears and anxiety, you’ll end up with some beautiful answers.
I believe at my core that I was placed on this earth to provide spaces where other people can feel undoubtedly seen. I hope with the work I create and stories I tell, someone will feel a little less alone. On top of that, I believe that mixed-race individuals hold a special power to build bridges between groups of people.
In college, I dove into the world of mending activism and art. I held my fist up in power, with my heart clenched tightly inside. It was rewarding to share perspective and empowering to empower others, but I always felt a pang of exhaustion at the end of the day. I quickly learned, as Austin Channing Brown says in his book, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, that “the role of a bridge builder is appealing until it becomes clear how often that bridge is your broken back.” Every time I shared an experience in order to educate, I was not only peeking into a very painful part of my life, but neglecting to acknowledge and take care of this now open sore. Before entering my first long-term relationship, I had never considered what kind of emotional toll I would feel bringing my bridge building tendencies into my romantic life. It was beyond bridging the gap. I wanted my partners to have a basic understanding of why, as a person of color, some things would drastically hurt me more than they would hurt them. Many of us even run the risk of our partner’s learned behaviors acting as a trigger. Now, let me preface my experience by saying that all relationships will be different, and I am speaking specifically on a relationship between a half-white, half-black person and a white person. All to say, white partners should hold the responsibility of seeking to understand this pain.
Relationships are special. Being given the gift of exploring an entire world within another person is such an enthralling, breathtaking experience. I had found an intoxicating love I had never felt before, but I was still covered in all of these old wounds. Of course, everyone has baggage when entering a relationship, but racial baggage is unavoidable, embedded into our history, plastered on our faces and will not go away.
My partner was like me, an activist with their beating heart always present in their fighting fists. They were my best friend, and there were things about being a person of color that I so badly wanted them to fully understand. Frustration often crept under my skin because I realized they would never understand, but how could I ask them to? It was unfair of me to expect someone who was not of color to truly know what I was talking about. I wanted more from them, an unrealistic expectation to be healed, maybe, but all I could really ask for was some active listening. It was up to me to create spaces for myself where sharing these experiences could be less about educating and more about healing. I hadn’t known that space before. Frankly, I didn’t know it existed and it was okay that it was not with my partner. Both of us needed to realize we would never have a mutual, deep understanding of this huge part of my life, and that was okay too. What was not okay, was for them to use my vulnerable moments as times to express their struggles as a white person. Each moment of my own sharing took an exceedingly large amount of courage. A lot of this stems from my fear of feeling like a burden, or re-living every time I had been told to stop playing the “race card.” I started to notice that my unpacking of a story would somehow result in me comforting them. Instead of learning to take responsibility, they switched the positions of power and ran. This, unbeknownst to me, was the white guilt at play. I was not prepared to see it come out as defensiveness, feeling extraordinarily overwhelmed, sad, and confused.
It is hard to look at the person you love and see little acknowledge of their immense privilege, but it is harder to listen to them tell you that you should feel lucky to be a POC because people like hearing your struggles. That I was “in” right now and no one cared what they, as a white male, had to say. They didn’t have the stories anyone was interested in anymore. All of this was confusing to my part activist and part drowning in love brain. There I was again, exhausted from my old wounds, but this time it was outside of my academic world. I didn’t know this familiar feeling of fatigue would find me in my most vulnerable of settings. On one hand, I wanted so badly to explain what was wrong with this situation. On the other, I didn’t feel ready to outwardly express how much weight this person I loved was adding to my baggage, or accept that someone I loved could hurt me in a way I knew all too well.
Needless to say, both of us had a lot to learn. Being listened to by your partner is not an extravagance. Just because you love someone, does not mean that they can fully understand or heal your traumas. It is important to state what you need in a relationship, and it is okay to seek certain needs elsewhere. You cannot expect the world out of one person, who is also learning and stumbling through their own narrative. Relationships of any sort still need a protection of self, especially carrying the burden of existing as the constant educator. I’ll be honest, I still don’t know how to explain to someone why certain news stories or day to day microaggressions hurt me without pushing my fingers into old (and new) wounds. I don’t know that I ever will. People of color may not get the luxury of relatively painless baggage, but we can learn how to be gentle with ourselves. A sturdy bridge needs to nurture a strong foundation, and that, we owe ourselves.
♥️