I recieved this comment online after sharing a story from my childhood, of which I have few positive and uplifting recollections. Within the past few months, I’ve started speaking about it for the first time in about a decade.

A lot of people share inspirational stories of overcoming lives of horrific abuse and misfortune in order to inspire others who might be going through the worst of it right now. They want to reassure everyone that it does get better. And they’re right, it does.

Some talk about their trauma because that’s how they heal. They’re still in the process of doing so, and sorting out their emotions while getting feedback from compassionate people helps their healing process. I actually used to do this too about 10 yeas ago, much to my family’s horror. Even more horrifying, was that people were actually listening to me.

Then, there are those who share their trauma because they are not at a point in their healing journey where they can think about much else just yet. Best case scenario, this is only temporary. Where it becomes a problem is when you see people who have the resources to get help, who absolutely refuse to make something of their lives while blaming childhood trauma from 40 years ago. You can’t stay stuck there.

As for me, I talk about what I went through simply because I feel like it.

Sometimes I’ll think of a funny story from the time that I spent living in a small town in Turkey, and talk about it online. Other times I’ll remember some wacky behavior that I saw at work conference, and chat about that instead. I’ve lived a lot of life and have a lot of opinions, and my life up until the age of 18 is included in that. Sometimes, I’ll just remember that one time that I was beaten for having a dirty room and talk about that instead.

The people who tend to have an issue with one type of story and not the other, are the ones who see themselves in the ones depicting poor behavior. Oftentimes I’ll criticize the practice of bullying abuse survivors into silence, and that’s when I’ll get the most pushback. “Why are you even writing this anyway?” “This is nobody’s business.”

This could be what they were told when they came to people that they should have been able to trust, recounting their own story about being treated poorly. Some people internalize this for a while, before realizing that what they were told is BS and they have every right to share their lives in it’s entirety. Some people accept it as fact and project it on to others.

Some people, simply do not give a fuck either way and say what they want.

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BeanieMemoir.com

Apparently, she was pulled over for a traffic violation and refused to sign the ticket. I was later told by my sibling who was in the car that it was because she tried to pull some sovereign citizen “logic” that she learned from conspiracy theorists online, that ended in her getting arrested and spending the night in jail.

She was committed to that conspiracy, too. I remember a decade later when I was almost 18, I filed paperwork for some minor legal thing that I needed to file a petition in court for. My mother told me to stop wasting money by printing the formal pages off of the legal website, and instead directed me to fraudulent sovereign citizen paperwork that would “let you do it for free.”

At 17, I remember googling what sovereign citizens were, seeing that it was a scam at best and a club for absolute idiots at worst, and confronted my mom with it.

She said the white man wrote it and ignored me.

I remember being 16 years old and being forced to live in one single hotel room with 6 people and a massive American bulldog for a summer, because my mother and her husband decided to run full speed ahead towards people who roped them into an easily avoidable housing scam for anyone with basic math skills. They lost our home.

While we were homeless, I remember her refusing to leave one of the hotels because she decided that the checkout time didn’t apply to us or something. The hotel staff were forced to call the police to get us to leave after she argued with them about it. We could’ve easily gone to another hotel, she just wanted to cause drama.

We went from having a large house, to living in a small apartment in an awful neighborhood for a year after that, the stress of which led to my first mental health hospitalization.

I remember sitting in the hospital because my weight was so insanely low from all of the stress, and the doctor looking at my mother and asking directly,

“…And you didn’t notice anything?”

I’ve never heard her stutter before and have never heard it since.

She did notice, she just didn’t care. I had to withdraw from school for the rest of the year to recover.

I remember one time I accidentally took way too much Midol (I was a teenager and didn’t know better) and got so insanely sick. When I woke my mother up at night asking for help, she sighed and said “you don’t know how to make yourself throw up?”

I didn’t, but I tried anyway and of course it didn’t work. It had already been too long. But she didn’t take me to the hospital, the most that she dignified me with is sitting on the toilet while I sat on the bathroom floor with my head spinning. Overdosing on this to the extent that I did can actually cause liver failure kill you.

I remember dragging myself to school feeling like I was dying for weeks. I will never forget dragging myself to the bus stop in 6th grade crying because I was still being forced to go to school. I was so tired. My legs weren’t working right.

I was told to stop whining and go to school.

I was so tired. Everything hurt. I was SO tired. This dragged on for such a long time.

After I was mostly better but still struggling a bit, my mother finally let me go to thee doctor where they ran a test and found out that I had mono.

We had great health insurance, by the way. I know because it’s the reason that my parents were able to access my medical files after I cut them off, to explain my boundaries away with mental illness.

Thankfully, my PTSD does not cause memory loss. That’s why I remember posting an ad on Facebook begging one of my friends online to take the family dog. My mother beat him and was threatening to put him out on the street because he responded to her aggressive instructions with aggression (because he is a dog.)

She found the post, and stormed into my room demanding to know why I was telling everyone that she was hitting the dog and threatening to put him out on the street.

“…Because you did? You literally just did!”

“Stop telling our business online!”

There is a 0% chance that I will ever shut the fuck up. For the record.

This is a common theme in the household. The last time I spoke to my little sister, who is the most like my mother out of all of us, she made it clear that she did not want to be honest about why she distanced herself from me because she was afraid that I would post about her online.

I wondered, what do you plan on saying to me that would be so extreme that you wouldn’t want anyone to find out about it online or otherwise? I personally have never had that thought.

Anything that I say to anyone can end up online and I would have no qualms about it, because I don’t say anything to people that would make me nervous about that.

The reason was because if I talk about what happened, it becomes something that you can’t ignore. It’s why my youngest brother unfollowed me on all of my social media pages after he read my previous essay about my upbringing.

It’s because it didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. Acknowledging that this happened is not something that most are strong enough to grapple with. It’s not even possible for some abusers to grapple with the effects of their own behavior.

I remember my brother confronting my mother about her behavior once, in a situation that was undeniably just…awful behavior. Most of her behavior was undeniably awful on a normal basis, but this in particular was egregious.

My mother ran away crying.

This is why, as someone who has found myself with an online following, I became the biggest threat to the family system imaginable. If I talk about what’s happening, it’s real. If people actually read it and listen, that’s a catastrophe. Because it just can’t be legitimized by being witnessed by outsiders.

And the fact that the only ones with successful lives are the ones who got as far away from these people as possible is very confronting and hard to ignore.

The truth is that my siblings who stayed in the dysfunction are too busy dealing with the lives that they’ve built for themselves to sort through it, because these lives are dependent on maintaining a delusional level of coexistence.

For them to have somewhere to go on thanksgiving, for them to be able to say that they still have a family. For them to have free childcare or a place to crash during a breakup. For them to have somewhere to hang out during summers home from college. For their own kids to have stability, since they’re all from broken homes and financially struggling.

