My Best Self is Not My Whole Self, and My Whole Self is Valid
February 2021
If you happen to notice that I seem to be showing up as less than my best self, then trust me when I tell you that I, too, am aware that I am not showing up as my best self. But I am embodying my whole self. And as a whole person, I am complex, and I feel, and I experience a whole range of emotions, some of which are less than ideal for my best self and all of which are valid. So when you notice that I am showing up as someone other than my best self, know that it is still me.
When you open your mouth to utter, what’s wrong with you?, it feels like you’re spitting machetes at me, like you want to hack me into pieces and keep only my best parts, because apparently there is something wrong with my whole self. When I hear what's wrong with you?, I smell gasoline being poured on an already raging fire that’s trying its hardest to consume whatever compassion and grace I might be trying to muster for myself as I experience what it’s like to be my whole self. So what's wrong with you? sounds like confirmation that there is, in fact, something wrong with my whole self and that I must discard parts of her for your approval and understanding.
I know these things aren’t true. I need neither your approval nor your understanding, and there is nothing wrong with me. But it doesn’t bother me any less when I hear those words and have to answer to your reduction of me as someone other than my whole self. So when you ask, what’s wrong with you?, the only correct answer is, nothing, no matter what I may be feeling or what words need to come up and out. I cannot always name my emotions, but none of their names are the answer to what's wrong with you?, because feeling is not wrong.
Give me space to be. Give me time to ask questions and find answers. If you happen to notice that I seem to be showing up as less than my best self, then trust me when I tell you that I, too, am aware that I am not showing up as my best self. But I am embodying my whole self, and as a whole person, I am complex, and I feel, and I experience a whole range of emotions, some of which are less than ideal for my best self, and all of which are valid. So when you notice that I am showing up as someone other than my best self, know that it is still me.
When you dare to imply that my whole self is wrong, know that you are deepening the very feelings that you’re afraid to let me move, because now I know it’s not safe to show up as my whole self around you. Those feelings have nowhere to go but deeper inward. Harder to reach, harder to move. We have successfully suppressed them, made them so inaccessible that when they want to move and try to come up so that they can go and we can get free, they barely reach the surface to tell me their names before I feel compelled to swallow them back down and send them a little deeper. So when you ask me, what's wrong with you?, the correct answer is, nothing, but the only answer I know to say is, I don’t know.
The way in which we use language is significant. It is a tradition of Black folks to signify– to say a thing and really mean another that only those fluent in the language of double consciousness and survival can understand. We have become adept at censoring ourselves and speaking indirectly for the sake of seeing another day, and as artful as we have proven to be in the face of our attempted extermination, a state of constant fear and the forced twisting of our words and stilling of our tongues is no way to live freely and fully. Attempts at extinguishing us have never ceased, so what do we have to lose by using language more intentionally and words more directly? And what is language but expression?
At the very least, we should be able to express fully as our whole, authentic selves with each other, if with no one else. So, you see, it’s not that I can’t imagine what you actually mean when you ask, what's wrong with you? It’s that what's wrong with you? suggests that I cannot show up as my whole self without risking the sting of rejection and the subsequent threat of my survival being in question. My survival is at stake when my full expression is not allowed. The denial of expressive release is a form of spiritual violence (Gallion 35), to which Black folks have been subjected by white supremacist models of existence. The denial takes a particularly lethal shape when we impose it on one another.
What's wrong with you? is an unintentional use of language that communicates that you’d rather I wear a mask with “best self”— an unchanging, unmoving, simply stated, and simply understood persona— plastered across my forehead than see me or hear me or allow me to show up as myself and all of who I am: complex, sensitive, mutable, messy, intricate, expansive, spilling out, not always contained. It is unintentionally inflicting spiritual violence by denying me the right to allow my feelings to move and to take shape in a way that allows me to release them so that they don’t just sit on my spirit, collect in my body, and form dis-eases that might otherwise be preventable.
What I hear in this (mis)use of language is the direct denial of my right to express as my whole self. It is white supremacy coming right into my home and taking a seat on the sofa and getting comfortable. And while survival has been our concern for generations since we were transplanted in an environment hostile to our very existence, can survival even be ensured if we then turn the imposition inward and don’t allow ourselves to show up as fully human? Are we human if we don’t give ourselves the space to feel, explore, question, move, and express our emotions?
