Outside the Box

I’m not really sure how I got to be so different, see things so differently than the rest of the world, than the rest of my family even.  I mean, I didn’t have particularly radical parents who raised me to buck the system and question the status quo.  I had a dysfunctional, conformist mother who strived for mediocrity and lived to justify her belief systems with a circle of friends who thought just like her.  My grandparents were activists, radical for their time, but they were the definition of mainstream.  I have to sit back and ask myself, how is it that I came to see the ills of society and have a need, a compelling drive to correct the wrongs that color the very fabric of our existence.  I mean, how is it even possible that in a family of Christian, conservative deacons, deaconesses, trustees, and ushers who have never once thought to question the religion the slave master gave them, that I stand alone as the symbol of religious tolerance?  You see, I see don’t see Jesus as the one way to Heaven.  I think Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Yoruba, and a host of other religions are all equally valid.  I don’t think any of them is completely true, nor do I think they need to be.  I think that religion is supposed to give people is a sense of grounding and peace, not intended to be the divisive tool that its used as to perpetuate war and hate.  People assume that because I don’t identify as Christian any longer that I’m some amoral atheist. Nothing could be further from the truth.  I believe in a Divine, universal, scientific Creator that masterfully, intentionally, lovingly crafted the most complex, beautiful system of organisms that ALL operates to glorify them.  How did I come to such an understanding?  Hell if I know.

How did I come to embrace all forms of sexuality as acceptable?  Look around you and ask yourself how many people do you know who can see a transgendered person as unique, valid, and deserving of every single solitary right as every other human being on the planet.  Sadly, not many.  I was raised in a family were there was no tolerance for anything other than heterosexuality.  I see a host of reasons that contribute to a person’s sexual preferences and I don’t necessarily place any more value on nature or nurture, as long as a person chooses to love whom they love, they have a right to do so in freedom without my or anyone else’s judgment.  Sexuality, as far as I’m concerned, is such an irrelevant issue, such a minimal facet of a person’s entire being that I place absolutely no importance on some societal need to condemn anyone for whom they are attracted to.  How is it that I’ve known since I was a child that loving someone had absolutely nothing to do with what genitals were between their legs?  When I look at the people who surround me at family dinners, do I see anyone who mirrors my opinions?  Nope.

I wear my hair short and nappy with pride.  I’m among a very small (but thankfully growing) population of Black women who embrace our natural, God-given hair texture.  I’m not even sure how I could have come to such a revelation because among my peers and family, I’m almost singular in that view.  I have more integrity, less fear, and am singularly the most introspective person I know.  I can totally see how I learned to fight racism; I was raised in a family where civil rights were as important as religion and education.  What I’m not so sure about is where I became so comfortable embracing my identity as a descendant of slaves and as an African.  Most Black people see slavery as something shameful and something to be denied and wouldn’t identify with anything African if you paid them.  I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of understanding how the collective African American consciousness came to be and restoring it to a place of wholeness.  I can assure you, not many people think like me.

Perhaps, most significantly, I write erotica.  Not only do I write erotica, but I write erotica with an agenda.  I use sex as a tool to teach Black people how to love and white people how not to be so fucked up.  Certainly, one would assume that I was raised in a family where sex was openly discussed and where I was taught to see sex as healthy.  Yeah . . . not so much.  Sex was dirty, not talked about, and something only for married people.  Where did I find this voice?  Where did I get the confidence to express myself in an unapologetic, explicit voice and not feel the need to censor my thoughts or curb my language in order to get my thoughts out to people?  I don’t understand how I or why I’m so different.  Why am I so willing to step outside the box, to think so differently?  It makes no sense to me.  I wasn’t raised in an environment that nurtured my individuality; I was raised to conform.  I feel as if I’ve taken the red pill, or the blue pill, whatever color pill makes you wake up from the matrix.  But I didn’t ask to take a pill.  For all intents and purposes, I should be a corporate climbing, Christian, cog in the machine.  Being different isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  It’s an isolated existence where I’m constantly being challenged to defend my beliefs and countered with irrational logic.  I’m not sure how I got to where I am today, all I know is that I can’t go back.  I can’t close my eyes to the truth, I can’t unlearn it, I can’t be “normal” at the risk of part of my soul dying.  It’s a very lonely path I’m traveling.