So talking about it is really, really serious. If I remember her pinning my sister up against the basement wall like a linebacker for disobedience as she begged to be let go (“I wasn’t choking her, so don’t say that I did. She was fine.”) or forcing my sibling to squat against a wall in a stress position until he collapsed for disobedience as a small child (this is called a stress position, it’s a war crime) or the many beatings that we all recieved for minor infractions (these were of course never ‘that bad’. We were just dragged into her bedroom, had our pants forced down around our ankles and assaulted on our bare private areas while we begged and screamed that we were sorry) then this is a direct threat to the delusion. I’m the problem.

To be fair, there are only so many paths that you can take when you’re raised by a violent, narcissistic, and prejudiced woman who had 6 kids by 5 different men, hoping that one of the baby’s fathers would be a ticket out of poverty one day or something. A few of us turned out great, a chunk of them are continuing the pattern of making disappointing life choices.

So I don’t take it personally that they want nothing to do with me. Psychologically, they just can’t deal with it. And frankly, they definitely have far bigger issues to worry about. So they brush it off as drama and gossip about what a mentally unstable coon I am over dinner for 20 minutes, before returning back to their routines. Because that’s a lot easier than processing being a survivor of childhood violence, neglect, various pan-African cults and narcissistic abuse.

I’ve done all of that, and managed to build a fantastic life because of the effort that I put into doing so. This is why I very intentionally use the word survivor. I am not a victim of shit.

Nowadays, I spend a lot more of my time being grateful for the fact that I have so many loving and beautiful people in my life that it’s sometimes hard to give all of them the attention and time that they deserve. They are the reason that I now what love looks like now.

“My family’s business” is actually my own story, and nobody can stop me from telling it.

Especially not when it’s being told from my cozy European apartment between running my business remotely and smooching my adoring husband, after walking from the market with a baguette hanging out of my bag, as I prepare to host a dear friend tomorrow for a wine and gossip sesh tomorrow.

You’re going to have to try harder than that to control me.

You want to find community with people who have similar experiences. Provide context for your content. Maybe even tap into your altruistic nature by helping to remove the stigma behind your diagnoses by being loud and proud about it. You need to make sure that everyone knows that you’re a neurodivergent anxiety-ridden baddie with fibromyalgia and lyme disease and also major depressive disorder stemming from your CPTSD.

In reality, there is a 0% chance that this is a good way to go about whatever you’re trying to accomplish. By declaring your medical information front and center in your online bios, you’re actively decreasing your own quality of life.

Note: this perspective is coming from someone with physical, neurological and mental diagnoses that would give many ammunition to win most pity-party arguments that they get into on the internet. It’s also coming from someone who, at a time, did seek community both online and irl based on people with shared illnesses.

That was a terrible idea. Not because I think that mental or physical disabilities should be some shameful secret, but because it was both unwise and counter-productive.

Nowadays, you’d have no idea that I have disabilities unless I just happen to mention it where contextually relevant. And I for damn sure avoid posting about them online, let alone making sure that it’s the first thing that everyone online knows about me.

First of all, why do strangers online need to understand you in context?

The internet is full of trolls, crazies, and varying degrees of under-funded Disney villains. When these people have access to your private medical information, it doesn’t prompt them to offer you a single crumb of humanity and understanding. It just gives them ammunition to taunt you using something that actually affects your life and causes you pain.

There are a metric fuckton of reasons that I don’t talk about my medical woes publicly online anymore. The most practical being the same reason that you wouldn’t share that you’re pregnant during a job interview, or ignore the demographic survey when applying for a job. It’s because when employers or clients learn about this, they make assumptions about the work that you do. They make assumptions about your capacity and your reliability, about your values and personality. And it’s really not wise to shoot yourself in the foot that way.

“But why would you even want to work for someone who-”

Shhh you need money. It’s a corporation, not a test of your moral standing. Shut the hell up and go earn some money.

Anyway, most of my clients have no idea that I have disabilities because it doesn’t affect my work enough to matter. Though I do recognize that I have the massive privilege of working from home, allowing me to stealthily work around it.

You Don’t Want a Community of Hot Messes.

This phenomenon tends to happen the most in the US, so I’ll speak to this first: If you’re American, a diagnosis first and foremost a tool for your treatment providers to forward to your insurance for clarity on coverage. Secondarily, it’s tool give your team the information that they need to treat you properly.

For my readers from civilized countries that aren’t entirely controlled by corporate elites, you can swap this list of priorities. But this is still what it is in a nutshell.

When you use it as a bridge to find others who are struggling, what you now have is a community of people who are struggling, while also having made their diagnosis such a large part of their life and personality that they want to bond over it with others too.

Trust me, you do not want that.

When your life and identity is centered around your struggle and negativity, and the resulting stress will worsen whatever you’re struggling with in the first place. You have a community of people who have varying degrees of mental stability and physical availability that, more often than not, affects their ability to be present, communicate clearly and resolve conflict in a clear-headed way.

When you’re in pain, frustrated by physical limitations, struggling with healing from trauma or with mental illness, or struggling with symptoms of a personality disorder, you’re not at your best. You’re just not.

One or two hot messes in a friend group is manageable. A friend group of hot messes bonding over their particular brand of hot messery is just not sustainable. And when you graduate towards having an actual personality and hobbies that don’t revolve around your diagnoses, they might just be unstable enough to turn on you for it.

Ask me how I know.

You Don’t Need to be Intimately Understood By Everyone Around You.

My hot take is that you’re often better off scrolling through your diagnosis’ designated subreddit for whatever anecdotal knowledge or camaraderie that you need.

Every illness, disease, or disability has so many different manifestations and presentations; there is a pretty solid chance that even people with your same diagnosis have really different experiences with it. They all have different lives, different resources, different support systems and different symptoms.

The diagnosis doesn’t actually tell you even half of the story, so it’s difficult to say that these people will relate to you anyway. This also makes comparison super easy, despite your best efforts.

“Did you notice that she gets more sympathy than me for the same symptoms because she’s pretty?”

“It’s not fair that they have family help and I don’t.”

“If I could work from home I too would write an article about not centering my disabilities…”

Life is really unfair, and nothing shines light on a resource or empathy gap like being in constant community with people who have the same illnesses as you.

Despite this, I also want to present to you that sometimes, realizing that people who have a totally different background from you (whether illness-wise or lifestyle-wise) but have similar struggles is actually more impactful than circle-jerking with people that have the same insurance coverage codes.

Let’s fight the stigma!

Let’s not.

We live in 2026, where everyone has unlimited access to knowledge using the little glowy learn-anything box in their hands at this very moment. Broadcasting your mental illnesses while writing illiterate rage-bait shit on the internet is not the same as Princess Diana shaking hands with AIDS patients.

