As I sit here listening to Kendrick Lamar’s “i,” I remember a time when I didn’t love myself. Loving myself was a foreign object. The song is about self-expression and self-love inspired by Lamar experiencing self-hatred in his community in Compton, Calif.
It took me a long time to love myself. Matter of fact, it took me even longer to figure out how to love myself. In the Western world, we are taught that we must look a certain way. Don’t be too thick, too dark, too femme if you’re male or too masculine if you’re female. If you fall into any of these qualities, I bet you have experienced some form of discrimination. In our society, we must have a particular set of experiences and education to qualify for the “American Dream.” But what happens when you do not fit these Eurocentric heteronormative qualifications? Or if you accomplish everything you were supposed to do, but still struggle to find your self-identity or path?
On Dec. 18, 2010, I received my bachelor’s degree in English/creative writing from Bloomsburg University. I was excited to be out of college and join the workforce. Ever since high school, teachers always told me that a college degree was the key to a high-quality job. If that was true, why was I laying on the floor of my younger brother’s bedroom listening to his hamster dance around his cage? Why did I feel the cold breeze entering through the cracks of the room as I searched for a job? The economic experts would tell you the reason for my unemployment was that the United States was in the worst economic state since the Great Depression. But it goes deeper than that. I was set up to fail from the start.
Being raised by working-class parents in West Philly, there was never a day that went by when I didn’t question why the conditions I was living in were so unfair. My dad went to college and my mom had a good-paying job but it wasn’t enough. I went to one of the best public high schools in Philly but still I struggled in college to catch up to my suburban peers. I had professors that didn’t care about teaching but did care enough to receive a check. I had academic and administrative staff discriminate against me and make me feel less than human because I didn’t conform to their picture of an ideal student.
The struggle was always there.
I thought by going to college, the struggle was going to end for me. Unfortunately, I was naive and foolish to believe that a piece of paper could make me invincible to the systemic racism, classism and homophobia I persistently had to face.
I felt the full force of oppression of being an openly gay, black, low-income man in America in the spring of 2011. I had no money. I had no health insurance. I didn’t get accepted into the only two graduate schools to which I applied. (I only applied to two due to the high cost of taking the GRE and admission fees.) I had no home. I had no love life. Then, the final blow was when my last living grandma had a stroke. It became my duty to nurse her back to health while trying to maintain her finances on a fixed income and take on the paternal role of helping raise my teenage cousin of whom she had guardianship.
I became weary and disheartened by the struggles and pressures placed in front of me. It felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. As I struggled, my friends struggled. I refused to let them know the true me because I didn’t want to burden them even more. So I created a wall, a wall that grew out of self-hatred. How could I end up like this? I did everything I was supposed to do. I hated myself. No, I hated what I became.
One day, I was invited by a friend to go to the Breakfast Club. I was apathetic about going to the BC because of the negative history that surrounded it. While at the BC, I heard that an organization was giving out Rite Aid gift cards. I decided to get tested so I could get one. I walked into the long, white mobile-testing unit and my heart began to race. The fear of being HIV-positive hit me out of nowhere. An average-height, dark-skinned man motioned for me to come into the small, bright room. I sat in the room and answered the uncomfortable questions that every gay man has to answer when being tested. He told me his name was Quincy Greene and then asked how I was feeling.
This simple question took away the fear as we began to engage in casual conversation. We began having dialogue about post-graduation struggles. Our conversation led to talking about systemic racism and other hot-button issues. By the time we got done talking, I had spent nearly 15 minutes in there. He read my test results and it came back negative. Before I left the mobile-testing unit, he invited me to attend a training program about HIV in black and Latino communities who live in poverty. I enthusiastically accepted his offer.
For the next six Wednesdays after that day, my eyes were opened to the true disparity of HIV in black and brown communities. After the six-week training, I began to spend more time with Quincy. He quickly became my first mentor in the LGBT community. He helped me realize that the hardships I encountered weren’t my fault and I wasn’t the only one going through the struggle created by capitalism and the many systems of oppression that minorities face daily. As I witnessed Quincy transform every person he encountered, a fire was lit in me. I wanted to do something transformative in my community.
This led me to City Year to mentor youth in Philadelphia who had gone through the same struggles as I had. I knew this was my opportunity not only to empower the youth, but to inspire and challenge a system of racism and classism that had continued to oppress black and brown people for hundreds of years. When I first walked into Overbrook High School, I could see pain in the eyes of the youth sitting in the nearly 100-year-old classroom. Their pain echoed throughout the hallways. I knew this was the moment to step up and use all of the skills and experiences I gained to change the destiny of so many youth who have lose faith in themselves.
In the words of Kendrick Lamar, I lifted my head up, kept moving and smiled as I reclaimed the love for myself.