I am trapped in between.
I am standing in a world that says, “if you have experienced this you are a person of color” along with, “if you look like this you are white and have experienced something else” and I feel trapped.
I read the stories and listen to the feelings of my dark skinned friends and I nod because many of those stories echo my stories and many of those feelings are my feelings.
But then I look in the mirror and I am white. My friends look at me and they cannot help it, they see white. The blanket placed over my world and life is white.
But underneath I hold so many colors. I am a minority. I am diverse. My stories are often unheard or my feelings are often discredited. I cannot tell you how often I am told to feel and think differently, because that is how I am “supposed” to feel and think. White people feelings and thoughts.
But I picked up that story of the black girl running from everyone else who wanted to touch her hair and something in me said, “that’s my story too”. Only I’m not black. My hair isn’t big and curly, it’s just red.
I listen to the hearts of men saying that they are tired of learning everyone else’s histories and I think of how many histories I have learned to countries I feel I don’t belong to. But what even would a history textbook for me look like? Its impossible.
I lean in as I hear that lovely woman cry out that she has always had to listen and adjust to the culture of the white person, and I think of every world I have lived in where I was the one listening and adjusting. Every. World. Always.
And I want to celebrate these movements toward listening, I want to elevate and amplify voices that have gone unheard, stories that have gone untold.
I want to right the wrongs that have been engrained in the sweeping proclamations spoken over a people group because of the color of their skin and deciding for them what life should or shouldn’t be.
I want to see diversity flourish.
And yet, I am painfully aware that there will never be a movement across the world that declares that the TCK voice needs to be heard and that our stories need to be understood.
There will never be a hashtag to combat the way I am treated as a white minority amongst colored countries that I love but that target me for the color of my skin deciding what I am by it.
I will always be the white person who is more at home but never belonging to the diverse spaces and the diverse voices because I don’t know any other way to be.
I am trapped between these worlds with no way to move.
I don’t want to move for so many reasons. I guess. But still.
I make myself small, again, for the bigger stories around me while hearing that it’s time for the people of color to stop making themselves small. And the people who grew up being big stand next to me, trying to be small for the first time, nodding at me like I have finally found my place, unaware that this is where I have lived my whole life.
It is where I will continue to live.
I guess that’s okay. It’s just hard to know that history will never be made for me.
I am trapped in between.
I will hurt in ways people may never understand as I listen to the hurts of my colored friends.
I will work towards justice because I always have, in extreme ways and in everyday ways, valuing every person, seeing unseen people, hearing quiet voices, like I always have, but in places you will never travel to, with people you will never know, in ways you may never understand.
I will use this white privileged you give me to try and bridge gaps, to pull people from one side to the other since I am already trapped in between.
I will be silent as someone declares that I have never experienced what they are saying even if I have because they will not hear it through my skin.
I will be gracious when I hear frustrating dismissals and take on false assumptions of my childhood, worldview, and understanding because to correct will not help anyone but me. .
I will try and celebrate my own stories quietly in my heart.
I will try to mourn my own stories quietly in my heart.
I will try to be quietly trapped in between.