If someone misunderstands your illnesses online, at this point it’s intentional. And if they do it irl, you can gently correct them. I’ve had someone correct an assumption that I made about their specific personality disorder once irl (without knowing that they had it) and I thanked them for it afterwards and asked questions to cure myself of the ignorance, because I cared.

That doesn’t really work online. Nobody cares.

Your illnesses don’t have to be a secret, but if you use it as a basis for social interaction in any context, you’re going to have a bad time.

This week, the conversation turned into my analysis of the importance of learning the language of your host country if you decide to immigrate as a highly skilled migrant. Not only is it the respectful thing to do as a guest, but your quality of life will be dramatically improved if you do so. My stance on this is that there’s actually no reason not to do this.

I was chatting with a young lady who took offense to this.

She insisted that, as someone who herself had to learn the language of her host country, that nobody should ever be criticized for not doing so because it might not be their choice not to learn it.

She goes on to explain that learning a language in some countries is a daunting experience. Some people are working or studying full-time so it’s difficult to learn. Some people work completely in English so they don’t have an easy path to practicing. Some people are mean to you about it and tease you when you don’t speak perfectly.

I set my phone down and thought about her compassionate take for a minute. Empathy is nice, you can’t really criticize anyone for being empathetic. They have the moral high ground regardless, and if you push back you look like a complete asshole more often than not.

With that in mind, I picked back up my phone and responded with a take that I knew would risk me being labeled as a boomer at best and a judgmental asshole at worst.

“It’s okay to do hard things, and yes it’s absolutely their fault. I don’t respect people who avoid taking responsibility for their own lives this way.”

Ugh. Hear me out.

I know better than anybody that not everyone has a level playing field and I had a rough go of it myself, but I think that western society is a bit more of a meritocracy than people give it credit for.

I firmly believe that if you work hard and are under 40, you will already be ahead of 80% of your peers because most of them simply do not have the drive to do anything out of the ordinary.

I taught myself 3 languages in 4 years, after figuring out how to qualify for 3 long term visas, and financing every move as a contractor with no local working rights or college degree. I think that I know a thing or two about doing hard things, so just hear me out for a sec.

And I’m well aware of how boomer-ish this sounds, particularly as an under-40 myself, but the lack of accountability that has been deemed as acceptable is directly responsible for some young people’s quality of life right now. Yes, things are hard for everyone right now. Yes, you should still at least try to improve yourself and not succumb to a hopeless mindset because of it.

I will go as far as to say that for many Gen Z and younger millennials, it doesn’t really register that doing hard things is even an option sometimes because of the cultural nihilism that’s become more pervasive due to the housing market, job market, and economy that was inherited from previous generations.

But I think that the reason is a hell of a lot more complicated than “nobody wants to work these days.”

The biggest reason is a cultural correlation between communities that uphold open-minded and progressive ideologies, and radical acceptance without nuance.

This started as the acceptance of the LGBT+ community, racial and religious minorities, people with disabilities and people who live alternative lifestyles. All of this is very easy to get behind. But somewhere around 2016, it evolved into an “everyone is valid” mindset that I find to be a lot more nonsensical and extreme, as a response to growing oppressive climate for people who are of marginalized demographics.

Understandable, but counter-productive nonetheless.

I think that people who are more prone to gravitating towards ideologies and politics based in compassion and understanding are more prone to giving people a pass for things that really should not be considered “valid”. Sometimes you really just need to tighten up.

I felt this way after recently seeing nothing but a wave of congratulations on a pregnancy announcement of an acquaintance, all coming from the friends of people who consider themselves compassionate and appropriately progressive people. She started going on about how excited she was to have the baby, how she’s always wanted to be a mother, and posted a link for people to donate money to help support her.

Compassionate, right? Why wouldn’t you?

I zoomed out a bit to look at the situation more objectively. This woman has no job, no boyfriend or husband to speak of, no stable housing, no family support and moved across the country while pregnant (presumably away from the baby’s father) to stay in a homeless shelter in order to fast-track her application for social housing.

She knew that this would be her situation before making the decision to not prevent the baby, actively make the baby, and actively keep the baby.

Now, at what point does a “congratulations” and a $150 donation stop being compassion and become enabling of irresponsible choices?

Choices were definitely made here, and I had to sit with the possibility that I could be the asshole for thinking that expecting other people who are tight on cash to pay for these choices is irresponsible.

I might also be the asshole for thinking that commenting praise on a crudely designed graphic saying “single black mom living in a homeless shelter needs money and donations for the baby, leads for fully remote jobs, and also cute accessories for myself because I deserve nice things too” makes you a part of the problem.

In the case of someone who immigrates long-term as a highly skilled migrant yet refuses to learn the local language, other people are paying for that decision too. Your neighbors, colleagues, children’s teachers, and spouse’s family are paying by being forced to accommodate you and speaking in their second language (if they even know it), which is uncomfortable and exhausting for most, because you won’t put in the effort to adapt to your environment.

Any resulting fracture in those relationships is, dare I say, your fault.

On a personal level, I can say that once I became more intentional about the behavior that I do not endorse and brush off as “totally fine” for the sake of being non-judgmental and understanding, my self-respect greatly improved. I can trust that I’m interacting with the world in a way that’s genuinely nuanced and compassionate, while still holding accountability in high regard.

For example: if someone cancels on expensive or intricate plans last minute for a stupid reason, throwing off my plans and wasting my time and money, I'm no longer quick to say that it’s totally fine and you should “totally take care of yourself!” Because it’s not fine, and enabling disrespectful (or in some cases, irresponsible) behavior only enables it to continue.

If someone who I care about is making awful decisions and putting themselves or their children in an awful situation, I’m going to say something.

No, you should not be homeschooling those children because you are barely educated yourself and don’t have the resources to properly do so. No, you should not be quitting that job with nothing lined up because your boss is problematic and you have an unemployed husband and two kids to feed. And no, you should most definitely not marry that man that you barely know who has been to jail twice just because you’re lonely.

In return, I’ve found myself lucky enough to have close friends and a loving husband who do the same.

Artemis, you really should just white knuckle it through that awful client if you want to buy a house soon like you said you do. Get over it.

Artemis, you’re goofy for complaining about how badly you need to get in shape every time we speak while doing absolutely fuck-all about it, shut up or lock in.

Artemis, I just think it’s crazy how you said that you don’t have time to read the book for our book club but you have time to post on TikTok. Wild.

To me, this is how you actually show that you care. Not by co-signing every decision and choice that someone makes because you think that this is what compassion looks like.

Sometimes, compassion looks like pushing back and encouraging the people around you to become a better, more responsible and accountable version of themselves.

