I bumped into an old friend from high school. She reminded me of how I told my story in front of my year level at the age of 13 about fleeing Iraq & all the difficulty we had rebuilding our life & the teachers not acknowledging or saying anything and moving onto a group activity

And then the students spent the rest of the week long camp accusing me of making it up and being an attention seeker. And how that went on for ages unbenknownst to me. And I just want to say: fuck telling your story. No one deserves all of you. You don’t deserve to be consumed

We get told that telling our story will set us free, and that somehow we’ll convince people to right wrongs. But all it does is create a schism between you and a privileged audience. And whether they put you on a pedestal, ridicule you, or pity you, the result is the same.

It’s all about absolving themselves of the guilt they feel harbouring resentment towards you for not being a victim or being defined by your traumatic experiences. They were what they expected, and I never carried myself like someone who went through what I did.

Even people on your supposed side are only capable of consuming narratives that reinforce patriarchal, colonial, hegemonic power dynamics. You can’t have multiplicity. You can’t have light and shade. They want a linear narrative of start, middle and end.

And besides, telling your story without a clear strategy and resources to reach an objective or make meaningful impact is useless.

That’s why I tell other refugees to hold their stories dear, and share with those who show care, love, reciprocity. We are more than trauma porn.

Anyway. I hardly remember that incident, cause it gets buried under other misogynistic racist incidents I’ve experienced. And I’m more than all of those things. And people are terrified of that. They don’t expect someone like me to feel comfortable in my skin or to be audacious.

Shout out to teenage me who knew all that BS was going to pass no matter how painful it was. I remember reminding myself every day that I just had to get to the other side so I could finally build relationships of integrity and trust.

I’m very proud of who I was as a kid. I hope when I look back at me at this age, I’ll still be proud.