#MIADWA

[miadwa]

I’m Coming Out…Again: Living with BP1

I’ve always struggled with my mental health. I was formally diagnosed with clinical depression in college, but looking back over my childhood, I can now see signs that things have always been a bit off. As a kid and an adolescent, I was irritable and anxious, going through periods of intense inexplicable anger and sadness. Anyone who has taken a child psychology class could easily see that I was clinically depressed. But I was also a little Black girl, and unfortunately, little Black girls don’t get to have depression and anxiety. Instead, we’re just written off as emotional teens with bad attitudes. I don’t blame my parents because they didn’t know anything about mental health. But I do acknowledge that I could have benefitted from professional help earlier on.

Since college, I’ve done a fairly decent job of taking care of my mental health. I haven’t maintained my regimens perfectly, but I’ve pretty much always stayed in therapy and on medications. Although there were some hard times, I worked really hard to keep everything under control. In working on bettering my mental health, I was able to live a fairly normal life: I partied with friends, had romantic relationships, continued to excel academically. But all of that changed about a year ago.

What was once a sometimes crippling but still manageable depression turned into a living nightmare. I went from just experiencing symptoms of depression occasionally to suddenly experiencing insurmountable lows and frightening highs. It wasn’t until I walked into my psychiatrist office babbling (well, I thought I was babbling, but I was actually yelling) about all the great trips I had planned the night before when I didn’t sleep at all that my treatment team realized something deeper was going on. I walked out of that appointment with a new diagnosis: Bipolar 1 disorder.

The term ‘bipolar’ has been co-opted in popular culture to mean any slight change; people refer to the weather as ‘bipolar’ when it’s sunny one day and rainy the next. People equate a slight mood change or mind change with being ‘bipolar’. But I’m here to set the record straight. You feeling sad one day and then happy the next is NOT bipolar.

So what is bipolar? Clinical definitions from organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) define it as “a mental illness that causes dramatic shifts in a person’s mood, energy and ability to think clearly. People with bipolar experience high and low moods—known as mania and depression—which differ from the typical ups-and-downs most people experience.” There are different types of bipolar disorder, differing based on the intensity and severity of symptoms. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder, meaning that my symptoms can be very severe and last from weeks to months at a time. So that’s the clinical definition, but what does it actually look like?

For me, bipolar has been monstrous. The depressive episodes are crippling and darker than any I’ve experienced before. I’ve frequently found myself curled up in a ball sobbing because I can’t make the darkness go away. I’ve withdrawn from family and friends to the point that they’ve started entire phone webs looking for me. It’s impacted my ability to work and do my schoolwork because it almost feels like walking around in a fog. Nothing is clear, food has no taste, everything is dim, and motivating yourself to do simple tasks like showering takes an immense amount of energy. The mania on the other hand…well I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy some of the times I was manic. You feel on top of the world and full of energy and ideas. I’ve written some of my best papers for school while manic. I hit the gym 7 days a week for hours when I’m manic. But it has it’s downsides as well. Mania is the reason I’ve completely emptied my bank account in 3 days. Mania is the reason I’ve gone 5 days on 4 hours of sleep. Mania is the reason I now have certain tattoos and piercings that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. Mania is the reason I’ve gotten myself into really dangerous situations because I literally felt invincible.  And I would simply cycle between the two, being manic for a few weeks and then crashing into a depression for a month at a time.

Getting the diagnosis was difficult because of stigma. I was consumed with the fear that someone would find out and label me as crazy. I was terrified to start dating someone new because I knew at some point, I would have to disclose my diagnosis. I was even more stressed because now, every time I started to feel good again, I had to worry that I was slipping into a manic episode. Add to that the stress of mental health stigma in the Black community and you had a perfect storm. I had to contend with family members who thought I was overreacting and didn’t need medication. After facing my family, I decided that I would never tell a soul because if this is how the people that love me most reacted, how could I ever expect anyone else to be accepting? All these things made me feel as though I was now hiding an ugly secret.  But the diagnosis also allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief, because it finally made sense. Before I was diagnosed, I couldn’t understand why I would crash so hard into depression after feeling so high and on top of the world. But now, I learned that there was a word for this, and I wasn’t simply being erratic. I could get help and people wouldn’t look at me like I was crazy. And the best part was that I could finally have someone help me learn how to manage it.