I have most definitely met that many people already, and I can promise you that at least half of them are completely fucking insane. Fascinating, but insane nonetheless.

When you’re traveling internationally, meeting new friends is exactly like dating. Except it’s worse, because you are now in a new country where you have no idea what’s normal or what’s just as unhinged as you think it is.

You’re also dealing with other travelers who fled their home countries because they thought their location was the problem, yet are about one bad day from realizing that the problem followed them to multiple countries. Spoiler: it was them the entire time.

I just want you to know that sometimes it’s okay to smile and nod in the middle of your first coffee chat while thinking to yourself, “I am never seeing this weirdo again, but let me keep listening to see if my red flag radar is still plugged in.”

Here’s what I’ve learned after meeting every single personality archetype in the western hemisphere.

Rule 1: If they are too familiar too fast, run.

A pattern that I’ve noticed is that every person who went out of their way to make sure that I know every detail of their divorce, childhood trauma, and mental illnesses on the first coffee date turned out to be absolutely terrible friends.

What this signals a lack of discernment and entitlement. These are all very heavy topics, and dumping them on a complete stranger to hold is inconsiderate at best.

You’ll notice that these people rarely ask you about yourself in turn. They aren’t using you as a free therapist because they want to bond with you, and it’s most certainly not because you have a friendly face. They’re doing it because they don’t respect you.

Real friendships with longevity are built over time with mutual reciprocity, not trauma dumped as soon as possible to get it out of the way so that you have sufficient background for the following drama-of-the-day newsletter that you’re about to subscribe to.

The second that I realize that I know everything about your dating history, family drama, incidents of abuse, bad friendships and health issues, while you can’t even tell me the city that I was born in, I know that it’s time to split.

Rule 2: You need to be friends with people who are “centered” in the same way as you.

I am a very community-centered and career-centered person.

If you are male-centered, we are just not going to get along because I fundamentally do not understand you as a person. If you’re child-centered, even less so. If you’re politically-centered, your conversation is probably too intense and stressful for me to enjoy. If you’re religiously-centered, we have absolutely nothing in common.

This really doesn’t mean that I think that people who are centered around these things are bad people, and I have space in my life for a little bit of everything. It’s just a basic incompatibility.

I want you to tell me about your life, your culture, your hobbies, your ideas, your goals and how you’re working towards them. I want to hear about how all of these things shape your worldview.

I want to gossip, see your pets, hear about your travels, talk about how AI might or might not mean the end of our civilization. You tell me about your crystal collection and metaphysical musings while I tell you every detail about every 21st century maritime disaster with a neurodivergent level of accuracy.

The important thing is that I most certainly do no want to hear about your God, children, or a man for more than 20% of the conversation tops.

I actually don’t think that anyone should compromise finding people who are aligned to their center of attention when making new friends, internationally or not. If the discrepancy in values is big enough, it’s not going to be a fulfilling relationship.

Rule 3: Do not befriend other people from your country that you wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole back home.

Everyone who has ever lived abroad (or even moved to a new city) will tell you that this is such an easy trap to fall into. Repeat after me:

A geographic origin is not a good basis for a relationship.

And frankly, creating a bubble full of people from your home country who you wouldn’t otherwise associate with is a complete waste of the privilege that is your international experience.

Before you know it, you’re holding court with Irene who would have cut you in line in Publix, Jason who would have been your loud pothead neighbor in Iowa, and Emily who most definitely would have bullied you at your nursing job.

While I’m at it, I want to caution you against befriending people just because you have the same racial or ethnic origin as well. I made this mistake in the US, and ended up being tortured by people who I only put myself in proximity to because “we’re all black” and felt the need to stay in those situations out of fear of rejection from other communities.

Those fears were ignorant and un-founded. Most of my friends today are from countries that I couldn’t even find on a map before I left the US, and we have a lot more in common than you would think.

Rule 4: If you meet a local who is actively seeking internationals as friends, definitely figure out why.

Usually, locals who go out of their way to make new international friends are the ones who have lived abroad for a while and no longer relate to the local friend group that they have established throughout their lives. I love it when that happens.

But the other 25% of the time, they’re seeking out new friends because they’ve used up all of their goodwill with people in their vicinity by being a complete nightmare to be around.

Usually, you can befriend normal and perfectly sane locals by meeting them through a shared interest instead of via Bumble BFF or Facebook Groups.

I’m talking about sports clubs, a work event, art workshops, concerts, through mutual local friends, etc. Places that they would be at anyways.

Because if they’re actively looking for specifically international friends, you run the risk of running into people who were pushed out of existing communities for a very good reason. And when you figure that reason out yourself, it’s really going to suck.

Rule 5: Do not let shit slide just because you’re desperate for friends.

You just moved to a new country and you’re bored, I get it. But I swear, people can smell desperation on your entire being and can tell when you’re going to let them treat you like trash just to avoid loneliness.

I used to let people trauma dump on me for hours without even asking how I’m doing. I tolerated people who I would help move, dog-sit for, and introduce to my friends while they invited everyone in the group chat to dinner but me. I kept around people who I treated better than their own romantic partners treated them, only for them to refuse to show up for me in the most miniscule of ways.

I knew that people were spreading rumors behind my back and inviting me to the function as an afterthought, and I tolerated it until I realized that I would absolutely rather be alone than to allow people who have more interest in having a friend than being a friend to experience me.

My friendship is a sacred experience, and so is yours. It’s a tough pill to swallow once you realize that most people really don’t deserve it, but it’s freeing to have this clarity. But only if you act on it and set boundaries around who has access to your precious time and love.

In any case, real friendships are rare. They’re hard to find, hard to maintain, and they require striking out more often than not.

But if you’re patient, treat people well, and are 100% authentically yourself, you will find other little weirdos who will make all of the bad eggs worth the trouble, wherever you are.

If you drop your friendship horror stories in the comments, I’ll drop mine. But only if prompted, because there’s just too many. And my current friends are awesome, so I seldom think of those people.

I had, completely by accident, started the largest outdoor recreational roller-skating group in the Pacific Northwest using nothing but social media and COVID lockdown boredom. It kept growing, we kept getting interviews in major publications, we kept getting stopped on the street and asked “Hey, are you guys from that insert feature here?”

It was cool at first, but I don’t think that people realize the kind of difficult internal politics that comes with this kind of territory. When you have pre-existing toxic international communities, a competitive sport, and dynamics that were already blowing up before you even got there, there’s going to have to be some politicking involved.

And a politician I am not.

One day I was talking to my therapist about the mess that I found myself in the middle of, and had no idea what to do about it.

“People are stalking me across state borders, they’re sexually harassing other members, they’re stealing money from charities, stealing money from ME, they’re harassing people at skating rinks over online drama, they’re having roller-skate turf wars…I honestly just wanted to skate.”

