Hey Meeka,
I’m more than a little nervous writing a letter to you. It took me a long time to put pen to paper but my delaying the inevitable wasn’t me trying to avoid you. My hesitation came from the fact that I didn’t know what to say and that I just didn’t want to tell you what you wanted to hear.
It was important that every word I wrote to you derived from a place of authenticity. Considering all you’ve been through and all the lies people have told you to your face, you didn’t deserve to have yet another person who was supposed to know you insult your intelligence and waste your time. That emotional drain from that alone led you to estrange yourself from the people who used up your last bit of tolerance, of patience, of understanding you kept for them.
I, Louis, am partially to blame. When I found out that I was to temporarily delay coming out as my complete self to make room for your healing from past trauma, it would be an understatement to say I was pissed. From where I stood, I felt like your time was up. If anything, I immediately transformed into an energetic explosion of wrath that was hellbent on making you and the inner selves pay for what I considered an irresponsible and selfish move on your part. I remember waiting within the shadows of a closet cluttered with the secrets around who you really were, and your desires for us to switch places so you could one day strip away the mistaken identity that was assigned to you: woman/girl, female/monster. Regardless of how uncomfortable I was, I waited patiently for that moment to arrive.
And when it finally did, I ran out of the closet with no thought of looking behind me. The first thing I did was draw into my lungs my first breath as Louis Javier, as I wanted to feel what true freedom felt like. But then I was informed by Spirit and our ancestors that you had unfinished business and that you weren’t to leave this body yet. Meeka, I initially blamed you. I say this with remorse, but I vehemently argued that your history and your desire to overcome the worst of it interfered with my liberation, my opportunity to construct a history in which I lived my life with joy, confidence, and complete authenticity.
At that point, Meeka, I automatically assumed that you lied to me. That assumption steadily mutated into accusations of you being a form of violence and oppression that was selfishly denying me my chance to experience true freedom. Eventually, I convinced myself that you never wanted me to be a part of you in the first place and your healing was just a ploy to turn me into a ghost. I thought you were attempting to erase me from existence. And I retaliated with violence to protect myself from your supposed plans to make that come into fruition.
You endured my campaign to remove you from this body for more than two years. I counted. Everyday, I accused you of prolonging your presence for the sole purpose of eliminating mine. The arguments between us often involved writing projects and the kind of stories we both wanted to share with others. You harbored the desire to write Creative Non-Fiction revolving around the numerous acts of violence you encountered throughout your history as someone who was socialized as a Black female. You were encouraged by our ancestors and Spirit to mentally return to the past and energetically relive every horrific incident of the misafropedia each version of you tolerated while growing up in an individualistic dysfunctional familial community. To relive the relentless taunts of peers in every school you attended who spat at you.
You were left with the task of investigating the worst of those moments and dissecting the motivations behind their unjust actions against you, as well as your reaction to them. And you were also instructed to never keep these stories to yourself, but to share them with others who suffered as much as you have—especially Black queer survivors who are living a life of recovery.
Meeka, you were only acting upon what was being asked of you. Besides, you wanted to begin this work for as long as you were here in the flesh but couldn’t because you were just years away from the technology and resources necessary for the brutal nature of the healing work, which we both had to undertake. You attempted to inform me of this, that you only remained in the body we share because you couldn’t leave until the mission was done. In my head, I heard you.
I need to be here for just a little bit longer, you said, your tone sympathetic yet touched with a noticeable mixture of hurt and exhaustion brought on by the intensity of my anger towards your presence. Once I feel like everything is done, you can do whatever you want with this body.
Unfortunately, my own emotional immaturity and assumed anterior motives prevented me from resonating with your sincerity and wisdom. Instead, I used everything you told me as a reason to further distrust you and attempted to control the situation by loudly emphasizing my desire to write Speculative fiction Children’s Books and novels–mainly Black Folklore and Magical Realism–simply because it was my way of teaching others how to heal and to imagine living in a world in which Black joy and justice was possible with the aid of ancestral majick. I called myself wanting you to understand that you and I were completely different people and that I had no intention of expending my energy on stories that didn’t belong to me. I was only invested in beginning my own history as if you had absolutely nothing to do with my overall existence.
