notes from a life that persists

there is a particular loneliness that comes with being a black woman in a country that does not love you.

not in the loud ways first. not always with violence. but in the quiet math of it all. how much you give versus how little is returned. how often you must soften your voice to be heard or harden your heart to survive.

you learn early that admiration is conditional. that your beauty is praised only when it can be consumed without responsibility. that your labor is celebrated but your rest is treated like an inconvenience. you are strong until you are tired. resilient until you ask for care. visible when useful. invisible when hurting.

this country loves black culture.

black rhythm. black slang. black grief turned into spectacle.

but black women living breathing aging needing.

that love evaporates quickly.

there is an unspoken expectation that we will endure. that we will translate pain into grace. that we will make something beautiful out of neglect and call it purpose. when we succeed it is framed as exceptional. when we fail it is treated as confirmation.

and still we show up.

we show up loving deeply in a place that does not love us back. we show up brilliant funny tender ferocious. we show up knowing the odds knowing the history knowing how easily we can be dismissed or discarded. that kind of courage is never accidental. it is learned. inherited. hard won.

sometimes the grief is not about one moment but the accumulation. the micro cuts. the exhaustion of being twice as good for half as much grace. the way joy must often be self authored self defended self protected.

yet there is something else too.

there is a defiant softness.

a sacred interior life no one gets to colonize.

a lineage of women who loved anyway laughed anyway dreamed anyway.

being a black woman here is not just survival. it is artistry. it is restraint. it is choosing tenderness in a world that mistakes it for weakness. it is knowing your worth even when the mirror offered to you is distorted.

this is not a request to be understood.

it is a record.

a witness.

a reminder to myself and to anyone listening that our lives are not footnotes. we are not margins. we are not metaphors for other people’s growth.

we are whole.

even here