My therapist asked what my options were to deal with this, and my brain started rolling through the possibilities before it became clear that all but one were just really, really fucking stupid.

“Oh. I’m going to just quit.”

“You’re going to just…leave everything that you’ve built?”

“Yes.”

And leave I did.

To this day, I count this among the most wise and beneficial decisions that I’ve ever made for myself. To say that it worked out would be a massive understatement.

In fact, I actually cannot think of a single time that I’ve quit something where I’ve regretted it.

I actually love quitting, and I think that more people should.

I used to be quite afraid to talk about my affinity for giving up, because I was nervous about what others would think. This trait is typically assigned to the non-committal, to people who do not have their life together and have no clue what the value of hard work and discipline is.

But lately, I’ve noticed that the most successful people that I know are exactly like me in this way. They’re committed to what works, and are extremely quick to drop what doesn’t. They have high standards for what is allowed in their life, and don’t see shedding the dead weight as quitting. They see it as re-alignment.

As someone who moves around quite a lot, I have to re-align often. If I join a friend group or community in a new country that can really damage my mental health in the long run, I’m often the first to figure it out and wordlessly drop off the map.

And to be completely honest, I’ve only benefitted from quitting like this.

During this trip to Paris a few years ago, I joined what was supposed to be a productive and warm introductory meeting with a long-term client who recently acquired new ownership. I ended up quitting 20 minutes into the call, shocking everyone but me.

Every time I quit a job, I find one that is a better fit, higher paying, or both.

Every time I’ve quit a friendship, I find friendships that are more-aligned right away. I often also realize that the friends were way worse than I even knew before I quit the dynamic.

I quit the entire United States of America and it’s the best decision that I ever made.

I quit 95% of my family years ago and haven’t regretted it for a single second.

I think that when people give the advice to “just quit,” most people are very averse to hearing it because they think, “it’s just not that easy.” In actuality, sometimes it really is and you’re afraid to just jump.

The biggest blocker to properly giving up and throwing in the towel is the fear of what will happen if you do. The second blocker is the fear that this is as good as it gets. It seldom is.

Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, and quitting requires a lot more resistance than just going with the flow. It requires explaining your decision constantly, it includes disrupting your routine, losing access to resources, and most importantly it includes losing access to the knowledge that you know exactly what to expect tomorrow.

Most people can’t stomach that. This causes people to stay in relationships, jobs, family systems, and communities that are actively detrimental just because it’s comfortable.

Here’s my advice, from one quitter to (hopefully) a future-quitter:

If you can’t quit now, you need to start directing your energy towards setting up a system that will allow you to quit as soon as possible.

Start de-coupling your life and identity from your judgmental family. Find a hobby where you can meet new friends to get away from your current toxic friend group. Brush up your resume and start networking to be able to quit your job sooner rather than later. Go apply for your passport.

Because even though walking towards the unknown is hard, staying in a situation where you are miserable will be infinitely harder in the long run. Some things aren’t worth the stability, the money, or the stress.

Just quit, it’s a lot easier than you think it is.

It is actually considered to be an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the leader of the cult (who I’m pretty sure has found himself in my childhood homes on several occasions) was personally denounced by name by Barack Obama himself, after a photo of them together leaked.

My step-father spoke to this man loudly on speakerphone phone every single evening for a good chunk of my childhood. He would casually mention hanging out with him over dinner.

Needless to say, my entire upbringing was filled with messaging that was typical of a Black Extremist cult.

Cults start with messaging that has a sliver of truth to it-

Black Americans face oppression. The world is unfair to Black Americans. Unity is needed to counteract this.

Then the rhetoric shifts to go way off base.

Black women are put on this earth to serve black men. Being gay is unacceptable. Our homeland was stolen by Jewish people.

When I was about 10 years old, it got to a point where I was drawing pictures in school of a bunch of brown people beneath a crudely-drawn UFO while explaining to my teacher exactly what my step-father had preached to me for years:

That the mothership was going to come and beam up all Black Americans from the USA and take us to our rightful promised land. He gave me books to read that detailed this promised land, an entire planet just for us away from “The White Man (devils)”.

I remember my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Powers, trying to convince me that all white people weren’t bad and I honestly simply could not comprehend what she was saying. I knew that she herself was a well-meaning white woman, but my brain couldn’t process that she was also “one of them”.

I grew up in a majority white area, so every time there was an issue in any context, my mother was 100% convinced that it was because we are black.

An interpersonal issue with our (Hispanic) neighbors? They’re racist. Teachers having an issue after learning that we were being regularly assaulted at home for small transgressions? “That’s just how black people treat kids, if you don’t like it you’re racist.” Issues with my mental health growing up? It’s because I have too many white friends.

At the same time, she was also quite racist herself somehow.

She wouldn’t let us hang out with one of our black classmates next door, because he was a refugee from hurricane Katrina and came from bad stock. She forced me to return a little $8 ring-watch that my friend gave me for Christmas, because she “might have stolen it.” There was no real reason to assume this, she was a great kid. My mother even admitted that she didn’t hit me as hard as she hit the rest of my siblings, because I’m the only light-skinned one, and she rationalized that the resulting bruises would show.

And it’s true, some of my siblings definitely had it worse. But that’s not my story to tell.

What I can say is that true to it’s culty nature, the isolation was also an aspect of my upbringing that I had to wrestle with.

I remember having a dear friend named Amanda who went to a Unitarian Universalist church, with parents who loved her and taught her the most beautiful mindset around humanity. It was okay to be gay, violence wasn’t the answer, there are good people from all walks of life, the works. When I came home excitedly talking about how cool it was that she got to do normal-preteen-things, I was banned from seeing Amanda because she “dressed like a slut” (reader, she was wearing shorts and a tank top during the summer).

I think that my mother also found out that I would break the strict vegan diet that she had us all on when I was hanging out with Amanda, and that was the end of that until I could sneak over to a mutual friend’s house sometimes to see her after school. I can count on one hand the amount of times I got to hang out with friends outside of school before and after that.

I did a bit of sneaking, but I was a very nervous child so I seldom did. Sometimes I would sneak food at school, because I wasn’t allowed to eat what the other kids were but I sometimes did anyways. I snuck candy from friends who pitied me at Halloween, because we were never allowed to go trick-or-treating. I snuck cookies with gasp milk and eggs during the school holiday parties, because we weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas.

Sometimes my teachers ratted me out, because they got chewed out by my mother for not accommodating my vegan diet well enough, and therefore became enforcers of my diet themselves.

Other than the handful of times that I snuck food, I was definitely properly indoctrinated because the fear of the beatings for getting caught was a very convincing deterrent. And these beatings, all of which “never happened”, got pretty bad.

