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The one who faces trauma.
The one who stores it.
The one who is resilient.
The one who obscures it.
The one who leans into trauma.
The one who resists it.
The one who feels the feelings.
The one who numbs it.
The one who stays hopeful.
The one who accepts it.
The one who trusts her self.
The one who doubts her wit.
The one who prays for ignorance.
The one who condemns theirs.
The one who knows it would do no good
Except maybe quell nightmares.
The one who performs for the validation.
The one ashamed of it.
The one who personalizes another’s experience.
The one too privileged to feel it.
The one who feels the things she feels.
The one who sits in it.
The one crushed by all the weight.
The one who learns to uplift.
The one who feels the anger.
The one who wants to hurt them back.
The one who leads with love.
The one whose grandma made her black.
The one who casts the blame
On the one silent and still.
The one who found her own voice
Only once she had the will.
The one who hates the one who loves our culture and not us.
The one witnessing terrorism abroad and keeps it on the hush.
The one who has the faith
Of a mustard seed.
The one with the hopelessness
Of a poplar tree.
The one begging for validation.
The one who hides in shame.
The one who manipulates the support she needs
By giving it “freely”.
The one who sees humanity.
The one who pleads for others to.
The one who sees her people sweet.
The one who sees them change.
The one who condemns their biases.
The one who has her own.
The one who rejects white supremacy.
The one who makes it home.
The one who knows we’re all more than the color of our skin.
The one who can’t see any else, beyond the skin we’re in.
The one who has a black father and a black brother.
The one who leaves the street with black men in favor of another.
The one who feels weak to change the fate of the world.
The one who knew the power she had since just a little girl.
The one who hates our predicament.
The one who is grateful for the strength it made.
The one who wishes it was never this way.
The one whose humility it gave.
The one who silences herself in class
Because their arguments are better.
The one who earned the right, just like everyone else
To wear the C on her sweater.
The one whose mom is loud and curt.
The one whose dad will cry.
The one whose brother is angry,
The one whose brother she wished would die.
The one who thought her skin made her opinion too small to matter.
The one who will get paid to voice her opinions on matters.
The one too scared to protest in the streets.
The one whose protest is her occupation of an Ivy League seat.
The one who may not know right now what difference she can make.
The one resolute that space for her she will take.
The one who can’t show up some days
The one whose blade she sharpens.
The one staying true to her kind heart.
The one who lets it harden.
The one whose trauma triggers her.
The one who escapes it all.
The one who looks hatred in the eye and
Says, “To you, I will not fall.”
The Multiplicity of Personality
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> | *The Multiplicity of Personality | | | “The world existed, and my pain, my desire, my love and my uncertainty existed, and then, there was something else.” –Eben Moglen. | |
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< | | | | The world existed, indeed, and other humans existed in it. And these humans created systems that benefitted their wants and needs, sometimes at the expenses of others’. And some millions of years later, I came into existence, and the totality of who I am was tested. My love existed, people’s trauma existed, and it was projected onto me and it became mine. And now my pain exists, my love and my light exist, and though my trauma exists, my resilience exists. My optimism still exists and my determination, above all, exists. | |
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< | My trauma is expected, yet unpredictable. My constant persecution and the inevitable consequence of trauma is allocated to me as my fill. According to America, I should need nothing else but my trauma. I should long for and revel in nothing short of my trauma. To this country, my trauma negates my joy. It negates my peace. It negates my potential. It obscures my humanity and labels me “one-sided”. To the majority, I have no depth or purpose beyond my trauma. I have one personality, and it is the one persecuted, oppressed, subjugated, traumatized, and broken. America tells my seemingly one-sidedness to accept its fate. To accept my second-class position.
But my trauma opens a new world for me, one of endless possibilities. One where I exist here, and now, and I am happy. One where I exist here, and now, and I am powerful. One where I exist here, and now, and I am free. I would not know my resilience, my strength, my humility, and my perseverance if it weren’t for the trauma I am gifted. If it weren’t for the trauma that once crushed me, I would not be free. The gifts of trauma, cognitive dissonance, and dissociation avail to us a break from reality and a reconception of what is.