And managed it, I have. I still have really rough days and have had some scary experiences (more on that later), but I no longer walk around in shame. I’ve tried to eliminate the word “crazy” from my vocabulary. I now think of myself as I would a person with a physical illness: I simply have some chemical imbalances in my brain. And that’s okay. I don’t have to pretend it’s not real or hide in the shadows of society. I just have to take care of myself. That means taking my meds no matter how I’m feeling, keeping up with therapy, and practicing self-care by protecting my energy. I no longer look at living with a mental illness as a death sentence; instead I see it as an indicator that I’m doing more than just surviving; I’m thriving.

**If this has resonated with you or you just need someone to talk to, text ‘NAMI’ to 741741 to find support in your area.

[miadwa]

How Can You Pour From an Empty Well? Taking Care of Yourself while Living with Mental Illness

This entry is going to be a little different than other posts. So often we talk about mental illness and the effects it can have on our daily lives. If you’re anything like me, you’re a giver: someone who will literally give their last to another person. Generosity is a beautiful attribute; however, sometimes we give at the expense of something else, often times, ourselves. While giving to others is actually a great way to lift your mood, doing so at the cost of your own self can be detrimental to your mental health. Without some form of self-care, mental illness can leave you drained and empty of the energy necessary to function. But as difficult as mental illness can be, there are lots of ways to combat it. Below are a few simple tips on what to do if you feel like you’re slipping into a funk.

Drink water and eat healthy foods. It’s true what they say “Garbage in, garbage out.” But this doesn’t just apply to your physical health. Your mental health suffers too when you’re malnourished or dehydrated. I can’t tell you how often I’ve been feeling like I’m on the edge of a depressive episode, just to realize that all I’ve eaten all day is candy and chips with a grand total of 3 sips of water. Want to feel better? Change your diet and stay hydrated; the benefits are endless.

Get enough sleep. I can’t stress this enough. When living with a mental illness, especially bipolar disorder, getting enough sleep is key. For me, going without sleep can trigger manic episodes. When you’re not fully rested, you’re more susceptible to changes in your mood. So take that after work nap, cancel those plans and get in bed at 8PM. Just do whatever you have to do in order to be well-rested.

Exercise. When you move your body, chemicals are released in your brain, and typically, those chemicals are the ones that are imbalanced when you have a mental illness. So exercising and moving your body is a great way to improve your mood. For me, that means working out with a trainer 3 times a week. Don’t like the gym? Find another method of movement that you do like. Dance, hike, walk, do yoga, take a Zumba class. Just get up and move your body. (P.S. This also helps with body acceptance, but more on that later).

Take your meds. I know how hard this is. There are still times when I cry when it’s time for me to take my meds because medication management is so stigmatized in our society. But look at it this way: If you got sick and the doctor told you that you had an upper respiratory infection, you would take your antibiotics. Why? Because you’re sick and want to feel better. It’s the same with psychiatric meds. If you’re on them, keep taking them, because they’re designed to make you feel better. Feel like you’ve been on your meds and they’re not helping? Be honest and let your doctors know that; they’re just as invested in improving your mental health as you are.

Now for the harder ones. Everything I’ve mentioned before is fairly simple because it’s individualized, and although they require work, they are fairly external in nature. The next few tips require internal reflection and sometimes even confronting others and (something potentially even more scary) confronting yourself.

Protect your energy. Consider who and what you allow around you. I hate to be the one to say this, but that friend that you’ve had all your life that spews negativity, the one who never has anything good going on…they can worsen your mental health without ever intending to. I’ve recently had to come to this revelation within my own life, and the unfortunate fact is that not everyone in my life is good for my mental health. I have friends that I’ve known for years that I’m slowly realizing, even though they’re fun to hang out with, they can (and sometimes are) inhibiting my growth as a person with their negativity. When you’ve made the decision to focus on improving your mental health, some sacrifices will have to be made.  It is far from easy, but consider challenging your friends to be more positive with their words as well. If they can’t get with that, it may be time to consider what role they should play in your life.

Work on bettering yourself internally. Those negative thought habits you have, they’ll contribute to you feeling down and out. Your thought life becomes your waking life. This is one that has taken me years to overcome. So often, we become entrenched in our own negativity, thinking that we’re unqualified or unattractive. What we don’t realize is that thinking this way can become a self-fulfilling prophecy where we fail to achieve the things we want because we feel less than. Long story short, want to change your life? Start with something small, like changing the way you think.