I’ll never forget the first bad one-

I was attacked for having a ‘boyfriend’ in the 2nd grade. I was forced to open my diary where I wrote about having a crush, and beaten for it. I was beat for having a dirty room, for not finishing dinner or for getting bad grades. My mother took turns assaulting us all with a belt for eating cake without permission once, and beat me more when I falsely confessed to it just to save my sisters from being further punished. On another occasion she took turns beating us for ‘stealing’ my sister’s money and never apologized after it was found (after having been misplaced.)

So when I grew up and realized that none of this was normal, I really had to work on re-discovering who I was and re-raising myself against everything that I thought that I knew.

Realizing that several of the regular “punishments” that would be dealt out to both the kids and the dog were considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention was quite the revelation for me.

But not nearly as confronting as when I heard the name of the hate-group leader that my step-father spoke to and about as if he was merely a loving older-brother underneath a news story. The more research I did, the more I had to face the fact that I actually had a lot of unpacking to do.

I’ve been deconstructing for 12 years now and here’s what I’ve got:

1. I am not an activist. I was, and I care about causes that are important to me, but I was not put on this earth to be a struggling freedom-fighter who feels so disabled by my race that I feel that trying to live well despite racism existing is futile. I am a lot more than just “black.” Shockingly enough, I even thoroughly betrayed the cause by marrying a white man, so that’s out.

2. I’m actually an extremely loving person. I was always a little angel as a child despite constantly being told that I was “too mean” yet simultaneously “too sensitive”. That kid was actually just a bit annoying at worst and loved everyone she met.

3. Violence against children and animals is the hill that I’m willing to die on.

   All of this is quite extreme, but it’s why I can’t be convinced that there is any valid reason to strike a child. Talk to your kids, and if they aren’t old enough to understand what they did wrong, they’re not old enough to understand why you’re hitting them. And the dog just shouldn’t have been hit with a bat and sticks, period.

4. I can trust myself. I know what’s right and what’s wrong, and don’t have to lean on the doctrine of violent and prejudiced people to have a solid moral compass.

5. I have a fantastic memory. All of this did happen.

One of the biggest hangovers from my childhood is my absolute fascination with religious extremist cults. They always start off with well-intended people who might even have a point, and devolve into a familiar-looking mess of oppression and violence. If I were in the Bay Area during the 70’s I would have absolutely ended up in Jonestown drinking the purple cyanide flavor-aid.

I understand how it happens, I really do. There’s nothing more disgusting than exploiting people’s vulnerabilities to promote extremist ideology that ruins lives. Some people make it out, some don’t.

But as of now, I’m just glad to be living a life that my parents find absolutely repulsive.

I stopped outside of The Hague’s central train station, trying to process what in the world was just said to me.

“…Sorry?”

She switched to English-

“Did you know that God finds you precious?”

I don’t think that either of us understood my “sorry.” I speak and understand Dutch quite well, I just didn’t understand why this 40-something woman who looked perfectly normal and sane was targeting me specifically to push her religious propaganda onto outside of a train station.

As someone who grew up in the deep American South, I had to figure out what mood I was in today. I opted for pretending that I was in a rush and remaining polite.

“Okay, thank you!”

“When you die, do you think you’ll go to heaven?”

I contemplated arguing with her about my “lesbianism” before opting to instead tell her a half truth.

“I don’t believe in heaven or hell. But I respect all religions.”

She blinked a few times, as if she didn’t expect anything other than a direct “yes” or “no” answer, and I had just completely short-circuited her programming. I think that she had enough self-awareness to know that my comment was implying that her confrontation was a complete lack of consideration for my religion, whatever it may be, and simply blinked twice before wishing me a good day.

About a year ago I agreed to attend a gathering for black influencers locally in the Netherlands, and agreed to give a presentation on the link between mental health and social media.

Imagine my shock when we opened up the meeting with a Christian prayer, had someone mention the content that “nonbelievers” consume with distaste, asked around to find out what church everyone went to (which I dodged), and closed the meeting with an equally lengthy prayer.

I’ve been tricked into attending work conferences that turned out to be un-subtle recruiting missions for the Mormon church, I’ve been told to not to practice yoga by a Turkish man who informed me that it was “shirk” (un-Islamic) because he assumed I was Muslim and needed his advice, I’ve had a few Americans in Istanbul pretend to want to genuinely connect with me and be friends before they revealed that they were actually missionaries and wanted to know my relationship with their God.

I’ve had an old friend trap me in her car to rant to me about how her father is currently burning in hell because he didn’t accept God into his heart before dying of complications from alcoholism, and told me that she would give me the opportunity to not make the same mistake.

I have had all manner of religion pushed on me in ways that make my genuine curiosity for it die a little bit just from the nature of how it’s being done.

The reason why my earlier statement was a half-truth isn’t because I don’t respect all religions, it’s because I simply do not agree with religion at all when divorced from cultural context.

Every time somebody throws a “I’m praying for you!” or “God bless you!” may way, an “inshallah olacak” or “mashallah”, I politely thank them and move on. I’m the kind of person who takes intention more into account than the actual delivery, so I’m fine with it.

But I promise you, in my 3 decades on this planet, I have never in my life had anyone take my lack of religion seriously.

As someone who approaches other people’s cultures with genuine curiosity, I don’t need any hands to count the amount that I’ve gotten the same. Nobody has ever asked me why I don’t believe in God. They’ve never asked me what my relationship with religion is like, why I’m not Christian despite being a Black American, why I’m not Muslim despite having such a warm relationship with Muslim communities globally due to my travel commentary.

And when I say that I’m genuinely curious, I’m not giving you my copy+paste resume and cover letter answer. I actually love religion when it allows me to learn about other cultures and ask about it often because I actually love learning about it.

When I was in Seattle, I used to attend meetings and meditations at a Buddhist temple that had quite an international congregation. I’m Buddhist-ish, but it’s complicated.

I find Calvinism fascinating because of the influence that it has on the Dutch simplicity mindset and it’s accompanying pragmatism that still exists today.

I find Islam comforting because of the outpouring of loving hospitality that I’ve recieved from my Muslim community in Turkey, which is directly influenced by Islamic values and stories from the Quran.

I find Catholicism to be endlessly fascinating because of how it had controlled almost every aspect of royal and peasant life in Western Europe for centuries. Visiting the Vatican was an incredible experience for me.

Growing up, some of my closest friends were Mormon and took endless joy in explaining to me the intricacies of their faith when asked. They’re also generally the nicest people I’ve ever met.

With that being said, I absolutely do not like religion at all and would like you to keep it far away from me, period.

Why?

Nobody has ever asked me this, because no religious person that has gone out of their way to push their views onto me has ever cared. So I’ll just put my thoughts here for the handful of you, my dear readers.

It’s because it doesn’t make any sense.

