Visibility

Safe spaces are underrated, but if it weren’t for them, the day will feel like 50 hours long, burdened by a mixture of positive and negative self consumed thoughts about being who I am.

Yesterday I ventured into POS, simply because I had been craving a ‘Sally’s double’s for a while, and since I had some time to kill, I detoured down town, parked opposite Church’s Chicken and walked to the Sally’s doubles stand near the Jerk stand. I stood behind a score of people waiting, some with napkins in hand, some eating. My eyes caught sight of a woman with short dreadlocks, giving another woman the eye, her lips pointing to me. The woman looked back and caught my eye. I neither smiled nor diverted my gaze. Somehow in that brief moment between glances so many thoughts flooded me, reminding me of those many insecurities I thought I had crumpled and thrown away.  But unknown to me, someone went into my trash, rescued and ironed them; now they stood crisp in front my eyes. What were their glances about? The thoughts swirling around my head, made the glances impossible to decode…neither their lips nor eyes bore any smile. Standing my ground I kept my stare fixated upon theirs…being reminded of my visibility, gave me an inner strength I had not felt before. When I got my doubles, I went and stood behind the one who initiated the stares in the first place. She kept looking back, and eventually walked a small distance away and kept staring.

I am comfortable in my skin, was the mantra my heart repeated. My thoughts however were not so comfortable, and weaned in and out of past insecurities. When I was a cub, my lips were positioned to meet others with a smile, but my visibility was greeted by frowns and misconstrued meanings…my smile disappeared, my stare saw only what was in front me…others hatred and ignorance for who I was. I became stoic and in some cases reserved, and this was my mask.

The thing about this mask is that it comes off in safe places, like work and home and among my special circle of friends. And sometimes when I am so comfortable, I misplace it, especially when I refuse to venture outside that scared arena…so when I was confronted by it, I was left mask-less…but a funny thing about being left naked is the strength we foster within. Today I am going to destroy that mask…face the sun in my visibility and step forward.