You mad, though?
By: That Human Over There
Tags: Feminism, Covid 19, LGBTQ, Coronavirus, BlackLivesMatter

The rest of our small talk involved my reassurance that I have no reason to be angry with him.

It made me think though…do I always have resting bitch face on by default? Here I was, trying to embrace my favorite moments of the day, leaning into the positivity and possibility of a clean slate, and my neighbor seemed so concerned about my “angry” disposition, that he drove his car to the other side of the block in order to follow up with me.

But since he asked. I guess do feel angry about some things…

I feel angry when I wear a bra.

I don’t know why I need to wear one. I don’t care how “unruly” my boobs are, and although sometimes I do wish I didn’t have them, I still wouldn’t trade them for anything else. I don’t know why my chest “has” to be constricted every day just because I’m a “girl.” Because other people don’t want to see my shit moving around everywhere, that’s why. They aren’t on you though, so why does it matter?

I feel angry when I look in the mirror.

When I stare at my long short hair, growing up and sideways and all over the place, making me look like an unkempt chick — and I mean the feathery kind, not the hot girl summer kind. Short Hair Me scores 10s across the board by serving you stud boi realness, and this overgrown pandemic look is not it.

I feel angry when I realize, for yet another day, that the shorts I’m wearing might look almost too masculine because they’re too long and have that extra area for a dick I neither want nor have, but short shorts make my hips look big and too feminine for the look I’m trying to turn, and male muscle tees make me look handsome until you get to the chest where it gets a little confusing, the same disappointing way female tank tops and their tiny strings barely cling onto my slopey shoulders.

I feel angry hearing that people I grew up with, and are on the front lines of these protests at our nation’s capital, are getting shot in the eye and blinded and having their bones broken and skulls met with batons simply for standing up for their rights — my rights — legally.

It makes me feel like I should be doing more, shouting louder. I feel angry because of the raw injustices of America that continue to bear itself to an increasingly awakened society is aggravating.

Even with the awareness I previously thought was sufficient as a Black person, I still feel ashamed in the empty pockets of life where I haven’t rolled up my sleeves to demand major changes in how I am treated. It makes me angry knowing that at a certain point of resistance, I have succumbed to a level of tolerable inequality.

I feel angry that I risk being shut off from my family just because of who I am and how I love.

I feel angry at the fact that I have to pay for a Black woman who is ‘LGBTQ-allied’ and licensed in talking to people, to talk to about problems I can’t seem to solve on my own.

I know that it is my choice whether or not to choose anger.

I work every day to separate myself from that reaction and to instill a sense of calm and focus on the present as soon as I wake up. Maybe I’ll run down this list with homeboy the next time I look too angry.

Even though I am tired and sad and deeply depressed about the world and transpiring apocalypse, I continue to put one foot in front of the other, because that’s just what you have to do in order to keep up this 100% survival rate. There is so much to learn and experience in this one life. Who even has the time to not keep going?