This may surprise many, but it has nothing to do with anything that you would consider woefully un-progressive about all religious doctrines. It has nothing to do with it being used as an excuse to start wars, to enslave people, to oppress women, to keep people in poverty and subservient, to oppress gays…

I have an issue with all of that, and I will argue that those are mostly symptoms of sick societies that would exist even without religion.

It’s simply because none of it makes sense. That’s it.

Please read this section with an open mind, because I know how it sounds and I would prefer that you receive it while pretending that I’m just your quirky aunt/little sister/older cousin who you roll your eyes at every now and then, but you know that she means well so you just let it slide.

It was so nice of God to give the Vatican so much money.

I think that every time someone starts talking to me about their religion, it sounds the same to me as when a schizophrenic person is announcing that they hear voices.

I’m not judging, but I am concerned. I’m wondering how you actually think that there’s a magical man in the sky controlling your life like little chess pieces, who is too busy helping you with your love life or funneling offensive amounts of money into your religious institution to help children being tortured in coal mines on the other side of the world.

I think that in today’s society, the line between having something as human as faith and full-blown religious psychosis is becoming blurred in many contexts. I think that at best, with prayer you’re bringing good intentions and energy around you to put yourself in a good mindset to make good decisions. At worst, you’re wasting your time. But I simply cannot be convinced that this (gestures vaguely) is intentional. It’s beautiful, and I don’t know what it is. But I definitely don’t think that whoever wrote that book knows either.

To give some belated insight the very unemployed, yet very passionate train station lady -

I think that after you die, it’s just…lights out.

I’m fine with that.

By the time that I die, I will be weary of this world and ready to go. I will have seen enough, did enough, lived well, and will be ready to go to wherever I was before I was born.

Not that anyone has ever asked.

I had hung out with this mother before, and she let us know that she would be bringing her toddler along. I was fine with it, especially since he was a calm kid. But lately, I noticed that a lot of my mom friends would just…assume that the invitation included their children. I wanted to know if this was normal, so I told aforementioned mother the situation and she let me know the 411.

“Well, if the kid is under a certain age, you can just assume that their mom is going to be bringing them along.”

She then elaborated that if I’m inviting a mother to anything during the daytime or on a weekend, then I should know that they don’t have childcare and just assume that there will be small children at whatever I invited them to.

She then goes on to give me a little unsolicited lesson on how to be parent-friendly. She told me that back when she was the only “childless” person in her friend group, she would always bring along toys for her friend’s kids and got so many brownie points for being the “child-friendly” friend.

At this point, I have a lot of reflection to do. Is the social deficiency on my end for not knowing that every child under 4 years old is apart of the package, and every child on a weekend is just attached to their mother by default? For not having toys in my bag for brunch, or at my house for when I invite them over?

Then, my thought process shifted to instead, put myself in my own shoes instead of everyone else’s for once.

If I were a mother, you can safely assume that I would know that every child under x years old gets childcare on x schedule and outside of that will come along with mom. I realized that the impromptu mom-lesson was not, in fact, because I was expected to know this as a friend of a mother.

It’s because I was expected to know this as a woman, and therefore assumed to be a future mother by default. And it appears that if I reject the role of “future mother,” I must accept a caretaker role anyway by striving to be “child-friendly” or the “cool auntie” instead. It also dawned on me that there is a 0% chance that my husband has ever had to participate in this discussion.

Then one thought popped in my head that made me feel not just guilty, but also morally bankrupt:

Why would I have an interest in being child-friendly in the first place?

Whenever the topic of children comes up, I seldom hear childfree women just say their reproductive position without qualifiers.

“I love kids, I just don’t want any.”

“I don’t have any kids and we’re childfree, but I LOVE my nieces and nephews.”

I realized that I always do the same. It’s as if I need people to know that despite my obvious moral failing of not being a mother and not desiring to be one, I need to reassure them that I am still a good person. It’s almost as if the title of “mother” has earned such a high regard by default, that opting out requires justification that you are a morally sound individual in some other way.

The truth is that I do actually adore children. When I see them happy, I’m happy. When I’m around them, I feel so amused getting to see the world through their eyes. They literally just got on this planet, it’s funny to see how the barrage of input that we receive on a daily basis is processed in their tiny little heads.

But in the past few months, I’ve had to reflect on how true that is.

Do I really like every child? By nature, almost all of them are rude, loud, disruptive, and often sticky for no apparent reason. By nature of them being around, the topics of conversation that I can engage in are limited in ways that I’m not accustomed to having to censor myself for. By nature, children are humans-in-training and often just bad at being humans, which is normal.

Not to mention, every child is different. They’re just little people, after all.

I had to take a long time to reflect on whether I actually do like children, or if I’ve just made that apart of my narrative to convey that I am still a safe, moral person despite my childfree status.

Do I actually not mind being around children, or do I just not want to lose friends due to their entitlement around not giving me a choice about how childfree I would like my own life to be?

So for the first time in my life, I actually just started talking about being childfree candidly.

I figured, if mothers can talk about their children and how much they love them, I think that it should be okay to talk about how much I love being child-free. If mothers can opt for child-friendly spaces, I can choose to keep my spaces child-free.

I talked about it with my mom friends, and I lost most of them.

Their main identity was “mom” and if you don’t bend over backwards to accommodate that and be appropriately ashamed that you are not one, it wasn’t going to work. You hate moms.

I talked about it with my friends who want to be mothers within the next few years. Almost all of them accepted my views, no matter how heavy-handed I was in my delivery.

“Not only do me and my husband not want kids, but I actually cannot be convinced that most women don’t realize that you actually have a choice in the matter. I honestly think that more woman than we think regret having kids. Actually, never in my life have I looked at a mother and thought, ‘wow, I really envy her life.’ It honestly looks like it sucks.”

I went on to explain that as the only woman in my family without kids, having a front-row-seat to the contrast between the lives of myself and sisters, aunts, and even my own mother, has really made it clear that this just isn’t an option for me. They’re all currently (or were in the past) struggling single mothers, and even my friends & colleagues who have supportive husbands and boyfriends don’t seem to be having a great time.

I rounded off these conversations with the very pointed and somewhat immature thesis that “it just doesn’t seem fun.”

Instead of getting defensive, they thanked me for the perspective and one even asked me to try to talk them out of having kids just to see if they’re as iron-clad in their decision as they think. We made jokes about each other’s lifestyle, and promised to be there for one another regardless.

They wouldn’t leave me when they had kids, and I wouldn’t leave them either.

I’ve never felt so secure in my relationships in my life after being vulnerable about this. I don’t feel like our friendships have an expiration date after they have kids, because I know that they care enough to integrate me into their life either way.

So, I decided that I do actually like kids. I don’t want to be around them all the time, but sometimes I don’t mind it.