The killings of my people may have shocked me, hurt me, depressed me, crushed me, isolated me, and abused me—but it jolted a power within me that refuses to submit. It cleared an opening for a reimagined America, and in that opening lies my path, my purpose, my sense of empowerment, and most importantly my opportunity to advocate for the recognition and respect that my people have been denied for centuries. It is only by my affliction of trauma that I have been gifted the pain, dissonance, and dissociation that created my multiplicity of personality—the one thing that can make me an experienced and authentic advocate for my people.
I reformatted the text to reflect your intentions.
It's not for me to say how you should revise this. It has been written as you needed it to be written, to have used writing as a way of knowing to know something in a new form. You should revise in order to keep the growth of your awareness alive, unstopping.
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> | My trauma is expected, yet unpredictable. My constant persecution and the inevitable consequence of trauma is given to me. Not just my hand, but my fill. According to America, I should need nothing else but my trauma. I should long for and revel in nothing short of my trauma. To this country, my trauma negates my joy. It negates my peace. It negates my potential. It obscures my humanity and labels me “one-sided”. To the majority, I have no depth or purpose beyond my trauma. I have one personality, and it is the one persecuted, oppressed, subjugated, traumatized, and broken. America tells my seemingly one-sidedness to accept its fate. To accept my second-class position.
But my trauma opens a new world for me, one of endless possibilities. One where I exist here, and now, and I am happy. One where I exist here, and now, and I am powerful. One where I exist here, and now, and I am free. One where I exist and I am humble, I have compassion, and I have unending empathy. I would not know my resilience, my strength, my humility, and my perseverance if it weren’t for the trauma I was gifted. If it weren’t for the trauma that once crushed me, I would not be free. The gifts of trauma, cognitive dissonance, and dissociation avail to us a break from reality and a reconception of what is.
The relentlessly killings of my people over the past decade may have shocked me, hurt me, depressed me, crushed me, isolated me, and abused me—but it jolted a power within me that refuses to submit. It cleared an opening for a reimagined America, and in that opening lies my path, my purpose, my sense of empowerment, and most importantly my opportunity to advocate for the recognition and respect that my people have been denied for centuries. It is only by my affliction of trauma that I have been gifted the pain, dissonance, and dissociation that created my multiplicity of personality—the one thing that can make me an experienced and authentic advocate for my people.
Now, I look beyond my race and I see another: the human race. The complexity of it all. The history that existed before my existence and the tensions that may outlast it. I do not understand it all and I recognize daily that my work may be futile and at times my solidarity performative. I reflect on that. I hold space for my ignorance, for my knowledge, for my authenticity, and for my insecurity. I hold space for the individuals who have died fighting for the freedom that I revere as a right and simultaneously shame as entitlement. I hold space for the centuries of complicated and nuanced history of conflict that exists while also taking space as an aspiring attorney ripe to change the world.
But is it real? If I can't watch the videos of terrorism and brutality, am I genuine? If I don't put my money where my mouth is, do I lack authenticity? If I speak up just because I think I will be judged if I do not, am I conceited? If I only amplify others’ struggles to provide a basis for their continued solidarity, do I even care at all? If I care about able-bodied, healthy-minded people of color, but reject those facing disorders and dysmorphia, how am I perpetuating pain and mistreatment? The answers fluctuate. But one thing I know is that the only light in this darkness—the only redemption in our suffering—is the law.
The law has not always been kind to me. It usually has not. The law holds power over me. It dictates my behavior. It discriminates against me. But it legitimizes me. It empowers me. It offers me opportunities to denounce my own discrimination, to protect and uplift others, and most importantly to reimagine a more just world and to do something to achieve it.
But what if “I’m in law school” becomes “I’m a lawyer” becomes just a line that earns the validation of others? What if this submission to compete with my peers becomes an air of superiority towards my clients? What if I lose my passion in paperwork or performative justice becomes paramount? What if my image did not dictate my work ethic and my salary did not define my integrity?
These questions, though far from any compelling essay I have ever written, are the foundation of my career. My practice begins and ends with the search to embody the lawyer I want to be. In fact, it’s cool to care. Conceit and vanity are boring. Egoism is uni-faceted. Performative justice advances some at the cost of others’ truths and struggles. It is entirely through the multiplicity of personality that we may embrace our own hypocrisies and honor the humanity of others. It is through my multiplicity of personality that I have found compassion for my counterparts worldwide. Each instance of trauma inflicted on me serves to crack open the soul of the scared little girl within. The glass ceilings shatter. Her light is reflected in the face of all the others. She rejoices in their image. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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