I came into a world that, since day one, has threatened to end me, I am in a dark and silent place with the uneasy currents of polemical “tolerance” swishing about me. I am alive and I don’t know why. I happened and there is no reversing it. But at times, though you and I are one, I imagine it would be easier if I were out of your way. Life just isn’t the same with me around. For others, I am simply unexpected, so there is no room for me in the narrowness of their bigotry, I mean, minds. How can I persuade them to let me stay? My voice is no voice at all until the appointed time, a time appointed for me by another body.

Men who toss me around like a rag doll, hunt me like prey, dominate my body so I’ll know who it belongs to. Truly. They’ll assign me a place, decide when or if I get to be a person.

Women who back-bite, want to scratch my eyes out. Cats! Isn’t that how they frame us anyway? Can’t be more than the lies they tell us or somehow they’ll be less. And we can’t have that, now, can we? 

Tell me again how many fractions of a race make a whole one or why people are so arbitrarily categorized in the first place. My skin being so many shades lighter or darker or a tinge more exotic than they are used to really makes me more of an interesting subject for research or an art gallery rather than a person. 

Not sure why my being from outside their comfort zone is such a big deal. They never stop to wonder if their entitlement stifles any sense of security for people who look like me, regardless of our roots. And in a world infected by power-hunger, exoticism is a safe zone bounded by alienation and self-hatred. Well, wouldn’t you choose appeasement over abuse? 

Wrong MOVE! As if any of us had a choice when interacting with the powers that be! But it’s why you hate me and why I hate myself. And why both of us are on my back or on your front and why we scuffle and we retaliate and we tire ourselves out.

Divide and conquer, other against other. Let’s have a fight! And because we are one, we are torn down before we become anything recognizable; before we get a chance to grow into the people we know we are meant to be.

If I hold a gun to your head, I apologize. Though we are one, I suppose it’s either you or I and this is survival of the fittest. You have a rather remarkable advantage, I concede, or seniority at least.

But if you simply fear the change I bring, again, apologies. Might just terminate or deport me, might as well abort me because you’d rather not support me in the space you occupy. God forbid I inconvenience you with my existence or cause you to share what you have not earned. Your frantic desire to control what no man should be able to betrays your weakness. ‘Cause nothing stays the same. Eliminate me and your life changes anyway, you know, because we’re one.

Who gave you the right to define my personhood and why do I bear the burden of proof? Because you’re older, stronger, louder, or in the majority? See, I’m not yet, and though we are one, no one is listening. Apparently, ‘not yet’ is a reason, legitimate or not.

You pretend to respond to your own language, but you fundamentally misunderstand it. I know this because we are one. I speak no language, though it behooves me to learn them all. You may be from Mars and I from Venus. Maybe you’re colored inside the lines while I am in between them. You’re jaded from shattered dreams and tired prayers, but you don’t understand that I’m a part of the healing hope, the long-awaited answer.

I embody what you say you live for, but now you seek to take my life; push me down to pull yourself up, trying to get them to grant you “equality”; take away my humanity because I value lives like yours, just so you can prove you’re man enough to be human. Smells like contamination, domination, abomination, and downright hypocrisy!

Call me a heretic, but I am the truer to your cause. If it is indoctrination that enables me to value life, then let Compassion brainwash me. If you free me from Compassion, from altruism, what humanity will I have left? To prove my manhood, I mean, to become a person, must I allow you to squeeze the last bit of humanity from my clinging-to-freedom-body; wring my neck like a towel as you continually threaten ‘become like you or else’? 

I’m done. I’ll have no part of your assimilation, your disintegration, your falsification, your self-righteous apostasy! Keep your ruthless egocentrism. Because without sacrifice, coexistence, altruism, and Compassion, there is no hope for humanity. Though we are one, some things from us must be undone to truly make us free. 

I know what it’s like for someone to treat my body as if it were his for the enjoying, the making, or destroying. So why wouldn’t I have Compassion for the body of one with no voice (like mine), a body not nearly who he or she will be, but who by virtue of existence deserves a chance to try to be?

That’s what at least one person did for me.

But who am I to say who deserves a chance? I have no voice and I will not deny Compassion in order to channel the voice of my oppressor. Louder and louder, still unkind, not human, not free. Becoming the oppressor is not equality.

Therefore, I’ll bear you if you bear me. Through Compassion, we are born into our humanity.

Friend, please do not dismiss me. You and I, we are one, if you remember. We have no need to assert our humanity, for it must surely be. If we think like our oppressor, we are bound to it, by it, always for it, continually under its thumb. For freedom’s sake, let us preserve our Compassion. You see, it is for freedom as much as for survival. If we destroy each other, we’ll fall together, you and I, because of our denied humanity.