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 world existed, and my pain, my desire, my love and my uncertainty existed, and then, there was something else.” –Eben Moglen.

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.

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.