The entire white supremacist structure and its accompanying structures of patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, ethnocentrism, and nationalism interweave to produce the crooked room (Harris-Perry), in which our sense of uprightness and best modes of survival are altogether skewed. To express fully and directly feels wrong because it calls for a sense of alignment that, in a crooked room, doesn’t feel aligned at all. And despite what these models would have us to believe, our sense of alignment does not and cannot come from that crooked room. It comes from our own interiority, our own sense of self. It is the crooked room that asks, what's wrong with you?, for following the human impulse of feeling and expressing.
I, too, have tried aligning myself with the crooked room and have come away asking myself, what's wrong with you? For years, I have struggled with depression and anxiety and not given myself space to work through their causes and manifestations. I’ve had microaggressions and overt displays of white supremacist patriarchal capitalist oppression hurled at me. I’ve folded myself over and over again until I’ve been small enough and square enough to fit into boxes of convention and respectability. I’ve swallowed words, held back tears, and stifled anger for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of pretense. And despite my best efforts at aligning with modes of living that satisfy the structures whose ultimate goal is my extermination, my soul inevitably shows me that I am too big to be contained. I always come spilling out.
While my previous impulse has been to ask myself, what’s wrong with you?, that’s an impulse I can no longer follow. It’s one I refuse to follow. I have learned that even if I am allowed compassion and grace nowhere else, I, at the very least, can offer them to myself. What's wrong with you? is devoid of that compassion and grace. What's wrong with you? doesn’t want me to interrogate or criticize the structures in which I am a disposable body for their maintenance and perpetuation. What's wrong with you? doesn’t ask me to unlearn ways of being that are wholly antithetical to being, to existing, to surviving, to living, to thriving, to expanding, to healing. What's wrong with you? demands that I see my existence as fundamentally flawed and my expression as a problem, and that’s a demand to which I refuse to acquiesce now, here, in this present moment.
So I’m not arguing over a matter of semantics and proper ways to pose questions. I’m defending my existence. I’m acknowledging a history of the denial of externalizing my interiority and my humanity, and how that history shows up in language and asks me to align myself to a crooked room in which none of us can stand upright and see ourselves or each other as we wholly and fully are. As Zora Neale Hurston taught us, “None of us are free, but some of us are brave” (Woods 00:01:58-00:02:02). I know that after generations of being denied the right to exist and express without the threat of dying as a result, oppressed people showing up as our whole human selves and not being afraid to express that wholeness and that human complexity can be triggering and scary as we continue to uncover and heal these deeply-entrenched wounds. So I can understand your fear when you see me spilling me out. Maybe you worry that whatever is coming up out of me might touch you and trigger your wounds too.
It’s always easier to acquiesce to what we know, which is the denial of our expression, than to step into uncharted territory and face the unknown. We don’t know what’s on the other side of emotions coming out to sit beside us and ask us that they be acknowledged and allowed to move. But there is the possibility of healing being on the other side. And the alternative to that is our further destruction. We literally kill ourselves when we don’t express.
So if I retire to a quiet, lonesome space, let me be there. If I’m brooding under a dark, gray cloud, let me feel that rain. I’m working something out. I’m clearing out demons. I’m befriending shadows who just want some air to breathe, some light to play with, some warmth to feel. The next time you feel the urge to ask, what's wrong with you?, maybe consider that I am not wrong, and neither are you, and there are entire forces of history, trauma, and physical and spiritual violence behind that question and the way that you ask it. There are feelings begging to move and to be expressed, and it’s in our human nature to let them.
So if you happen to notice that I seem to be showing up as less than my best self, then trust me when I tell you that I, too, am aware that I am not showing up as my best self. But I am embodying my whole self. And as a whole person, I am complex, and I feel, and I experience a whole range of emotions, some of which are less than ideal for my best self and all of which are valid. So when you notice that I am showing up as someone other than my best self, know that it is still me, and that my whole self is my best and most valid self.
Works Cited
Gallion, Aisha C. Space to Be: Hip-Hop Music Culture in Charleston, South Carolina. MA Thesis. Florida State University, 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340814881_SPACE_TO_BE_HIP-HOP_MUSIC_CULTURE_IN_CHARLESTON_SOUTH_CAROLINA.
Harris-Perry, Melissa. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Yale University Press, 2011.
Woods, Jamila. “ZORA.” Youtube, uploaded by Jamila Woods, 5 February 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0_3XwBb5s.