grief and lonely aching arms.

Taking my hair down again, I can’t help but think of how taxing and deeply lonely it feels. I usually wait until evening to start – sometimes late at night after work and obligations are done– so that no one will see my hair in between protective styles. I take it down and wash it just in time to get it done again. I’m very serious about my privacy. I’m an intense, deeply feeling Scorpio, after all. I’d never even intentionally let my past partners see me this way, until I met my neighbor from down the hall. 

He sent me a sweet text message saying he wanted to see me, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to look at the face that felt like home, lined with salt and pepper hair, and holding a pair of softly worried eyes. A face belonging to a lover and friend I felt I’d had many lifetimes before. I never grew tired of seeing it come through my door. So I cracked it open and waited nervously for the familiar sound of his voice shouting “hello” as he walked inside. I’d never felt this safe with anyone, and it wasn’t easy for me to settle into. I let him see all of me that day, at least in my physical form, without any of my aesthetic shields. “Your lack of vulnerability actually makes you appear more vulnerable,” he told me, intellectually, encouraging me to use more of my language to share myself with him. That’s when I knew I was bonded to him, with or without the reciprocity I feared I wouldn’t receive. But, as luck would have it, he reciprocated and I began the long, painful, and beautiful process of detangling myself for him.

Safety. The Oxford English Dictionary says it’s “the state of being safe and protected from danger or harm.” For some reason we rely on a small group of white men from 1857 in London to give words their meaning. In fact, in order to exist in this world, we still rely on a hope that today’s small group of white men who give the world meaning are also, in general, well-meaning. Another fact that I can’t quite make sense of. Those three men from the Philological Society – Richard, Herbert, and Frederick- gathered together to create a new dictionary, believing it was superior to and more complete than the existing dictionaries of the day. They had the confidence of their peers, all male scholars who supported them in this effort, along with their own. That confidence would motivate them to dive into a decades-long project to capture every missing English word and their definitions. Isn’t the innate conviction and focus of white men truly fascinating?

I learned early that I wasn’t necessarily desirable in the conventional, euro-centric way. Cute at best, but even that would come later in life. Being one of only a few Black girls in every social setting, and the tallest one at that, I often found myself as the awkward sidekick to prettier girls, and a confidante to the boys. I kept many secrets, and I still hold the ones I can recall under lock and key. When needed, I really did play, and still play, the role of the token exceptionally well. White comfort is the point of the game, and I can be an olympic level player. The first time a white boy touched my head, he scoffed at the oily residue my hair left on his fingers. It was gross to him - I was gross to him. How could I explain that I’d greased my scalp everyday for a reason that I didn’t even comprehend? He was uncomfortable, so I instinctively apologized. My grossness, which he discovered while touching me without consent, was something to apologize for, and I did what we’re all meant to do - make white men and boys comfortable. This was before I learned one of the most common pieces of wisdom shared in polite society - "Never touch a Black girl's hair." It became the one weapon I could use against them. I hadn’t known that I needed this sword at that moment, but I was glad to have it from that point on. 

After setting their sights on their project, Richard, Herbert, and Frederick led the "Unregistered Words Committee" in identifying problems in the dictionaries of the day. Definitions of obsolete words were incomplete, inclusion of families of related words was inconsistent, and they saw a lot of wasted space on redundant information for starters. At that point, 1858, the society pivoted from only defining words that weren’t incorporated into existing publications to developing a definitive (pun intended), comprehensive dictionary. Our brave linguistic heroes were on their way to writing the future of what would become, through many twists and turns, enslavements and abuses, my native tongue and these words I’m sharing with you.

It’s 2AM Wednesday morning, and I’ve caught up on every show I could muster any interest in across every streaming platform. My arms are exhausted, and the heated blanket on my lap is covered in tiny coils of black hair that couldn’t wait to be freed from my head. I wish I had someone to talk to, to share ideas with, and to laugh with right now. I pick up my phone to see if he’s thinking of me too. I guess he isn’t because my phone stays dry. I don’t necessarily have something worthwhile to say. I run my hands across the blanket, unsure of what to do. How can language capture feeling and emotion in anything close to a complete way? Words don’t seem big enough for what I’m feeling, so I’m sitting here remembering without him. 

