Remember Me?

Well, this has turned out to be harder than I thought. Apparently my new condition, discussed here, is more demanding physically and emotionally than I had expected. Some days I feel just like I always have. Some days -- for weeks at a time -- I feel like I'm car sick. Some days I feel vaguely depressed for no reason. Though of course, when you feel vaguely depressed, everything is a reason. Some days I get through the day, but by the time I do my now necessary work out at the gym, I'm just too played out to do anything but play a few games of Solitaire and collapse.

To make things worse, if that's not enough already, I often feel as if I'm drowning in a sea of "race" here. I mean, I'm always hyper-sensitive to "race" everywhere I go and always find plenty to be hyper-sensitve about. But here, aside from stuff I'm just not prepared to go into today, de facto segregation alone means that I can be with Black folks or White folks, but rarely with them both and frankly, I hate that. At work, I have to leave my building to have a real conversation with a person of color who's not a student. And, since not everybody knows me personally, I never know when a White person will haul out the n-word (behind African-Americans' backs, of course), leaving me with the hot potato and no idea whether or not it's even worth saying something to rank strangers who might, in fact, be dangerous to me or someone else, if they get their panties in a bunch.

I can go to a family gathering with an African-American friend, but after a few times of this, I'm almost ready to give it up. She can introduce me as her "sister" all she wants, but they're not buying it. And I don't blame them. Why should they trust some trouble-making White woman? And what is she up in here for anyway?

I do have several African-Americans I consider close friends now, but our relationships are conspiratorial in nature. We compare notes, shore each other up, and plan insurrections, laughing in that dark way that soldiers laugh in the trenches.

And as I'm now in the process of being moved into a permanent position, after all, it finally occurs to me what the implications of all this are for someone like me. Good golly, Miss Molly! I'm a highly Conscious White woman living in what might as well be rural Louisiana. I'm not complaining. I'm ready to do my part. But some days, I really don't want to leave my apartment. And it's lonely there.

So I feel sad. And weak. And heartsick (about all the oh-so-obvious effects of the on-going nature of racial oppression all around me -- everywhere, yes, but amped up some here, in spite of my quick disavowals of that in earlier months). And tired (all of this plus 300 students will do that to a person). And daunted by the idea of these circumstances and feelings lasting for the rest of my life.

Then, since I'm not blogging, I don't read blogs either. I mean, I can't bare to lurk when I don't feel up to playing, and apparently, on some level, I don't think I deserve to be part of it all because I'm not holding up my end (whatever I perceive that to be). And since blogging and bloggers are the joy of my life, I ain't having a lot of joy these last few months.

May I please come home?

Is there anybody there?

I got a shit-load of stuff to write about.
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The image above is from Kaotic Enzymes, which is a tattoo blog(!)