If You're Giving to Get, You Missed the Point
I was minding my Black ass business, leaving my house having just checked the mailbox, and was determined to throw out the junk mail I had just acquired, and then head up the block to the postal box on the corner. Its a blessing and a curse to live on a main street that is highly trafficked and usually very busy, for this reason alone, I usually try to handle my business in the wee hours of the morning, so I don't have to fucks with the riff-raff going up and down the avenue.
This was one of those days that I had to walk smack into the path of a Karen or at least a Karen-like looking woman. I wasn't really studying her, I was off to complete my main task, mail a letter. Taking the sojourn out of my apartment in the first place is so rare, I don't look forward to getting accosted the first thing out the door. But I knew it best to put letters in the box during the daylight hours because of recent mailbox theft, and also the temperature was at the highest it would be for the day, so a good time to make a secondary errand to the supermarket and re-up on my yogurt.
She's ooo'ing and ahh'ing over how beautiful my sweater was and I am like, I really don't need this right now. I knew I was cute before I left the damned house, I don't need you telling me what I already know. But I was raised well, and said in a low annoyance-tinged voice thank you. I am sure that mildly inebriated Black man who was closer to me heard me. But nano-seconds after her compliment was a nasty, well you're welcome. #😤 It took all my effort to NOT stop my forward motion and go back and whoop her ass! I had two errand to do, and none of them had anything to do with affirming a Karen.
So she expected to give something to get something, in my mind no different than a crafty pan-handler who leads with some creative line hoping it will get you to give them some money. Her attention was given as an acknowledgement or affirmation, but clearly something that was serving her ego and her own needs. I know this because I can feel the difference when someone is genuinely seeing me, and when they are just seeing what they want, the latter is where this Karen was at clearly.
I have no desire to get into her head, it doesn't sound like a very pleasant place to be, but in seconds she turned my initial moments outside sour, and irked me enough that I had a flash of wanting to commit violence because my personal peace had been violated with her unnecessary rudeness. This is exactly the reason I don't leave my mother fucking house. Can't I go outside with having to take on the burdens of whatever disposition or energy folks are carrying that day?
When I give a compliment to someone if I even verbalize it, because I don't always, its a nod or just making eye contact and a small smile, but if I do say something its to let that person know, I see you! #👀 My intentions come from a place of encouragement with no expectation of anything from that person.
Black women in my experience are very good at this, they have a cornucopia of affirming phrases they can say to you that lift you up, because you sense their sincerity and their unnecessary need of reciprocation. They give a gift, with no expectation of getting anything back. This is the kind of human I want to be, the one who spreads love, not necessarily expecting love back.
This Karen was like a sooty cloud darkening my doorstep, tripping over alleged good intentions masked in some personal need for recognition. As far as I am concerned, she could have kept her damned mouth shut.
I shared this story with a girlfriend and she reminded me that this was a form of street harassment, which is so curious because if anyone would know that walking down the street isn't a transaction you would think would be a woman.
This whyte woman's entitlement and self-absorption wouldn't allow her to see that she was wrong from the front to the back. As a queer person street harassment has been a part of life especially as a young queer. Its part of the reason I don't expose my body when going outside, folks don't know how to act. But it seems even when I am fully covered up, folks don't know how to act. It blows my mind that a protected group can cause as much harm and damage as the group that targets them, and not even be aware of it.
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Video game I saw in a dream. It was in this low poly style like an older video game. You play as this character I think was meant to be a lamb, or maybe a weird mix of a lamb a mouse and a rabbit, (while not really looking like any of those things) and you’re running away from a wolf. Your objective is to last as long as possible before the wolf catches and eats you.
The house you’re running in is endless and bizarrely put together like most building interiors in dreams are (like the infinite toilet dream dimension on Reddit lol) the layout of the house is pretty detailed, you can stop and hide in places like closets or bins while the wolf looks for you, you can go up and down stairs and into rooms etc.
You never actually know where the wolf is or how close it is to you until it appears in your line of sight, it makes no noise and the game gives you no way of knowing where it is, and it’s pretty unpredictable it doesnt move at a consistent pace. When the wolf catches you there’s an animation showing it eating your character
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