A needle girl in a haystack world

“I’ve been low, I’ve been high

I’ve been told all my life. I’ve got nothing left to pray. I’ve got nothing left to say.

I’m in love but I’m still sad

I’ve found peace but I’m not glad. I’ve been trying the wrong way.”

MICHEAL KIWANUKA

I’m a “me” girl in  a “everything else” world.

I recently took an Enneagram Test that told me a lot about myself. It told me what I already knew, but was too scared to admit to myself too. I had become so comfortable with forgetting, that it was forcefully fluid and flowing subtle reminders, welled up in the deep crevices of my memory etched in my mind, that in that moment, seeped and stained the imperious and once seemingly impermeable construction of my every essence,  with remembrance. That remembrance negated the possibility a novel existence of these truths in the places of knowledge in me. These truths were abrasively rehashed; and so it hurt my mind to remember and my heart to feel.

I muted all sound in my inner city and in all civilization of my inward being, the way you would mute the sound during a horror movie, because you knew what was coming next, and even if you knew it, that knowledge was not comfort sufficient enough for you to endure hearing everything; the screeching shrieks I felt inside that caused me to breathe faster and deeper, the life shaking resonance of reality that vibrated and moved the tectonic plates of my inner city’s landscape enough for me to swallow back warm salty tears that wished to cascade.

I muted that and the possibility of more, like I owned the controls that operated the part of me on which I imposed mechanical rules and commands. I shut my inward eyes to push it all out and quickly opened them to drink in the sight of the next picture my mind would present, like a TV that changed its own channels because it was afraid of what it was broadcasting. I fought not to feel all that was surging and coursing.

I hated it. I hated it and I know why. I hated it because I am so afraid of looking into the mirror; any mirror. I’m petrified at the thought of being exposed for what I am- human. I am terrified that I will loathe myself even more with a full acquaintance of my human self. I am scared that what is weak and wrong in me cannot be overcome. I am worried that it is stronger than anything that could be useful or good  in me. I am afraid of the veracity of truth; so true, so indisputable, so candor and so evidently right.  If only I could say something logically and theoretically palatable for me, to create a defeating sophistry in the understanding  of truth’s simple and clear cut mind.

I wanted to tell truth it wasn’t true. I wanted to show truth it was false. I felt like a convict that agreed solely with the ratio descedendi given by the judge to secure the verdict that sentences him to eternal and everlasting death. No mitigating factors are of consequence after that verdict is passed. If in self defense, you hacked at the man that attacked you, more excessively than was necessary or reasonable in reaction to apprehension and fear, of the attack, he becomes the victim and not you, in some legally logical sick and disgusting joke, and its still the truth according to the letter of the law.

I realized I was the hypocrite that told people to “grow up” and bear the ugly, and yet I couldn’t do it with myself. I loathed that truth for making me loathe myself. There I was with characteristic role being an individualist and romantic, with my ego fixation being melancholy (fantasizing), my holy idea being origin, and my basic fear being the lack of identity or significance, and my basic desire being mastery and understanding, my greatest temptation being the replacement of direct experience with concepts and my vice/passion being avarice. Great.

In complacency and a sort of human irresponsibility in discerning a true knowledge of myself, in order that I may strive to be a better person, I am being struck in the face with things I should have known where coming, as, they are things that come for everyone. It is unwritten and needn’t be codified. Even in a customary sense, its enough for everyone to be affected by the imposition of the obligation to be bound by- the rules of social success and interaction, the rules of a cultural hegemony, the patriarchal construction of society, and the-way-the-world-has-been-and-will-always-be attitude.

I am black. I am African. I am Ugandan. I am female. I am a lawyer. I am an artist. I am a Christian. I am a 4 on the enneagram.  I seem to be an ambivert and less of a full blown introvert. Because of the existing disparities between these pieces of me that as I have grown, have come together in  a uncomfortable proximity, I am repeatedly, being hit in the face. My face is  swollen, bruised and in pain. I haven’t even had the cuts stitched yet. I feel a sickly sort of purple with all these pieces jamming against each other, and against the rest of the pieces of this world.

Maybe it’s colonialism and its effects that have me here in pain with my face.  Post colonial identity struggles jamming the understanding of my Ugandan identity and my saturation with western Influence, that also antagonize the pieces that make me African and black.

Yet although, I am an African female lawyer musician  ambivert firstborn child, and that’s legitimately difficult to work out or think about in some ways,   there’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Angelique Kidjoe, Jocelyn Bioh, Iliad Elman, and there even existed the likes of Yaa Assentewa. They are being hit in the face as well, and it’s definitely crazy difficult in different ways for them, but they have accepted who the are in an everyone else world.

Yes, its scary to realize that I am a “me” in an “everything else” world and that’s OK. Yes, my face is bruised, but the cells in my face and other biological processes are working it out. I am OK to look in the mirror and love what I see even though everyone else occasionally points out the complexity of this amalgamation, even myself.

What shall we say then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would have not known what sin was had it not been for the law. 

 

It’s OK for me to look into the mirror and be alarmed by the human I see. When I am brave enough to look and see and understand, I am brave enough to begin the process to being better. No one ever solved a problem by pretending it wasn’t there. I must sing the brokenness of myself first; the log in my own eye before I sing about the plank in everyone else’s.

It’s OK for me to look in the mirror and see so many different parts of who a human can be come together, to make me. I seem like a Quasimodo to most and even sometimes to myself. But singing and love saved him. So I will sing these insecurities and declare their beauty. I will love myself first, to learn to love others in this sense.

I am an artist that envisions a language of artistic expression that tells the truth, the irrevocable way a mirror exposes it. I believe in social commentary that attacks and condemns the evils present in the suffering parts of our people. I believe in some of the relevance that entertainment brings to the table, but like an ice breaker at a national meeting social security, there are more important things to discuss when urgency is taken into account.

This is the song I sing, and the song I wish the world with me, would sing. Look around you and sing; and when you sing, sing the song of hope because most of what you will see is what the world, like me is afraid to admit to themselves- brokenness, despair, anger, inward poverty and longing for more than is. Sing truth because it remains true even when others say it isn’t; truth is still true even when it isn’t. Understand why it is rejected, see how you reject it too, and sing.

Sing that you are a black man in a white world.

Sing that it feels like a man’s world.

Sing that everyone should be feminist.

Sing restoration and reconciliation.

Sing the beauty of your skin and the song of your culture.

Sing that the wound is where the light shines through.

Sing that the wound is where the light finds you.

Sing.