Letter to 16
I live in Harlem. I will be 35 in exactly 179 days. I am going to sky-dive on that day. No matter how high my fear factor is, I’m jumping. I have a passport. With stamps. I have friends. Who I love. And who love me. I’m not talking to my mom. My godmother died in September. My grandmother and Nanny Ocy (her older sister) died within 4 hours of each other in 2006. They were room mates in the nursing home. Skippy died two years ago. I have a gut and I struggle staying in shape and eating right. New Orleans drowned. Nothing is the same. Nothing has really changed. I am a full-time entrepreneur. That’s both good and bad. I feel like I have no home. I am scared. Shytless. I don’t feel like I do enough, yet am often exhausted. I think I’ve found my passion. Money is funny. Change is strange. I am single. Very very single. I still have hope. Love encamps me.
Right now your biggest concern is how to get your mama to buy you those Used Jeans and Tretorns. You want some Girbauds, too. She’s not big on name brands and neither are you, but every now and then, a teenager wants to look like every other teenager walking around.
I know you wish that boys paid more attention to you and less attention to the ‘fly girls’. If only Everell, Darryl, Armond, Jonas, Isaac, and/or Brandon would notice you, they’d fall in love with you instantly. I wish I could tell you that someone will come along and you both would fall in love instantly, but at 34 and single, I’m wondering how true that is. I can say this, though. All those girls they are chasing behind, will look like shyt in 15 years. Wait until you see Dominique at your 15 year high school reunion. Revel in that shyt.
But really, over the next 20 years, you’ll realize that you don’t really want boys anyway. CATCH IT! Yes ma’am. You will begin to develop a queer identity and it will shift your life and propel it in some of the most amazing directions. Surely, many won’t like it, but your life isn’t for nobody but you to like. You’ll also realize that all those ‘I don’t really feel like a girl’ feelings you’ve always had, will begin to have a name and its own language. And you will begin to also develop a trans-gender identity. CATCH THAT T!
Your hair will stop growing because it was the one thing people validated you on. You even won ‘Best Hair’ in high school. And you will take that validation and it will result in over-processing and essentially frying your scalp which will scar the skin and for years it won’t grow.
And you don't know yet, but your grandmother will be the person you miss most in the world when she passes. And while y’all always got along, you’ll wish you had spent more time with her. But it won’t be until she’s gone that you’ll realize just how much alike y’all were. That all those times she defended you in showing your shape off or wearing something kinda scandalous, it was really her way of saying ‘Do not let others police your body.’ ‘And you own you’. But wasn’t all that language back then. She was a maverick too. But like many, you won’t realize that until it’s too late. And it won’t be easy to shake the regret. She’ll visit you in your dreams. But she won’t say anything. She’ll always be in the background. Cleaning up. Or cooking something. Just as a reminder that she’s there with you. And it will be more comforting than her actually being in the foreground.
Your dreams of being a cardiothoracic surgeon will fade eventually. GASP! Yes. You aren’t going to medical school. Spirit has something else in store for you. You will find that your passions can be found in Social Justice and you will become a Social & Cultural Critic and it will look good on you.
So walk this road. You will often feel alone.
Make mistakes. They’ll give you wisdom.
Fail forward. Learn the difference between sucumbing to fear and engaging fear.
When you feel the lump well in your throat, that’s God’s way of saying ‘speak’.
You are doing well.
Sincerely,
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