Spend uninterrupted time with yourself. Turn off the phone, unplug from the social media, and take time to learn who you truly are. Take yourself on a date and leave your phone in the car (This is coming from someone who is truly addicted to their phone, so if I can do it, so can you.) Ask yourself “What do I like doing? What makes me happy? What do I want out of life?”. Get to know you first and foremost. If you really want to get deep, ask yourself what’s holding you back from those things. (Trust me, that can get messy, but it’s worthwhile.) Getting to know yourself allows you to be a more authentic version of yourself, and further allows you to know who and what helps you take care of yourself and your mental health.

This is far from an exhaustive list. But I offer you this because although we want to take care of others in our lives, it’s nearly impossible to do so without first taking care of ourselves. And mental health comes first, because without it, it’s nearly impossible to function in any other way.

[miadwa]

“It’s One of Them Queer-osexuals!”: Realizing I Might Not Be as Straight as I Thought I Was

‘How Did You...Ya Know...Know?’

I think I’ve always known that I was Black and Woman (thanks for the unnecessarily-gendered over-racialized world, white supremacist patriarchy), but I’ve only recently figure out this whole Queer thing. Looking back, there were signs, but I grew up in a Christian Black household, so the thought of having some sort of attraction to another woman never crossed my mind as something I would face. The list of signs grows everyday as I evolved and consider how my past experiences have shaped who I am today, but here are just a few for you to think on:

Sign #1) My older brother had a poster of Lil Kim on his bedroom wall. She was crouched down, legs spread apart in a leopard print bikini with a feather lined robe cascading over her thighs (making me wonder how my parents allowed this). To say I was obsessed with that poster would be like saying Beyonce’ is kinda an okay performer: a grossly disrespectful understatement. I cannot count the number of times I cracked his bedroom door when he wasn’t home just so I could catch a glance at the beauty therein. At the time, I didn’t really think much of it, but I knew enough to know I couldn’t get caught drooling with my eyes fixated on that poster. 

Sign #2) My aunt kept a collection of Jet magazines at her house in the bathroom. As a kid, nothing thrilled me more than skimming through that booklet to find the Jet Beauty of the Week. A different gorgeous Black woman oiled up in a bikini every single week?! Where do I sign up?? I had seen the promised land and it was overflowing with melanin. I had the page number memorized and could feel my heart beating faster and faster as I flipped through the pages trying to reach that glorious profile. I was always smart enough to keep my finger on another page in case someone approached and could catch me. Always gotta stay woke, right?

Sign #3) I had a lot of ‘girl crushes’ and I think most queer women can relate to me here. There was always a girl that you thought you just wanted to be absolute best friends forever with or a girl that you thought was so cool and pretty that you wanted to be just like her. (Let’s all let out a collective LOL). I won’t say her name, but the first time I can really remember feeling that way was in 4th grade. The truth of the matter is, from that point on, I always had a ‘girl crush’.

Oh Shit, I’m Not Straight at All

I didn’t fully embrace the fact that I was attracted to women until late in my college career when the girl crushes rapidly transformed into just crushes. Up until that point, I struggled a lot internally trying to figure out what was wrong with me. My process of accepting my own identity as a bisexual (I don’t really identify with that term for personal reasons, but we’ll go with that for now) woman was a rocky one for many reasons. One of those reasons was that I didn’t really fit in anywhere. Straight people wrote it off as a phase of experimentation that I would go through for a short period of time and then be ready to return to the world of heteronormativity, saddles of wedding dresses and tuxedos blazing. Lesbians wrote me off as yet another confused, closeted gay chick who only identified as bisexual as a stepping stone to coming out and fully embracing the life of lady-loving and two bride weddings. And both of them were quite wrong. That’s not to say, I’ve never felt some uncertainty or questioned my own feelings - there were plenty of times when I thought I was done dating men altogether. But when the rubber met the road, the simple truth was that I am an equal opportunity lover (and I’m working on trademarking that term, too).

