my question for the culture.

once again, on black identity, a lack of allyship, but this time it's an extended disco version with three rounds of "aren't you tired?"

pinterest.

i guess i need to get used to the idea that i’m on my own.

This week has been a brutal reminder.

It began with an Asian podcaster pushing some eugenics nonsense—something about how Black women supposedly have looser vaginas to accommodate Black men's larger penises. Out of nowhere, completely irrelevant. They weren’t even talking about us. She even admitted it should probably get cut.

I watched the clip through a tunnel.

Just minutes before, I’d been excited about heading home, reuniting with my nail tech, and getting my almond-shaped, bubblegum-pink claws back. I’d been looking forward to the delicate tennis anklet I treated myself to, ready to nestle it among my dragon’s mountain of gold jewelry.

But then the week spiraled, with one joke after another about P. Diddy’s endless abuse and rape of women—and not just women. Men too. And it ended with someone justifying why she, a white woman, wanted to use the n-word. She said it was “for poetic purposes.”

Yeah. Of course.

I was already fighting for my life, teetering on the edge of relapse. Now, with the resurgence of ED content soft-launched after the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, it feels like a full-blown assault. I can't stand to look in the mirror anymore, the reflection taunting me—this bloated, unfamiliar body that feels more like a punishment than my own.

It’s gotten dire. I’m listening to Future now, feeling like I should take his advice and thug it out. Maybe it’s our Scorpio placements aligning.

But what really gnaws at me is the sense of isolation that never seems to let up.

I don’t know what hurts more: the expected silence from white peers or the unexpected betrayal from other people of color. Maybe the worst part is Black men, once again, dropping the ball—dragging Black women down with every podcast episode, and every “low vibrational” insult thrown our way.

Several people on here are openly reluctant to drop the aforementioned woman. The racism doesn’t register because she made them laugh once or twice. And I’m meant to understand.

I knew what was coming when I posted the call-out. I’ve been called “weird,” not a “girl’s girl” because I refused to let some prescription popper toss around a slur rooted in my history, not hers. It’s too much to ask them to unfollow, to block, to even care.

But it’s always been too much for me. My whole life, it’s been too much. And this is the only life I get.

I don’t get to take any part of me off. My skin doesn’t melt away after I take off my mom’s bamboo hoops or my grown-out acrylics. My dialect is my own—unlike the accent you switch on when you want to prove you’re “about it.”

I keep expecting more from people, better. I guess I get that from my mother.

@nessydidit on ig.

You love the nails, the braids, the edges, the grills, the jewelry, the streetwear, the lip combos—but loving me? Loving us? That’s where you draw the line.

Fashion Week’s runways are filled with me, but on skin that looks nothing like mine.

I’ve been bone-deep exhausted this week. Winter is spidering through my veins like a drug. There’s comfort in her cold grip; I’m in love with her. She’s home, she’s the rhythm of the academic grind, she’s toxic R&B and mellow rap melodies looping through my study playlist. I still choke down a D3+K2 capsule every morning, but it goes down smoother than summer ever does.

Going home means code-switching. My laughter is louder, my lips looser. My words spill freer, sticky with sweet gloss, when I’m with my people. The ones who’ve lived with that other white woman’s casual endorsement of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, who face elections that threaten to rip apart our lives, who’ve had their fates sealed the moment they emerged from the warm, slick heat of the womb, Black.

I don’t have to over-explain the implications of someone’s five-second tweet. I don’t have to make the argument that you can’t group calling out someone’s bigotry as “canceling them.”

They were just young. So were we. But some of us were buried young, shot into the grave before we ever had a chance. They’ll always be young because they never got the chance to grow, to "learn from their mistakes" like you do.

The hard truth? Most of you aren’t half as woke as you claim—whether you're for or against it. Your whiteness has never required you to be radicalized.

I was six the first time I felt that fear, swimming lessons on a swollen, summer day. My older sister got pulled over because her tail light was shattered. The officer—Black, like us—was kind. He let her off with a warning.

He looked at me in the backseat through the window, swaddled in my blue fish-print floaties and huge plastic goggles, heading to swim lessons for another day of refusing to put my head underwater. He said hello to me, and I burst into tears.

I mean true, weeping, alligator tears pearling from my Bambi eyes. I cried so hard I probably got a headache. Sobbing, inconsolable, begging him not to take my sister away. I didn’t even understand the words, but I felt the weight of them, the dread in my sister’s tight smile, the uniform that loomed over us.

That radicalized me.

A few years ago, a white family friend sponsored my dad’s membership at a gun range. Deep in the woods, there was no signal, and he was surrounded by white men with itchy trigger fingers. None of us wanted him to go. But some non-American Black people still don’t grasp the full weight of racism. So he went.

And the fear that gripped me was unlike anything I’d ever known.

We lost contact that night—no one could reach him. I walked the dog, staring into the blood-red eyes of a slaughtered, dying sun, dialing and redialing. My family’s group chat was in chaos. My phone’s rapid vibration was my new heartbeat.

My mind spiraled—had they finally noticed he was Black? A Black man with a gun? Was I about to wake up to his name, butchered in some headline, his case unsolved?

Hours later, his car stole up the street, and the relief that crashed through me could’ve leveled buildings. My mother was beside herself. I hugged him—something we rarely do.

How was it? I asked him.

Fine, he said.

He never went back.

That radicalized me.

I’m black, a woman, and bisexual. I’ve committed every sin.

That radicalized me.

pinterest.

People love to say that everyone keeps writing essays about problems, but they never end with a solution. I’m tired of having to give you the solution. You figure it out, “free thinker.”

The world demands everything from me—always. You take everything from me. My thoughts, my style, the nurturing you assume I owe you just because I’m a Black woman—that’s all yours, right?

There’s a dark thirst for revolution, but you won’t even stand with me on Substack notes. You can’t even do that.

The second I call out the racism happening right in front of me, suddenly I’m “the problem.” Our heritage? That’s fair game for your edgy jokes. Our history, our endless saga of suffering? Punchline material. But when I clock it? Now I’m too sensitive. I’ve gone too far.

Funny how racism magically turns invisible the moment it’s your turn to feel uncomfortable.

I could hand you a mountain of blood-stained receipts, but you’d still say I’m imagining it. You’d still ask me to calm down. Because racism is some distant, theoretical thing, and not the vampire with his teeth in my broken neck.

You’d rather gaslight me than face it. You’d rather tell me I’m paranoid than admit you’re complicit.

Black women are disappearing. Every week, one of us goes missing, is murdered, or dumped in rivers like we’re disposable. Every time I leave my flat, I’m facing my worst fear.

I’m on my own.

Every week, it’s written off as if it doesn’t matter. No foul play.

When there’s none of me left to step on, will you finally check my location? Will you think of me then?

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to any black women and men reading this: i love you. i’m right here. always will be.

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@foxconfessor on tumblr.

@topgrl on tumblr.