kenyaamzee

[kenyaamzee]

by @makeupmamka 

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Toni Morrison on Trauma, Survival & Finding Meaning.

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Full Article Live On My Blog.

I Wish I Never Came Out: The Paradox of Pride

Honest, Intimate Reflections on Five+ Years of Candid Black Queer Womanhood and My Marriage to Loneliness

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I Wish I Never Came Out: The Paradox of Pride

Honest, Intimate Reflections on Five+ Years of Candid Black Queer Womanhood and My Marriage to Loneliness

In hindsight I fully concede that I walked into this with a naive and laughably myopic scope of the situation. In my defense, who predicts a dystopian reality when moving forward with love? I knew that familial conservative beliefs would pose challenges—perhaps a few small hurdles that would turn an otherwise beautiful journey into an uphill battle, but the magnitude of this battle birthed an ugly, kaleidoscopic beast determined to cheat me out of my love, so much so that one terrible day in my room, I cried out the thought, I wish I never came out.

There’s a strange, almost paradoxical ache that settles in your chest once you make the decision to live openly, especially in this context—a Black African context. For all the joy that comes with living authentically, a lethal dose of isolation and loneliness took form. It is not always born from outright rejection—though that happens, too. The deeper pain stems from the quieter, more insidious reminder that parts of you remain hidden. Revolving tirelessly on an axis of self-editing, self-silencing, and recalibration to fit into two manually divided worlds that comprise one whole—you. A delicate balance of pride and ache, where every part of you is visible, yet still distant.

Today I am proud of who I am. I would never choose another path, but it is important to note that the pain was not inherently unambiguous. Pain can be layered, nuanced, and sometimes slippery.

I gave myself a full year into the relationship before I made select family and friends privy to my romantic status. I told a few close friends first, found solace in their understanding and gradually gathered the courage to speak my truth to my parents. Once spoken, everything became infinitely more complicated. There’s a soul-crushing weight that accompanies being visible to family members who were raised to believe that queerness is unacceptable. My parents, pastors in a tight-knit evangelical community, loved me—but their love was strained, curdling under pressure. Made conditional by the thing they couldn’t accept or address without chaos ensuing. Our arguments weren’t just words; they were battles of the heart, torn between the love they had for me and the world they wanted me to fit into. The world they saw value and dignity in. Each conversation felt like a negotiation, where vital parts of me had to disappear just to keep the peace.

As much as I understood my mother and father’s journey in mourning the death of the cis-heterosexual daughter they thought I would be. As much as I can fathom the grenade-like curveball I threw into their well-kept evangelical garden, I can also surmise that the mishandling of the situation allowed an ugly beast to surface, graduating instantly to the role of captain, steering our fragile relationship towards an iceberg.

There are days when I wish it could be different. I wish my identity could be embraced without resistance, without the weight of contradiction. Sometimes, even in my proudest moments, I wish I could return to the peace I once had, before all of this. Not because I long to go back into hiding, but because there was a time when I didn’t have to carry the weight of all these battles. There was a time when my queerness was just mine, tucked away, shielded from a space not yet ready to see it.

I would never advocate for hiding. Not now, not ever. I know deep in my soul, that living my truth—out in the open—is not just an act of self-liberation but a quiet revolution. To suppress that would be to erase myself and I would never do that. I will add that while I know that "time heals" and "people come around," in the same breath, I reject the all-too-normalized idea that queer or disenfranchised bodies have to "give it time." Is said time promised? Do we have the bandwidth for this level of endurance? How many have given in to the sorrow before "people came around"?

In simple terms, this is not a story about the pain caused by people turning their backs on you. This is a story about the death of a space once yours to enjoy, now marred. That family home that activates a split personality. A fight or flight sensation. An inner critic with a megaphone or rehearsed smiles and neutral conversations. It’s the ever-changing tides of resentment that threaten to drown your intimate relationships. It’s not the cruelty that isolates you most sometimes—it’s the constant act of hiding in plain sight, of morphing into the largest rainbow-coloured elephant in the room. This is a story about the looping dialogue between a version of yourself you recognize and a caricature desperately extending an olive branch. Through this journey, I met and married loneliness, became a sister-in-law to isolation and attended multiple funerals in honour of the daughter I always thought I was.

In the end, I kneel at my own feet and kiss them. Thankful. Secure in the knowledge that love never fails, it always gets the gold. I have my community and chosen family that held me when I couldn't hold myself. A multi-generational network filled with divine love. Dear friends, grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who have embraced me and mine with no edits. A tribe that looks inward, at the heart. A people who trust you enough to come as you are. It is this love, their love -your love- that continues to cheer me on, facing the sun keeping me warm.

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Fela Kuti.

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Den Muso [1975]

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there’s no reward for sticking by people who treat you badly

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Seen in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by murllss + matchaarchives for ethiopian_girl_skaters (via IG)

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Not rlly a finished piece (yet)

"small" wip for a school project about anti-racism lolz, i gotta finish this one day since tmr it will be put for view at my class with other students works

Its based on a photography that i rlly liked althought not sure the org creator

Edit: a better search i found the model Stephanie Kenyaa Mzee

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Kenyaa and Sema

Kenyaa and Sema

~ Jan '24