“Historically, Black women have not had permission to decide to create those kinds of boundaries”
My life has been defined by it never truly being my own - not just through to adulthood, but through to the present day. Shaping myself by what I need to be to survive, not what I am.
I’ve rarely had the freedom to say “No” without fear of reprisal, especially when I was living in my home state of Montana, a 90% white state. The choice to was, and is, often taken from me by fear of what will be done to me if I don’t. My body is not my own. My spirit is mine now, but that wasn’t the case for most of my adult life.
In the most abusive relationship I was in, I was functionally enslaved because she knew that as a Black person, once she had me alone, she had total control over me in my home state because “who would believe you? I’m a 5’5” white woman and you’re a 6’4” Black man.”
I tried to run once. with nothing but what I had on me after she beat me in public and I managed to sneak away from her and get back home without her. She came back and grabbed my keys while I was packing, so I made a break out the side door and just started running.
She hunted me down in her car. I was on foot running through fields and suburbs while she tried to cut me off or herd me to somewhere she could trap me. I remember hiding in tall grass as I watched her bright red car circle a field she knew I was in, waiting for me to make a break for it.
She caught me because I made a wrong turn into a culdesac with no real other way out. She made me go back with her. And it broke me, because if I couldn’t escape when being willing to give up everything to get out, how else could I escape?
Through that relationship she controlled and exploited me in every aspect of my life. Job, finances, sexually, emotionally, physically. I was a husk going through the moves of a life I had resigned myself to.
When I finally did escape her, my life remained not my own. I was stuck with the results and trauma of that entire relationship and trying to make the best of where it landed me. I thought I could reclaim at least some of my life, my existence.
The first time people tried to exile me fully from my in person communities, it was two exes that openly spoke about wanting to lynch me.
The second time, it was at the behest of several people, including someone who’s now known as a literal nazi, and a white woman I wouldn’t give sexual access to my body. I was told that “(white) people are afraid you’ll accuse them of being racist if they tell you about problems” among other things.
Third time, I got sexually assaulted by a white woman, after a year of not doing anything with anyone but partners, after being told by my roommate and others that I was “somewhere safe” and repeatedly reassured that I’d be ok despite my worries based on my prior experiences. She then went on to claim I had assaulted her instead, and I not only got told once again that I couldn’t possibly be a victim because of my “pattern of behavior”, but also repeatedly got treated like a “man” while she got to be treated as a woman still.
I’m so tired of my body being a commodity for others to extract value from, instead of it being mine with which to do what I please.
I’m so tired of others using my Blackness as a tool to harm me when I just want to live in the joy of being Black.
I’m so tired of my boundaries and my autonomy being seen as lesser because I’m a Black trans woman. Because we, historically, do not get to decide what our boundaries are. I deserve to live as I am without it being a license to harm me - but we live in a white supremacist society so until that is dismantled, I have to keep living afraid of what the next white will use my Blackness to do to me.
gracieabrams
amandla
