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Bitterness as Healing

There’s a stereotype of an angry black person that I used to be embarrassed about.  Nowadays I feel that if I’m angry, then it is for good reason.  My daily life is marked by bigotry in many forms.  I fight against it as much as I’m able, but the constant onslaught makes me feel hopeless sometimes (and yes, this can lead to suicidal and/or self-harm feelings too)  So if I get angry at the world, so be it; I’d rather that, than being angry at myself.  If bitterness is a healing for me – if it helps me face another day then that’s how it will be for now.  Rage can keep my heart beating.  And being alive as a visibly bisexual, black, disabled person is an act of resistance.  I’m not going to wait until the world changes before I let myself live in it.  I’ll be wary of folks until I get to know them.  I’ll roll my eyes at white gay men who say they have an ‘inner black woman’ but then insult people like me.  And when new LGBT initiatives start without a single black or bisexual person involved or targeted, I reserve the right to kiss my teeth, and put my energy elsewhere.  Let me be bitter, if it means it’s the only way to live.

Like a dog for kicking
This black soul be thinking.
An essential way to living
Is with bitterness as healing

Expect me to keep on smiling.
Complain if I stop singing.
Black kids get a harsh upbringing.
With bitterness as healing.

Bruised skin from all your beatings.
Hard heart, but somehow still believing.
This is my own way of coping
With bitterness as healing.

Feel my anger sure start boiling.
Hatred all around, I can’t be hiding.
From Ferguson to Gaza, we all be living
With bitterness as healing.

Don’t ask me to keep on grinning
As I watch black trans folks dying.
All black lives are mattering
So I’ll keep on with this  bitterness as healing.