He brought me to meet his friends, so excited to show me off - the new girl he was seeing. I felt nervous, but touched that he’d thought enough of me to do it. These friends were all white, so I did my best to be charming and bright. I stayed away from any controversial opinions or topics, used my manners, and even pretended to tolerate yacht rock. Over time, they all grew friendly and comfortable, but it became more uncomfortable for me. They started to show their entitlement, speaking ill of the comfort foods that people without money would eat. Yes, casseroles can be disgusting, but they can feed a whole family for days at a time. I let it go for as long as I could until a woman called me Kendall, and he said nothing. “It’s actually Kendra,” I said after it had gone on for too long. I could tell she felt attacked and was mortified when she asked him “why didn’t you say anything?” I wanted to know too. “I figured she would correct you.” Was I not worth protecting in such a small way? Was I really as safe as I thought?

Grief is such a weird part of life because it seems like it has nowhere to go. I, along with my grief, can spend hours, days, weeks, and years just sitting thinking of all the things we should be able to do. Should we watch a movie or listen to some music? “Really, what good is a movie,” Grief asks. Grief is right – there’s really no point to movies at all. Ignoring more protests, I open Spotify and put my liked songs on shuffle, hoping for something that’ll make me smile. The first few songs don’t hurt, but I’m not smiling, and Grief isn’t impressed. “Unicorn” by Dizzy Gillespie comes on next, and I drop my tired arms, both relieved for the break and heartsick because this was the song he sent me two years ago, calling me his unicorn. I can’t hear the song without my heart dropping into the pit of my stomach and my eyes leaving tear stains down my cheeks. I pick my arms back up in my dampened sweater and work through it, as if to give myself something real to cry about. “Yup, it’s just you and me. No point,” Grief reminds me. It’s best I get back to the other half of my head so I can maybe get some sleep tonight. Grief can be an asshole, but he does keep it real.

Safe made it into the first edition of the dictionary that our friends Richard, Herbert, and Frederick published between 1884 and 1928, but the definition we see today was part of a revision in the third edition from 2011, so I know it’s more relevant for me today. Safe is the way I should feel as a modern human being living today. The truth is I feel danger more than anything else, and my therapist would call me hypervigilant – physically, mentally, and emotionally. As I navigate mostly white spaces, it’s my constant fear that there will be a white man who will assault me, testify against me, or abandon me. 

After dramatically breaking up on Valentine’s Day because we couldn’t stop arguing, we parted ways for almost the rest of the year. I hated being apart from him, and I thought about him every single day. I wanted to work through it, but it was too much for him. He wanted something easier, and I wanted something safer. In December, we ran into each other at a party another neighbor was throwing, and we picked up in the middle of the great pieces we’d left behind. This time it felt different, and we were both like-new people with more life experience and growth on the proverbial table. In the middle of the night, a few months later, he’d ask if I would consider moving to the east coast. It was something I’d always dreamed about doing on my own, and to do it with him sounded like heaven. I said yes, in a nonchalant way, as if it didn’t matter if he was there or not.

He went dark around his birthday in the spring, but always showed up when I needed him, so I still felt confident. When he emerged, I shared the vision from a recent intuitive reading I’d received. In it I had a garden on land that I owned, and I was confused because I couldn’t even really keep my plants alive in my loft. “Maybe it was me she saw. I would help you build a garden.” Over that summer, I thought we fell deeply in love, and he was the first to say it. I waited, unsure of how safe I was to say it back. On July 13th, when the moon was full in Capricorn and 4 days had passed since he’d let it slip, I confirmed its authenticity, and finally said it back. I felt safe again, lying naked in his arms, both with tears collecting in our hair and on the sheets. 

I wish I could say that our story continues and I’m writing in front of the window overlooking the garden we built together, but that’s not the case. I’m writing from bed in an apartment I rented to be a respite from the shitty neighborhood we met in. a place where we could move safely forward. “I never saw a future,” he’d say only a month later. enter grief, his ruthless truths, and my lonely aching arms.

I’m still heartbroken, and as I’m getting closer to the top of my head where the last of my hair needs to be taken down, I think that I should probably reach out to my friends for support. “What friends are you even thinking about? It’s obvious nobody cares anymore,” Grief says with a smug look on his face. I remember that I haven’t heard from any friends in weeks, then dismiss the idea of trying to connect outside of this moment with Grief. He wants me to sit here, cut off from the rest of the world so he can keep me to himself to punch for sport. I’ve known this before - a pattern I’ve lived through. As I let the last strands and tiny coils free, I realize what Grief really is. Thankfully, because my neighbor loved me, with his lightly tanned skin and pale blue eyes. Even if it was only for a moment, or only in my mind, the love was real, and I'm safe to say that Grief is one white man I don’t have to make comfortable.