Though if I did hate kids, I think that would also be fine. Not liking children is not a moral failure, and it doesn’t mean you’d do something as abhorrent as hurt kids. It means that you don’t have the patience, sensory fortitude, or desire to be around people who haven’t learned how to be people properly yet, and I think that that’s fine.

When I was in Turkey, the neighborhood kids took a liking to me and always drew me pictures using what little English they knew, because I would give them sweets and tell them (in Turkish) about my life in America.

The kids love me, don't worry. I’m morally sound.

In the middle of our conversation about travel, he sat back with a dejected expression and told me that he’s decided that he’s done with culture as a concept.

I raised an eyebrow. “You mean…in general?”

“Yes, I’m done with it. It’s all garbage.”

He goes on to explain that culture, in the context that he’s always experienced it in, has exclusively been used to divide populations, start wars, and enable the tribal mentality that keeps us all apart as humans.

I let him talk, and decided that to an extent, he was absolutely right.

As a history nerd, I can confidently say that one of the only consistent themes throughout history are people segregating, feuding, and causing chaos under the banner of culture until the dominant culture prevails, wash/rinse/repeat.

But that’s not all that it is, is it?

I pondered it for a bit before offering my view:

During my travels I’ve started to see culture through the lens of invitation and fascination.

I have a friend from North India who shared with me recently that in her culture, it’s common to offer people some of your own food to try because meals are more based around sharing than they are in the west. Coming from a more collectivist society, she really wasn’t accustomed to mealtime structures here.

So initially when she came to the Netherlands and her friends didn’t offer her any of their food, she had to train herself to not be offended.

Now every time we eat, I adopt a bit of her culture by offering her some of my food to try.

I have another friend from China who gifted me a dress with a Qipao inspired top, and a western A-line style bottom. A perfect blend of our two cultures to symbolize our international friendship. She told me that it was really nice to see westerners embrace and celebrate aspects of Chinese culture like Qipao and loved seeing me wear it.

Even so, I was nervous to do so-

What if, during my trip to Paris while I wore it, I deeply offended somebody with my choice of attire? Would I have to stop and explain to a stranger on the street why I felt that this was okay to wear? What would I say?

I made sure to research the history of the garment, the meaning behind it, the occasions that it’s usually worn to…

As you can imagine, absolutely nobody cared or asked.

To my shock, another friend of mine who is also from China let me know that she found it nice to see me wear such a widely-recognized staple in Chinese dress.

The disconnect comes because where I’m from, and in my own culture, culture is used more as a boundary than an invitation.

This is why the concept of “cultural appropriation” exists in the states, but is never a hot-topic political issue elsewhere outside of niche progressive circles.

In the US where my aforementioned colleague is from, people have become very aggressive about guarding their culture to prevent its commoditization, while the dominant culture of the country tries to erase the melting pot of cultures that make the US as beautiful as it is.

They do this not through integration, but through commoditization and exclusion using culture as a basis.

In Turkey when I wore hijab around my very traditional Muslim community, they found it extremely charming and sweet.

If I wore a hijab in the US around Muslims who were aware that I wasn’t, they would be less likely to see it as a respectful nod to the culture. Why?

Because in the US, that hijab has caused them to be treated like crap.

So many distinct cultural elements have had to become a boundary there. It’s difficult to welcome others when you’re still trying to fight for your own right to be welcomed for your own culture. The experience of diaspora in the US is so different compared to people who are originally from said country, so I do understand it.

But as someone who travels the world to experience, to celebrate, and cherish the lived experiences and traditions of others, it’s such a treat to be able to have my curiosity and awe rewarded as often as I have.

If I see someone here in Europe borrowing elements of my own culture, I don’t think much of it anymore. If their mimicry of Black American style and mannerisms is ridiculous enough, I might think, “Geeze, what a poser…”, cringe a bit, and go about my business.

But as it stands, I can’t muster enough emotion to feel anything reminiscent of offence anymore, regardless of prejudice being a worldwide phenomenon. Specifically in the US, prejudice revolves primarily around race, as it’s so closely intertwined with one’s culture there.

Outside of the US, race tends to fall to the wayside when people spin the wheel to decide what assumptions they’re going to make about you.

I understand that it affects almost every aspect of American life and politics revolves around race, but the rest of the world is more focused on your nationality, ethnicity, income level, religion, social class, and refugee status at this point in history.

I personally have been judged more by my accent and my clothing choice than my race.

Just by having these two pieces of information, you can infer that I am:

1. Western/American

2. Not a refugee

3. Not poor

4. Not Muslim

5. Probably well-educated

In fact, the more that I travel, the more that I actually get irritated when I hear people from the US speak about race where it really does not matter, forcing me to be confronted with the fact that this braindead system of categorization that I was raised to think is the end-all-be-all in cultural unity and/or exclusion is complete nonsense. It’s not because I find race to be irrelevant, in the US it absolutely is and probably will always be.

It comes because I didn’t realize how inappropriately hyper-relevant and stupid the entire concept of merging race with your entire culture and being was until I left the states. But this doesn’t just come from the dominant culture or white Christian society, everyone has been trained to promote this. And through defense against prejudice, it’s had to be emphasized and reinforced.

Even when I speak with other Black Americans, I notice how they’ll randomly point out the race of someone in a story when it actually has nothing to do with what’s going on.

I realized that I used to do the exact same thing.

This is because the possibility that it might have something to do with the story is always there, and no matter what you should always keep it in the back of your mind that someone’s race has the potential to make a huge difference in how the story went.

It’s always snuck into a conversation with the understanding you can infer almost everything about a person’s worldview, culture, religion and experiences just based on this one point of knowledge.

This has led to many awkward situations for myself within Black American spaces, where I have to explain to people that I am not Christian just because of my race so I don’t want to pray with them before this completely non-religious gathering, or that I actually seldom listen to hip-hop so no, I actually don’t know that song. I realized that culturally, race actually is only a small piece of the puzzle regardless of location.

The realization that it doesn’t have to be that way and never had to be that way is equal parts infuriating and nauseating. In fact, realizing that I actually have privilege in most places outside of the US because of my nationality, income, and social class has forced me to rethink the role that my own cultural assumptions play in how I see the world. Most people globally still care a lot about my cultural background, but not in the same way.

My cultural background is actually a huge advantage in most places, and most people will take the time to at least learn how western/wealthy/educated I am before they pass their judgement.

Which is still messed up, mind you. But a completely different relationship with culture and how my culture plays into how I navigate the world outside of the US and works out in my favor more often than not.

I don’t know what place strategic cultural exclusion has in world unity, but I know that it is only a symptom of the disillusionment that many feel around how America sees culture in general:

As either a problem to be fixed, or an accusation to be defended.