When you further consider how I was raised, accepting the fact that I was anything other than straight was...difficult. I remember praying, crying, begging and pleading for God to take this thing away from me. I was the daughter of a minister, I knew what my eternity held if I even dared to let the word ‘gay’ roll off my tongue. My back ached and my stomach knotted itself as the weight of carrying something that I had been taught was so dark and twisted bore down on my spirit. I remember being angry from a young age as I was forced to essentially battle myself day in and day out, but never really knowing the well from which my anger sprung. As I grow older, I can look back and see that (I think) I was angry at God. He’s perfect in every way, right? So how could God make this kind of mistake on me and send me into the world with this immoral blemish staining my soul, humiliating and debasing me everyday? And when I asked for the Tide pen to blot out this spot, He turned his back on me in silence? I never asked to carry this cross, so tell me how is any of this fair? But  in the quiet, I felt a still small voice speaking and breathing into me: “I make no mistakes.” It was in that moment I realized that maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me after all...that I was just different and God had written this into my life intentionally, not as a an unchecked grammatical error for which He had no White-Out. From that moment on, I had no choice but to walk in my truth and be the woman God made me to be. That’s not to say that it’s been an easy task; it’s still something I struggle with accepting in myself some days. But I was no longer angry, or ashamed to be who I am. I was simply...me, and I was just trying to live my life in the best way I could. 

So What Now?

Accepting myself for who I am has only been the tip of the iceberg. There’s still that whole “dealing with family, friends and society as a whole” thing, but that’s for another post. At this point, I’m comfortable in my skin and (try to remain) as equally secure in all of my identities. Sometimes it gets rough and I want to attempt to throw of the shackles of queerness in favor of an easier life. But then I remember the family I’ve gained, the joy I feel in just being who I am, how far I’ve come and who else I could help along this journey, and I remember that rainbows only come after the rain.  And it wasn’t until I walked through the storm that I was able to dance under the rays of the rainbow. 

[miadwa]

We All Need Somebody to Lean On: Finding a Therapist

I focus a lot on experiences with severe mental illness (SMI) because those are my experiences. However, I also realize that this is not everyone’s reality. Regardless of if you’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness or not, we all share one thing in common: we’re all human and we all need support sometimes. We could all use a listening ear or some sound advice from time to time. A great way to find that support is in a therapist.

A therapist can be so influential in your life simply because they are not invested in it. Unlike friends and family, who have a vested interest in the nitty gritty details of your life, a therapist is an objective third party who knows nothing about you and, although they care about you, they carry no biased opinions because they simply have no reason to. They have no interest in protecting your feelings or telling you things to stroke your ego. Think of it as the physical manifestation of a journal: someone you can tell everything to and trust that no one else will ever know.  

For me, therapy has been life-changing. I know there are myths and stigma regarding what therapy is (especially as a POC, but more on that later), but it’s essentially holding a mirror up to yourself. So much of therapy is simply talking through your problems out loud. It’s a safe space where you’re free from judgment and expectations. I can’t tell you how often I’ve walked into a session in tears screaming every expletive in the book, and I’m always greeted with grace from my therapist because that’s their job: to listen to your problems and help you figure them out. After being in therapy consistently for the last three years, I’ve learned more about who I am, how I process emotions, how I heal, how I love. I’ve learned how to offer myself grace when I inevitably fuck something up, and how to also extend that grace to others. I’ve found healthy ways to cope with anxiety, process my past traumas (and believe it or not we all have trauma), how to forgive and move on. But more than anything I’ve learned how to deal with life. Nobody ever tells you how hard life can be just trying to make it from one day to the next, and as a result, when you experience how difficult life can be, it’s jarring. Therapy has been for me like a seatbelt in a car accident: it can’t prevent anything bad from happening, but it can help me stay safe in those moments by equipping me with the tools to get through it. But the real question is how do I find a therapist that works for me?

Finding a therapist is a lot like dating. You have to interact with a few different people to determine which one sticks. Sometimes all it takes is one bad date to let you know that you will never be calling that person back. Other times, you might have to go on a few dates with someone before you either realize that it’s simply not going to work or that they’re a great fit for you and you’d like to keep seeing them. Those same principles apply to finding a therapist. I’ve had multiple ‘one-time dates’ with therapists. Whether it was the woman who acted somewhat like Iyanla Vanzant and yelled in all her excitement (No shade to Iyanla, but that’s just not my speed), or the man who almost seemed to be afraid of me because he was so quiet and reserved, I’ve experienced it all. But after all the ups and downs and ‘awkward first dates’ with different therapists, I found the one that works for me.

How did I do it? The simplest advice I can give you is to use your resources. Get online and visit PsychologyToday.com, use their Find a Therapist function to find someone in your area. Ask throughout your network. Don’t be afraid, more people than you think have probably sought help at one time or another. If you’re a student, start with campus health. If those providers don’t work out, ask for referrals to other providers in your area. More than anything you have to keep at it, despite how discouraging it can feel at times. Keep asking for information and seeking out new providers until you find one that works for you.

