11 april 2025 – journal entry
i have found myself often reflecting on how we are out of practice in advocating for ourselves and our needs. we are taught to neglect our rights to survival and revolution, our rights to struggle and healing, our rights to change. in the eyes of the colonizer we are incapable of deciding for ourselves, with courage, that we are indeed worthy of liberation and further opening our mouths to protest our oppression.
i have been reflecting on the power of the tongue, and how our inability to speak with certainty, without shame, in naming the violations injected into our skin, our bodies and our minds, has made us incapable of struggle, incapable of being decent lovers, friends, and comrades. i do not believe that we have understood the gravity of practice in our attempts to speak into existence the structures that will replace this cursed world. we are unfamiliar with boundaries and standards and with the righteous anger that allows us to transmute grief and disdain into action.
we consider ourselves to be individuals in this plight, and we are left disconnected, unprepared for what is required of us. when i neglect to speak up for myself i am practicing a denial of your rights. as your lover, your friend and comrade, i am ill-equipped in requiring the world to soften before you. i am unwilling and unconsenting to changing your reality, to fighting for and with you.
i become unreliable, a co-conspirator against your peace and the possibility of our future generations demanding justice and dismantling the systems that have burned us all. when we neglect to speak up for ourselves, we prepare to see harm and justify our complicity. we are irresponsible and apathetic in the face of love and tragedy. we are positioned against collective healing.
our capacity to resist requires meaningful, grueling, and nauseating repetition.
we are tasked with identifying clearly where we have been wronged by empire, and one another, so that we are capable of vomiting up the guilt of having sinned and the shame of conviction that plagues the consciously oppressed.
closed mouths don’t get fed, nor can they recognize their transgressions, their aspirations. we are required to practice ripping ourselves from the belly of the beast, we must be uncomfortable and tired at times, resistant always. a nuisance always.
theory without practice is miseducation. we must practice seriously. we must purge out the insecurity of silence. this is the only way that we keep one another safe. i cannot trust myself if i cannot speak life into your wounds, if i refuse to condemn your oppressor, and admit when i too have conspired against the oppressed.
neglecting my tongue, i am useless in struggle.