gonna vent for a sec: it’s really hard for me not to express the intense anger i feel at people promoting white supremacy, racial capitalism, policing/surveillance, etc. i have to remind myself that my anger & depression is founded in/formed by histories of violence and death

at the same time i don’t want to be characterized by/essentialized to my anger. & i don’t think it’s useful to pretend that all is good, that’s disingenuous. it’s hard bc i know these feelings are valid but i don’t always wanna feel them. i wanna be happy & joyful &all that

i’m cautious of happiness and desire too, bc those feelings are so difficult for me to distinguish from their falsified/commodified forms in white heteropatroarchal capitalism. like am i tripping for feeling that happiness/joy is like a way to become numb/cope to shit going down

i’m in a constant state of mourning death. not only as it relates to bodies but also as it relates to histories, lands, relationships, ways of being, community.

when we refer to antiblackness & settler colonialism, are we carrying the weight that comes with it? like are we mourning the brutality (that’s not a strong enough word) of chattel slavery & indigenous dispossession through which this place we call ‘home’ was made?

also i hate the colonizers language, i literally don’t have WORDS to express what i’m feeling. there are no words or phrases in the english language that truly reflect the unparalleled violence that make this reality possible (bc they were never accountable 2 those atrocities?)

circling back: sometimes i question if i have ever felt pure joy like untouched by colonization/whiteness. i think that real happiness is only possible through queer black & indigenous liberation.

i think this constant self-questioning & reshaping is a necessary practice of disentangling ourselves from the structures of violence and harm to which we are all subjugated & which we reproduce. it doesn’t have to be hard or frustrating, it can just be necessary.

i think anger and sadness are important feelings, and they are also easy to get stuck in. stuck in my ego, stuck in hopelessness. they are useful in grounding why and how we collectively work towards liberation.

i think falsified joy & trying to find the ‘good’ in a genuinely shitty world is harmful. i think it’s important for all colonized people to find pleasure. i think we should all be working to make black & indigenous people feel safe & comfortable in all the spaces.

gonna end this thread with concepts/frameworks/theories/practices:
- abolition
- refusal
- incommensurability