I don’t want to be here and I don’t want to do this. Vent, emote, cry out, lay my emotions at the Creator’s feet. Acknowledge my anger and rage and internal torment and tyranny. Act like I have feelings, hold back whatever ills me for the safety of those around me. There isn’t anyone around me. Loneliness is a plague, a disease. Casted out from society, the leperous beast I have become. We’re just here and while I rather disappear, I have no choice but to announce my arrival into this space because God won’t let me do otherwise.
The way I feel is not good. The way I feel about where things are in my life is not great. There’s something about being in-tune with your wretchedness. I have these thoughts of wanting to be off of what feels like God’s grid because I don’t add anything of value to Her algorithm. What good do I do? What good can I do? What purpose do I serve? What meaning do I have? What point is my existence trying to prove? What is the point of anything exactly? What’s the why of it all?
God knows why and doesn’t tell me. I choose not to listen to Her right now because She’s going to tell me what I don’t want to hear: to just be here.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to matter in this world. I feel like the worst thing you can be as a Black woman is to be seen as unreliable. We’re always supposed to be there for somebody at the detriment of ourselves. That’s the badge you wear, the Easter pantsuit you get buried in when it’s all said and done. Caring about others – being seen as an asset to other’s lives – is the ultimate sign of your power and dominance. If no one needs you, then you really aren’t needed. To be needed is to have the power to make or break someone’s life. It’s an extension of God.
I don’t always want me around. I don’t always want to be needed around. I often see myself as a nuisance to be around. When others say that I’m needed, I truly believe that they are talking about someone else. Can’t be me. Why me? What did I do to deserve being seen as important? I’m just a bolt in the machine. If it gets lost, I doubt the machine will stop working. But then someone important will notice that it’s missing and ruse on about how they saved the machine from collapsing because they found something wrong. So even in my absence, I am wrong.
All of this feels wrong.
I’m arguing with myself about who I want to be when I grow up. To be a writer? I don’t know. I keep being told that it’s what I am supposed to do or that I’m running from my dreams. I don’t even know my dreams. I don’t even know what I want to do. Attaching capitalism to ill-faded dreams seems counter-intuitive. But I know that’s an excuse I use to keep myself from finding out that I’m not really that good at this thing called putting words to paper. That I’m fraudulent, that I’m a failure. I fight the urge to turn into one of those failed rappers from the nineties who think that any artist from their era is trash only for their hate to mask their envy and jealousy toward someone who had the balls to think they could make it.
I think that’s why I’ve been listening to It Was Written a lot. It’s Nasir Jones at twenty-one years old. Showed and telled on the previous album, his first, that he could be the next great thing. Comes on with his second album and people think he sold out, that he failed to live up to the mantle he didn’t ask for. But yet when you run it back almost two decades later, it’s arguably his best work. The storytelling and word play are elite.
In interviews, he’s so cool about it. So cool about himself, so sure of himself. He knows he’s the best to ever touch a mic but he’s still in survival mode so you can’t see him act high and mighty. When people come at the king, they usually don’t miss. I want to be that cool when it comes to sonning everybody in my way. Nonchalant about being the best, chill showing up and delivering. I ain’t that. I am a ball of nerves and fear and doubt. I lack resilience, I lack confidence. I could put out my It Was Written and everyone will feel that it’s wack.
But only to see the wisdom in it later. So, look, it had purpose and meaning and stature. It meant something. It had to be made.
I have something within me that has to be made. I just don’t know what.
So the purpose is to make something, is to be present. I talk about that a lot. I’m sure God is tired of me not delivering on my promise to just be around. I keep asking Her for something else and She won’t give it to me.
ciara roslyn-james 