Here are a few things to remember when seeking a new therapist.

Be vocal about what you want in a therapist. Do you want a provider of color? Someone who specializes in LGBTQ issues? Someone who is Christian and treats from a religious standpoint? Whatever it is that you want, be vocal about that and stick to it. In every practice that I’ve approached, I’ve made it clear that I want a woman of color as a provider. If the practice didn’t have any women of color providers, I said “Thanks for your time” and I moved on to find someone who would fit what I wanted.

Learn what sharing style works best for you. Do you like to be asked questions? Or are you more comfortable just offering up information? Be prepared to either discuss or simply think about what style of sharing works well for you. It’s imperative that you and your therapist are on the same page regarding communication style, or else your sessions will be full of awkward dead space, which is a waste of both of your times.

Use your voice. Are you really getting along with your provider or think you’d benefit from more frequent sessions for a little while? Say that. Feel like this just isn’t working well for you? Speak up, you’re not married to your provider. You have the freedom and the right to keep looking until you find care that suits you. I’d go a step further to say that you owe that to yourself.

Hopefully this will help you on your journey to therapy. After all, the most important thing is that you’re doing all you need to take care of yourself. 

[miadwa]

True Life: I’m a Sophisticated Ratchet: Being Caught in the Middle of Academia and Trap Music

I Have a Confession: I’m a Sophisticated Ratchet

I am (self-proclaimed) Crime Mob’s biggest fan. Nothing warms my heart quite like hearing “Cash Money Records takin’ over for the 99 and the 2000...” One of my favorite pastimes is rolling the windows down on a spring day and letting Gucci serenade me while the wind blows through my Brazilian deep wave tracks. I’ve been throwin’ this ass back since before the term “twerking” was disrespectfully attributed to the likes of Miley Cyrus *major side-eye*. My mom refers to me as country ghetto on a daily basis, and all of my graduation photo shoots have included a shot of me throwing up the 2-6 and reppin’ my hometown with my tongue out. That being said, I also hold a bachelors degree from a public Ivy. I’ve recently completed a masters degree and am now attending the top public school in my field and am studying to attain a doctor of philosophy degree. At the age of 24, I have multiple publications and presentations, and my curriculum vitae is pushing 6 pages. (For anyone unfamiliar with academia, for someone who went straight into a masters program after undergrad, and then went straight into a PhD program after a masters, that’s quite an accomplishment.) In short, I’m a sophisticated ratchet. 

What exactly does it mean to be a “sophisticated ratchet”? It means exactly what I just described above. You enjoy the things that would stereotypically (and quite unfairly) be associated with the terms “ratchet” or “ghetto.” However, you’re also very well-educated, professional and cultured. So you might do yoga and enjoy jazz and contemporary R&B, but you will still go all the way off when Knuck If You Buck is played at a cookout. You’re cosmopolitan and well-traveled, but you also remember to set your DVR to record the latest episode of Love & Hip Hop NY before you jet off on your international getaway. To be a sophistiratchet is to have successfully mastered the art of code-switching at optimal levels. 

When considering doctorate programs, I interviewed at a rather prestigious private university with about 10 other promising young professionals. As we sat at meals together and nervously listened to admissions directors and faculty members tell us what they were looking for in applicants, I was frequently reminded that I wasn’t quite like these other people. Most of them had received their masters degrees from well-known Ivy League universities and were now working for national and international health agencies. I was the youngest in the room, still finishing my masters at a lesser-known state university. I was making less than minimum wage working as a research assistant on a project completely isolated from my desired academic field. They had all done international field work with global health agencies; I was focusing on capacity building within poor Black communities. They were predominately White; I was the only Black woman there. Moral of the story: I was different from everyone else in the room. On the last day of the 3-day interview process, I was more than relieved to say my ‘thank you’s’ and hop into my Uber and speed away to the airport, all while allowing the relaxing sounds of Fetty Wap to wash over my weary Black soul. 

