People Told Me I Had Perfect Skin, But I Could Never See it
People Told Me I Had Perfect Skin, But I Could Never See it
The unedited cut.
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to leave a little note here before you dive in. This is one of the rawest pieces of work I’ve ever written. I’ve never spoken to anyone about this experience before. The whole thing felt like writing a dark epiphany. I originally wrote this piece for a site but due to word count restraints, the article in its entirety couldn’t be published. I felt the need to post the full unedited work here. It’s important to me all of it is shared.
x
It is a cruel little game to wish yourself invisible. To long to exist without the weight of being perceived. To live without the suffering of being Black. It was what I wanted to teach myself the most — how to not suffer.
As the child of two very perceivable Ethiopian immigrants, I taught myself how to be invisible. How to be agreeable, how to avoid conflict, and how to not outshine others. How to blend seamlessly in the foreground but still participate enough to be accepted. Compressing myself into being formless, so that I could vanish. I succeeded valiantly in my efforts. I became extremely likable and was always able to make friends. My invisibility practice centered on making other people the sun, which I then circled.
Yet, my skin obstructed this process. It represented the exact opposite of the behavior I was trying to cultivate. Glaring in its clarity, deeply bronzed hues, and smoothness. It was unashamed. It made me visible. Although I never realized this, my parents gave me the gift of genetically perfect skin. I never struggled with acne as a teen and I hardly ever properly washed my face. In fact, the only time I struggled was when I tried out a nightly pimple cream and woke up to find a series of bumps where there were none before. I never needed the product, I just wanted to fit in at sleepovers. For all of my life, my skin has been exceptionally good to me.
This goodness, however, was just not enough. The industrial-sized baggage of carrying Black skin tremendously outweighed the gift of having beautiful, clear skin. How could I love and appreciate this attribute that made me feel so other, so different, and so ugly? How could this dark skin be special, if I constantly experienced how colorless skin had every advantage?
As I got older, I noticed more people would approach me because of my skin. Specifically, white women. Which always mystified me. They’d gape and awe, figuratively prodding me with a stick, “You really use nothing? No foundation?” They’d ask as their eyes probed my exterior. As if they wanted to take their hands to its surface and arch their nail beds into it. Just to see for themselves there was truly nothing there. Instead, I’d apprehensively take my finger down the side of my cheek. Then like a dull offering, hold it up to them to prove it was bare. They’d gasp.
I began to notice something peculiar beneath these exchanges. As someone who became an expert on observing others, I’d notice a shift in their demeanors. I’d observe these women, these white women, who consistently have privileges I do not have, pine for something that is innately mine. A trait, I for once, did not have to twist myself into. A trait, they for once, could not have. I was so used to contorting the spine of my humanity to crush itself in the irredeemable box of a white-supremacist society. Yet here I was, watching the benefactors of this system want the very thing that strips me from it.
I’d watch the people I orchestrated myself to become invisible for, begin to match their focus on me. In that split second, I experienced their wanting. How they could not sit with it. Knowing full well that if they had my skin their lives would be dramatically altered. Chillingly, I’d catch a glimpse of a new fantasy play out in their eyes. One where they could exquisitely lacerate the perimeter of my deep brown skin, run it under lukewarm water, and watch as the sacred color drained out — at least ten notches, or so, landing them on the perfect shade of white, or maybe tan. One they could administer and sew onto themselves. One they could benefit from. But, in milliseconds this impossible fantasy would be briskly tucked away. Meeting me back in reality, with a strained smile they’d tell me, “What I would do to have your skin.” As I observed them, knowing the exact reason why they wouldn’t.
This role reversal deeply confused me. I saw desire bourgeon over something that was innately mine. Innately Black. The one part of myself I could not mute. This micro-experience heightened to encapsulate the majority of my relationships with white women. Accommodating their misplaced desire. While my desire operated front and center. Validated by every corner of society. Their jealousy hid in corners.
As someone who functions as invisible, you teach yourself how to base nothing off of your own form. You identify a host and you adhere to its values. In this case, my host was white society. So like a chameleon, I performed human camouflage. To those of you who have not been infected by this kind of racism, I’m sure this sounds twisted, but it was the truth. It brutally mangled the precious corners of my brain. I calculated that my great skin was a risk because it was something white women wanted and I couldn’t have my place as their coveted Black friend if they were jealous of me. Thus, I had to heighten my invisibility to operate next to them. I could never outshine them because if for a brief moment they stopped liking me, that meant all of this work of minimizing myself to fit into their colorless orb, would vanish. I could not imagine the weight of visibility because I was petrified of what suffering would emerge with it. If I became small enough, and malleable enough, and invisible enough, for them to love me, then maybe I could live in that love too.
But that’s not real love. Real love requires sight. It requires seeing and accepting truth. I could not see myself, so I could not feel myself. And, if I could not feel myself, then I could not feel the full scope of my suffering. My brain prevented me from seeing my skin so that I could not feel the damage of being Black. Even though people would tell me it was beautiful, my mind could not register it. I simply could not perceive myself.
This unfortunately became the narrative I built around my skin. I could not live presently in my body, I was too anxious and obsessed with seeing myself from the perspective of the other. To make sure I could fit in. I distanced myself from people who looked like me, in favor of being accepted by people who didn’t. At the center of each of my decisions, whether I was aware of it or not, was the thought “How can I become more like them?” Draining myself of all color.
There comes a moment, however, when untouched trauma compiles and demands to be felt. Where it must be vanquished. When you can no longer play a role in administering your own pain. As I started the internal work of unlearning the racism within me, I witnessed a growing revolution inside of myself that reverberated throughout my body. Mountains of overwhelming pain, trauma, and grief shot like fiery needles throughout my interior. My heart was engulfed in flames from all of the rage. However, through patience and time, these fires died down, and a gift remained in the ashes. Boundaries, rules, and laws. The beginning of a protection towards myself that I had been sorely missing. Left also, was a mirror. Where I could look at myself and witness the emerging outline of a real form.
My life started changing because I became my own center and I watched how dutifully life began to form itself around me. That burning desire for validation weakened and something else took its place. A longing to facilitate an environment that grows towards, nourishes, and most importantly, protects me. Where the things I love yearn to center around me. Where I am not invisible anymore.
What does it mean to be Black when removed from the context of racism? What lives there? What will grow? That is my new mission to find out and the world I now seek. If society can’t give me an image of life that is freeing, then I’ll take these hands and build it myself. I treated myself as invisible, thus the beauty of my skin was invisible to me. To take on its beauty would be to take on its consequences. The psychological repercussions of not being white. But beneath the repercussions lied the opportunity of cleansed foundation. The discovery of a new book. I can work through the root of my trauma and water it with something new. I can realign the trajectory of myself.
In my most climactic moment of becoming, ravaged by the pain that precedes healing, I was struck by my appearance in the mirror. A woman was rising.
And with such beautiful Black skin, I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it before.