Perceptual Drowning
A Reality Check Installment
My perceptions are my reality
You assume
Because yours are different
That mine aren’t real
But your perceptions are accurate
My perceptions are real for me
Just as yours are for you
The difference is
I can relate to your perceptions
But to you mine are fake
That’s the power of privilege
It distorts every aspect of everything
If I were a man
You wouldn’t think such things
Society teaches you
To disregard my reality
To disregard me
To disregard what I say
To disregard what I think
My anatomy gives you free reign
My race comes into play
As soon as you see me
It’s not a game
But people see life that way
So, I remain invisible
Like those ghosts from packman
Like the visitor all in black
Who refuses to show his face
Like the overwhelming presence of a love
That has no form in 3D
Just a powerful presence
Radiating your inner space
Like surfing at night
On the most bodacious of waves
Only to be swallowed up
By the void when it shifts
Hello is always so heartwarming
Good-bye devastating
“Be a ghost”
He always said
You’re a ghost
He said
It became my designation
My actual profession
If I am a ghost
No one will believe what I say
No one will hear me
See me
Think I am real
Or that my perceptions
Have any validity
Who am I anyway
Who cares?
Disempowered
A projection
A constant misunderstanding
A stereotype
A slander
An abomination
A nothing
Less than zero
“Get over it”
Is what’s constantly telegraphed
How sick
Yet I’m the person in question
Commonly stated
Basic ass assumption
I can’t possibly be
Someone you can communicate with
Where was I educated?
If I told you a dungeon
You would think I was insane
Yet the truth is just as real
The basement of a base
Dark, cold, dank
Yet I’m a communications expert
Communication isn’t a struggle for me
Being targeted and abused is
I learned active listening at the age of 4
I learned it before I learned math
Meditation came earlier
Spirituality is what I was born with
Human analysis I learned from 5–7
By then I was in the field
Communication has always been a life saver
So yes
I can grasp it
But peep this
I think differently
Than almost every human
Less than .01% of the world’s population
That has ever lived
Past or present
Has EVER been like I am
So, who can understand?
Worst still
No one knows who I am
Some get pretty close
My old surfer friend sure did!
It wasn’t even physical
It was metaphysical
Scientifically speaking
It was quantum entanglement
Sent from the past
Into the future
But that too is extremely rare!
To find one who can connect in that way
My surfer friend
Such a long way
What a journey it’s been
Others couldn’t imagine any of it
You can’t comprehend the isolation
Until you realize the calculus
That goes into keeping me caged
Boxed in
When I was a child
I determined
I will break this rusted cage
As it eats away at the surface
I knew one day I would find a weakness
Exploit it’s vulnerability
Escape
Still in process
In progress
Fighting
Drowning
Alone surfing
In the highest, darkest, deepest of surges
Alone in the waves
Looking for my friend in the end
It’s just as he said
“No one will help you”
And I’ve lost so many along the way
Control is all I ever lived
Nothing about me has ever been allowed
Not my existence
Not my life
Not my brain
Not my feelings
Not my thinking
Not my vision
Not my perceptions
Never allowed to be
I adapt constantly
Because no one is capable of understanding
I get exhausted by people
Because they are so demanding
Needy
But as an empath
I can’t change my autonomic response to human
I have to embrace it
Live it
Experience
Set and hold boundaries
That’s when it really gets vicious
View the knowns
Synthesize them
Seek the known unknowns
Because that’s how I’m programmed
Find the solution
Create it where none existed
I have to reach into the quantum realm
To locate the unknown unknowns
There are no other solutions left
No one cares
Nothing matters
Not when it’s Black anyway
Least of all a Black woman
A Black mother
A Black disabled single mother
A Black human trafficking victim
A Black “victim”
Is the most favored target
No one cares
Not even those paid to be the change
So, I do what I need to do for me
No one else will
Should I regret that
Should I regret being me
Should I regret being alive
Should I regret surviving
Being different
Being
To give it all up
For the sake of hate
Evil
Abuse
Predation
NO!
I Am
I live and breathe
I learned when I was 5
How to survive different environments
I don’t care who that makes afraid!
Those voices in my head
Never came from me
They were the ugly, evil hatred
Spewed from society
The projectors
The hoarders
The predators who claim I am their property
Elite predators
Who prey on the most vulnerable
Then claim nothing ever happened
Hiding their hands
As they wipe the blood that will never be clean
When their voices entered my head
I learned at 5 they would render me dead
So
I learned to reframe them
In the moment
With reality I replaced their sickness
“Tell yourself the truth
As they lie to your face
Tell yourself the truth
As they distort reality
Tell yourself the truth
While they abuse you into oblivion
Tell yourself the truth
This too will soon be over with!”
I taught myself that
It sustains me on tough days
But it’s not enough to combat genocide
It’s not brain surgery
I need resources, help
Accountability for the crimes committed
I can’t explain how torture feels
I can only emote it
BLACK LIVES MATTER TODAY
TOMORROW
YESTERDAY
FOREVER
Ignoring that
Makes you no better than
The genocidal men and women
Intent on eradicating us for profit
To prove to themselves THEY matter
To prove to themselves white supremacy is real
How many more have to die
To cover the greatest lie
Ever in existence? United Nations Progressive Caucus Congressional Black Caucus Library of Congress
