but then I remember that we aren’t here to compete with each other

I started reading The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde. I feel inspired and emboldied, and humbled, and maybe even cowed by how powerfully, beautifully, truthfully she strung together words together. I found myself thinking: How can I compare, compete?

…i cannot

But then I remember that we aren’t here to compete with each other, but to each do our small (or large) part and let it help whoever it helps. I remember that being ‘good enough’ is part of the shame written into my story by others to control. And I remember perfectionism only helps keep us alone and afraid, and that I’ve disavowed it.

In her April 16, 1979 journal entry, Audre wrote:

I must be content to see how really little I can do and still do it with an open heart.

Henrietta sits at the windows watching the neighbor’s lawn guy cut winter grass. Cutting winter grass seems as fruitless as my attempts to wring words together. But for each of us it still matters.

In an entry from September of 1979, Audre wrote:

The arrogant blindness of comfortable white women.

I think of the comfort and sense of being safe to call the police that night Luna and I thought we heard sounds elsewhere in the house. I feared, at most, being mocked for being a ‘silly’ woman.

I think of Renee Good’s comfort bearing her gentle, open hearted witness to the man who shot her dead moments later. I think of how many men get enraged when a woman doesn’t perform fear for them and then get viciously attacked for it.

I wonder if its all pointless. If maybe humans are literally incapable of not destroying ourselves instead of being brave enough to trust, to love, to hope.

I think of student loans, and disability applications and ever-increasing credit card debt in an effort to ‘stay afloat’. I’d rather go into debt for veterinarian care than new clothes, but also, why was last month’s heating bill $328 instead of our usual $80-ish?

How long can this be sustained?

I think of pizza and of passion and of the pain of feeling alone in crowded rooms.

And then I forcefully redirect myself. I return to watching the kitten watch the yard guy (I wish I knew his name, it’s feeling dehumanizing to call him ‘the yard guy like this’). I will my mind to go blank to everything else even if only until I hear his truck drive off until his next mowing of winter grass.