I’m seriously considering writing a book of ghost stories. Not the white sheet, Scooby doo kind, but the ghosts that have flesh memories.

The last time I wrote to you about endings and devotion. Those lessons, still teaching me and working their way through my system, brought me to a little clarity that I need to be back in the States. I fought it up until the last minute, damn near willing my flight to get cancelled before I left Brasil. But I’m here for the time being. Filling up my to-do list with passport renewal, visa application, birthday celebrations, family time, and trying to stay still for long enough to figure iut what I’m doing next, without losing my mind.

I’ve learned to love myself in many cities, but my hometown is not one of them. Initially driven away by boredom and the types of limitations you have when you grow up in one place. I spent a lot of time here feeling like a loner. Once I realized I didn’t have to feel so lonely, I left. Fueled even more by finding versions of myself that weren’t allowed to bloom here, troubled too much by the grief, obligation, and rigidity. In the past, I could only stomach being here for about 3 weeks, before the corrosiveness sent me running away to greener pastures.

The ways that I’ve learned to cultivate a strong sense of self knowing and security do not always feel welcome in Richmond. Largely conservative (or worse full of faux liberals), Southern confederate legacy has not been washed out by the young (mostly white) transplants. There is a decent Black community which I love, but boxed up in cars and tight friend groups, it’s hard to figure out what’s changed for the good and where I fit in. And I still can’t comprehend why there are still no Black Sapphic Queer spaces in the city.

Beyond family and one close friend, I struggle to find the resources and relationships that came so easily elsewhere. Loneliness is louder here for not fitting into the silent, but powerful expectation of status quo. The ‘Black Coochie Matter’ hat feels scandalous. To even walk to the grocery store, I feel like a freak of nature. In all the becomings I’ve experienced, I worry most often about collapsing into a past version of myself. Where others' opinions and expectations force a collapse. That my defiant spirit will be broken like so many others who settled for whatever nigga-rigged version of life they can best maintain. So I left Richmond. I stayed away. Returning for short bursts, not testing out new selves but bubble wrapping myself and then doing a deep cleanse as soon as I crossed state lines.

The coach in me wonders, what it would be like to act in defiance to the expectation and status quo around me? Knowing that the status quo does not fit is plenty of reason to proudly defy. YES and, my desire and goal in life is to spend more time in places that doesn't offer so much resistance and questioning and rejection to who I am. I can only tolerate so much of ‘you sure you want to wear that?’ and ‘maybe you just don’t talk about what you do in your love life’ and ‘wow you’re so different’.

So while my body is adjusting to being away from the beaches and humidity and ease of life in Brasil, I’ve been spending a lot of time alone, lost in thought, binging, scrolling, writing, clearing, and distracting myself from who I was. What keeps me company are ghosts. I am constantly confronted with past versions of myself. Each time a walk out into the backyard of my mother’s house, I am teleported back into the me that brought an abuse boyfriend home to meet my parents. It was the me the believe I had to be with a man and I better pick one that challenges me enough. When I crawl into bed at 9 pm, I remember the nights telling my parents I was spending the night with a girl friend just so I could better understand my attraction to women. As I sit down to write, I remember the middle school me that wrote sexy sci-fi stories for my classmates before I got caught and shamed for writing about inappropriate things. I see the version of me that cried when my sister left for college and soothed myself nightly with the message she painted on my bedroom wall. The one who claimed a selfhood that no matter how much toxic sludge I move through can never be lost.

I feel like an overstaying guest with this type of company. Remembering and noticing the wide berth between the me that was and the me that is. It’s interesting in the place of trying to figure out who I am after things come to an end, that I am spending time with my past selves. So clearly seeing how I maintained everyone else’s comfort above my own before. Those old selves are only confident enough to be seen in part. As I’m re-visiting my old haunts, I have the clarity that I can no longer afford that way of living. To hide and shrink, and cherry pick what I think will be accepted. Historically, my biggest fear was to have all my selves, past and present, to be visible at the same time. To be in one room where the moody, sweet, tough, independent, gay, intellectual me’s are in front of the same audience. To be seen whole has mostly led to hurt and rejection.

I’m not sure if I’ve reached the coveted grown woman age where you just don’t give a damn about what others think, but this is for sure the closest I’ve ever felt. I have a really hard time code switching and the people pleasing tendencies feel more like the ads that you can’t wait to swipe away. It's harder and harder not blurting out the truth and just being in whatever inconvenient, messy form my being takes. No longer concerned with the contradictions between one version and another. This feels like the beginning of a chapter of radical, defiant self-acceptance. I no longer see that choice between me and the mask.

With that energy as the foundation, my hometown is still not exactly comfortable but it’s no longer as corrosive as it’s been in past seasons. I do not (yet) have the Black queer community, cultural events and access, or the independence that I’m used to, but I do have the whole me. Which says a lot compared to the ruble left from the last season. Something called me back here, so rather than bucking and cussing, I’m surrendering to the conflict of not exactly being resourced and also being called to spend time in the South.

In this place of acceptance and allowing, I’ve tuned into a broader discourse about the South, kicked up by the overturning of another key legislative protection. I’m not the only one who recognized the soil in the South or in the U.S. comes at too high a cost. There are at least 600,000 of us leaving what we’ve known and trying to make it work elsewhere, weighing the connection and responsibility we feel to ourselves, our communities, and our wellness. Letting go of jobs and leases and titles and ways of living to find ease elsewhere. It’s the same dichotomy that came up when I was working full time, can you best enact change from the inside or the outside? In response to recent erasure of Black majority voting districts, many voices offer again the idea of leaving it all behind. Leaving the South (or even the US), to the racists and bigots who are fighting so hard to maintain their facade of control.

For some of us, it’s the only thing that makes sense. To stay costs too much. For others, with and without the privilege and vision to leave, it’s not possible. Author and Historian, Sara Makeba Daise, reminds us even amidst our ghosts and histories, the South is a portal too important to abandon. As far as we run, we are too connected to the lineage and power birthed amidst our past and ancestral selves.

These ghosts are not the boogiemen they initially feel like, they are offering opportunities for reconciliation and reclamation. They are offering insight and inspiration. They are offering wholeness. And just like the times when I’m lost in the present and turning to the ancestral wisdom of Audre, or Toni, or Pauli for wisdom or insight, the South, my hometown, has something important for me. And when I still myself long enough to accept the discomfort and the offering, I can hear exactly what I need most.

Ghosts and Going ‘Home’

Are you overstaying?