Day Five: Between the World and Me

I think it's easy to accept a history that is solely  yours.  Those are my ancestors.  They came over on ships seeking freedom of religion.  A grandfather or uncle fought against the red coats in the Virginia mountains.  It's been told to me.  An oral history.

A written history presented years and years at the desks and tables of a classrooms.   It was my history.  Our history.  But not everyone's history.

I can almost feel the guilt of a 10 year old me learning about slavery.  It didn't feel good.  I can still see that young white girl.  

This guilt I feel now is a million times worse.  

I am not writing this for you to feel sorry for me.  Please dear God don't.  This is the guilt I need to feel and process right now.  This is the hard stuff.  And instead of sitting in the guilt I am putting my feelings down.  Because before with that 10 year old girl and that 20 year old girl and that 30 year old girl I let the guilt stew until I let it go like I let go of the simple problems of the world. A missing sock.  A ripped pair of jeans.  A forgotten friend.  These are all easy to let go of. It was okay because for a fleeting moment I sat it in and felt it for a little while.  But I didn't feel it to it's rotten core.  I still haven't even touched the surface.  But my pledge is to not let go of this pain.  To sit in it and keep digging.  Keep questioning.  Keep reeducating.

This is a lot of I's.  I just need to get this down.  Bear with me.

I am not coming to this realization now.    I was a 5 year old girl bringing home construction paper Indian headdresses. Milk carton models of the Nina,Pinta and Santa Maria.
30 year old me learned of Christopher Columbus' crimes.  No tears were shed when my children didn't learn that Christopher kinda, sort-of but really didn't discover America.

We write our histories.  Bind them.  Sell them. A McGraw-Hill label slapped on the spine, wrapped in a paper bag book cover decorated with markers and stickers and endless spiral doodles.   

Facts are facts.  I always connected this with history.  Facts are history and history is facts.

It's is hard for me to look back now at my love for history and not feel sad for that part of my life that was somewhat if not almost all a lie.  Half-truths.  The truths that was made to belief.

And what is even more hard to swallow is that history was used to demonize, oppress the child sitting next to me.  

My history was not everyone's history.  And it wasn't really my history in the first place.