But the truth, Meeka, was that I was petrified of the raw emotions that surfaced once we began doing the reparenting work in Adult Children of Alcoholics Anonymous. Every time we and other Fellow Travelers discussed the questions in whatever chapter we read in The Loving Parent Guidebook, you revealed details regarding a past atrocity that either our inner child, teen, or young adult survived and, before I knew it, we were shoved back into that moment in our history. And though the tender voices of the other members brought most of us back to our current reality, some elements of us remained in the vignette that we recalled during our share in the meetings.
I said our share because I now understand that, though I wasn’t out during your history, I was still a part of it. I, Louis, was still negatively affected by the interpersonal, societal, systemic, and intergenerational violence you endured during the decades you were mistaken for a cis woman. My experiences were different from yours, but the anguish you carried trickled into the closet in which I was hidden through the slim gap beneath the door. I remembered the sound of your screams as your mother or father slapped leather belts against your flesh. I remember the accusations of you being ugly from the Black boys you passed in the hallway (I’ve seen photos of you, Meeka. You were far from ugly. Those kids were just stricken blind with Western colonialism and the unrealistic beauty standards it gave birth to). I remembered the confusion and intrigue that whirled inside your mind as you were subjected to the porn videos your adolescent aunt played on her television set. I remembered the day you struck one of your siblings with an open palm when the rage and anguish that brewed inside of you suddenly reached critical mass and you somehow couldn’t handle it anymore.
Meeka, for my safety and your survival you swallowed an insurmountable amount of traumatic events that you subconsciously filed in every part of the vessel we share. And I’m only beginning to understand why you turned to escapism. Throughout your entire history you desperately chased relief and stability, a separation from an anguish that felt neverending. You most definitely persevered and that alone was commendable, but it wasn’t enough to ease the internal suffering that weighed on your spirit. If anything, such actions only further disconnected you from the joy and unconditional self-love you wholeheartedly deserved. Yet here I was, tampering with your chances to achieve unadulterated Black joy and liberation by resorting to full frontal assaults on your character and overall personhood, something that I knew hurt you deeply.
And I want you to know that I am truly sorry. I am sorry for inflicting unwarranted chaos onto you and the other inner children. For allowing the mere suspicion of you trying to eliminate me creep into my mind to the extent of marking you—of all people—as my sworn enemy. I see now that everything you did and continue to do was born from a place of unconditional love and the unwavering aspiration to exonerate those who hurt you. You chose embarking on uncharted territory over the false sense of comfort escapism provided, walking away from your addictive vices to gradually secure the peace in the name of the ancestors who never got to claim it in their lifetime.
But most importantly, I’m sorry for not realizing the importance of telling our stories. You only wished to share with other Black queer survivors detailed accounts of all that happened to you—to the both of us—in hopes that somebody would listen. In hopes that the toxic energy embedded within each account seeped from our body the moment you felt witnessed, believed, and vindicated. Meeka, I see that you not only wanted to liberate yourself from the near life-shattering influence our past trauma had over you, but also wanted me to experience something you and the others never enjoyed: a life without intergenerational trauma.
You already informed me that an apology itself would never suffice. In fact, you materialized in my mind’s eye in the middle of me writing this letter to you. I’m seeing you writing this letter and I can feel the sincerity in your words, you pointed out bluntly, arms folded over your chest. But I also know that sincerity and the remorse you feel is only a fleeting moment and I’m hoping that’s not the case. Because anybody can put together some beautiful words on a page, but we need to see more action behind them because, I’m going to be honest, the word ‘sorry’ doesn’t do it anymore. For me, it doesn’t hold water if you’re not doing anything to change.
And you were right to draw an irremovable line between making an apology and a living amends, especially when our recovery and our reconnection hinged on this distinction. So, Meeka, I seriously want to do the latter to make up for my own foolishness. Please just let me know the ways in which you wish me to support you in any way. As we thoroughly investigate our past with the Loving Parent Guidebook and other queer Black and BIPOC Fellow Travelers, I’ve begun appreciating the magnitude of the mission that was placed upon your shoulders. Until you voice any requirements you have, allow me to carry some of the heaviness of the assignment passed onto you. Allow me to show you how much I’m here beside you and all the ways in which you will never again have to walk through the valley of shadows alone.