That interview wasn’t the first encounter I’ve had like that and I know it will be far from the last. It’s simply a fact that I’ve come to accept: within the academe, the corporate world, and this society in general, you’re expected to be one or the other. In that interview I could either choose to be me or them. It’s a dilemma that’s exemplified in the “Virgin-Whore Dichotomy”, which basically makes the assumption that a woman can be a virgin or a whore and nothing else. If a woman has ever had sex, she is automatically labeled a whore and deemed to be dirty and unworthy of male attention and respect. If not, she is pure, virginal, and worthy of a man’s love and affection. In the academe, I cannot speak using Ebonics or broken English because it is automatically associated with lower levels of education. Should I walk into a class meeting with long stiletto acrylic nails and oversized earrings, assumptions are made as to how I received admission into this program in the first place. It becomes nearly impossible to exist in the middle space of two highly polarized vantage points. 

Now, none of this is to say that there isn’t a place and time for professionalism. But professionalism should not require that you shed other aspects of your identity for its sake; for that is when professionalism transforms into respectability politics (which I’ll explain are pure garbage in a later post.) This is to say that my type of professionalism is seen as too loud, too ‘urban’ and, in short, too Black, because it does not fit into a box that supposedly defines what an academic is. So when I decided to enter into a long-term relationship with  academia, I realized that I had a decision to make: I could either become all that the academe has dictated a scholar should encompass, or I could continue being the bomb, multifaceted, ass-shaking, purple curly-fro’d Black girl whose critical thought work and extensive writing skills had carried her thus far. And because being a Black girl is just too magical to pass up, I chose the latter.

Why I Cling So Tightly to My Identity as A SophistiRatchet

Being a first-generation college student, I entered the world of academia with very few expectations. This was partially because I wanted to experience something new without any disappointments, but mostly because I had no framework by which to develop any expectations. The more I experienced the world of publications, co-authorships, grants, and submissions, the more I realized that there were preconceived notions about how one should behave in this world, specifically, how a person of color should behave. Growing up as anything other than White probably means that at some point in your life, you’ve learned to code-switch. Within the academe, this pressure becomes almost overwhelming as you are surrounded by highly educated people who refuse to acknowledge that your credentials match or even surpass theirs unless you look, sound, and behave the way they expect academics to look, sound, and behave.

I cling so tightly because I was once ready to run from this Ivory Tower. Going into my masters program, I was hired as a research assistant in my department. Upon meeting with my new supervisor, she asked me what my career goals were, and I immediately responded “I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to do academic research.” All of my previous encounters in this setting told me that I could not be who I was and still succeed as a professional academic. So I was ready to ditch the degrees and titles and be the person that made me happy, even if that meant turning my back on a career and work that could impact countless lives. It took some time for me to understand that I could indeed be and do both at the same time.

I cling so tightly to show other men and women like myself that it is possible to exist in this space without sacrificing a part of your own identity. Of course, professionalism matters, but you can still love trap music, shaking your ass, multicolored weaves, highly scripted “reality” television, and all other things that White society deems “ratchet”, while still working on a fully-funded dissertation and building your CV. More than anything, I cling so tightly so as not to lose sight of who I am and where I came from. It is my reminder that there are people who look, think, and act like me who cannot, for whatever circumstances, be in the same place in life that I am. It is my reminder that I must keep going for them. For these reasons, I can be in my office building multivariate linear regression models and preparing manuscripts for submission while rapping Rick Ross and Young Scooter.  I can throw back shots of Patron while acting like I’m auditioning at KOD on a Saturday night, and still present groundbreaking research at a national conference on health disparities on Monday morning. I am not a monolithic creature, but can exist in different spaces as a single being. No single one of my identities can invalidate my right to exist in another space. I am no longer apologizing for that; now, I am requiring that the academe recognize and accept that. 

There are so many facets of Blackness and Black culture that are considered “ratchet”, “unprofessional”, and a slew of other eye roll-worthy racially charged adjectives, and looking at those aspects as ‘less than’ because of their proximity to Blackness further contributes to the criminalization of Blackness and Black bodies. These are the ideals that White supremacy points to as justification for our treatment as second-class citizens, and yes, I’m looking at you Black folks in the “Well, if we don’t respect ourselves first, how can we expect White people to?” crowd too, because like I said earlier, respectability politics are pure garbage. No matter what spaces we exist in and how we choose to occupy those spaces, we retain the right to exist. I cling so tightly to my identity as a sophistiratchet because, in my tiny corner of the world, in my limited sphere of influence, that identity is my own form of activism. It is me staring White supremacy in the face and saying “I exist fully in my Blackness, in every form that it takes, and you will respect it.”

So to make a long story short: get you a girl that can do both. *drops mic*