He told me that I was pretty for a Black girl and in that moment, in the desperate moment I found myself in, competing thoughts crowded my brain

No one had called me pretty before, but then again, neither did he

So I challenged his thought, the insult he tacked on at the end of what was already a full sentence

And his defense was even more disheartening and in my heart of hearts, I knew that, but all I could do,

In a moment where I felt I had to choose between being seen or shunned, I chose to do absolutely nothing

To say absolutely nothing

I would have to assess his anti-blackness another time or rather he would, I hoped

I didn’t have it in me to remind him he was Black too, to disrupt what he clearly did not know yet

The world saw us the same but he was years away from that epiphany 

What I knew, even as I accepted his crumbs and warred within myself was that I was proud to be Black and his observation would not distort the truth

That I was a descendant of a resilient and dynamic people ever beloved and delivered by God

I always knew Black was beautiful

That my very existence was the evidence of things hoped for, my freedom the evidence of things not seen by my ancestors

It was what most would call a backhanded compliment, a kind slight except there is no such thing

Truthfully, I did not realize the weight of his words, of his preference of protective styles over my natural hair and my silence until I sat in a Black psychology class as my professor defined microaggressions and the tears came streaming down

The more we lingered upon the conversation, of the various ways in which one person could diminish another by way of race, gender, body and class, the more I reflected on the ways in which he chipped away at me by limiting and I’d let him

But he wasn’t the only one who thought I needed to make alterations 

In order to be better, to be valuable, to be beautiful, to be like everyone else

And I’d internalized their “suggestions” for so long that I started to believe I had work to do

That if I tweaked this and stopped doing that, then I would be accepted

If I asked less questions, if I stopped standing out, if I stopped standing up for what was right, if I stopped challenging the status quo, if I stopped talking about faith and about God, then my presence would no longer unnerve or challenge the people around me

If I stopped being different, if I stopped doing the very things that made me who I am, then and only then could they allow me to be one of them

But it occurred to me, who said I wanted to be “in?”

That was their assumption, that my desire was to be them, to be accepted by them, to be one with them but I had greater aspirations 

But there were truths in place that I could never abandon, that my flesh could never silence 

There were my father’s words to find my voice, which were as much about singing as they were about finding and knowing my place in the world and standing boldly and unabashedly in who I was

In who God created me to be

I was scared to be who I was for a long time.

The girl who loved God and His precepts and sought righteousness

Who hated injustice and exclusion and the fact that loving God casted her out in the first place

Who loved freely and fiercely even when she could not be loved back 

Because vulnerability is not a weakness but a strength 

Because it makes her like God 

 I think I always knew these things about myself, that I was not like everyone else and this path was narrow 

It’s just that it was always at odds with everyone else

With everything else 

But I could be a wave tossed in the sea no longer because in the middle, straddling the fence is no place for God’s child 

Despite what he thought and what the world would one day tell me about this skin I’m in, about this God I serve, I knew better

Greater is He that is in me than He that is in the world

My father taught me better than that

My mother taught me better than that

My Bible taught me better than that 

I knew as I sat in church and listened to the biographies of Black pioneers that there was nothing I could not do 

And nothing I would not do when it was my turn

There was Frederick Douglass and WEB DuBois and Toni Morrison and then there would be me 

I am excellent because my Creator is and I contended with that truth my whole life as contrasting comments and beliefs encamped me

But the truth of who I was destined to be, of the God who ordained it all and the indomitable spirit encased in this melanated skin are truths that will endure forever!