“Aisha, remember that the most beautiful flowers grow in the wildest of gardens,” my grandmother once told me. “But they have to survive the thorns first.” Her words felt like a distant echo, like a prophecy I was desperately trying to rewrite.
Growing up as a Black American female was an intricate dance of survival. I was a chameleon, effortlessly blending into the tapestry of a society that often felt designed to exclude me. To survive was to exist, and to exist was to create an armor of self-deception so thick that sometimes I forgot I was even wearing it.
The daily news became a morbid ritual of selective blindness. Headline after headline of Black men gunned down by police, Black women silenced by systemic oppression, Black children doomed to a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. The numbers were staggering, the pain suffocating. But I couldn’t dwell on it. To feel the weight of it all would be to collapse, to surrender to the despair that threatened to consume us all.
I was taught from an early age that my silence was my safety. Don’t speak up, don’t stir the pot, don’t remind them of the color of your skin. But the degradation was undeniable. It was written in the dilapidated schools, the crumbling infrastructure of our neighborhoods, the lack of opportunities that haunted every corner.
I saw it in the eyes of my parents, weary from a life of working twice as hard for half as much. I saw it in the eyes of my teachers, overwhelmed and under-resourced, trying to educate a generation that was already being prepared for a different kind of imprisonment. I saw it in the eyes of my friends, already disillusioned at a young age, their dreams stunted by the stark reality of their circumstances.
And so, I lied to myself. I told myself that it was just the way things were, that change was impossible, that I was lucky to even have a chance. I disassociated myself from the collective trauma of my people, creating a barrier between myself and the harsh realities that surrounded me.
I became an expert at ignoring the subtle slights, the backhanded compliments, the invisible walls that constantly blocked my path. I forced myself to be optimistic, to believe in the promise of a brighter future, even as the shadows lengthened around me.
I learned to live in the gray areas, to find moments of joy amidst the darkness. I found solace in my faith, in the love of my family, in the resilience of my community. I learned to find beauty in the unexpected, to cherish the fleeting moments of peace that sometimes broke through the storm.
Growing up in America as a Black woman was like building a house on a fault line. The ground beneath me was constantly shifting, threatening to swallow me whole. But I had to pretend like I was standing on solid ground. I had to continue to dance, even as the music grew fainter and fainter. Because to stop dancing was to admit defeat, to admit that the lie was all that I had left.
And sometimes, in the quiet moments when the lie felt too heavy to bear, I would look at the reflection in the mirror and wonder who I really was. Was I the resilient survivor, the unyielding spirit that refused to be broken? Or was I just a ghost, haunted by the memory of a life that I was too afraid to live?
I learned to ride Life and not let Life ride me. Keeping calm and in control in all moments even my greatest disappointments and highest joys. My emotions are for me and the Creator who made me alone. ~ Aisha, The Black American Southern Bell :->
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