My earliest lessons were in sacrifice. Be it a shiny, new bike or a pricier meal, I was taught to want less if for no other reason than to protect me from the disappointment of not having more. I was unashamed of my poverty (to be clear), but deeply ashamed of my longing, of the sadness a life of lack had no trouble bringing to me.
Anyone in community with me (or privy to my therapy sessions) knows I’ve never had a carefree day. Since childhood I felt firmly planted in reality, even when it hurt me most and as I age, I treat imagination and dreams like a skill- one I’ll probably spend decades becoming proficient in. This easy acquiesce to bleed, to be something other than happy has impacted most, if not all of my relationships. My inability to lean in, to move past discomfort into bliss always fumbles any hopes of being in relation with folx for long. As the years past by and I curl further into my psyche, I expand where I speak the language of sacrifice most, and to whose benefit. I ask “what do you need from me?” before I’m even sure it’s there to give.
“Sacrifice: destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else”
I’ve always loved words. Since I was a kid, I dreamt of stringing them together in meaningful ways, for the intimate crevices of my mind to matter to someone as they watch it uncoil throughout the pages of a novel. I’m the first person to explain that words have intrinsic meaning, that we’re always saying something because words themselves are something.
Sacrifice (n.) appears in the late 13th century, derived from the Latin sacrificium as a means of explaining the duties of clergy after the story of Christ spreads around the globe but what’s more interesting is its introduction as a verb in the 16th century with a new definition: surrender, give up, suffer to be lost for the sake of something else.
I often wonder who needed to put that feeling into words, why the quiet resignation to suffer had to be made public for those lacking fluency in it already. I envy them for getting to it before I did, for prophesying what would come to be the center of my existence. My willingness to sacrifice became so instinctive that when I ran out of things to give up, I seemed to make new things so I could give them away. My most frequent victim is writing.
I sacrificed the joy of writing for the “artistic ache”, the belief that real writers hate every word and pen scratch and thought expressed on paper, which further enables their brilliance. That the only people entitled to the joy of writing were the ones who’d been asked to do so. I spent years writing poems that were age appropriately angsty and short stories too mature for my youthful understanding of the world only to hate them because no one had asked they be brought into the world. I was seeking permission to find my desire to write as legitimate, for someone to find my writing to be good. I couldn’t just think I was a good writer (that felt absurd & too self assured), I had to be told I couldn’t be a bad writer if I tried.
My favorite sacrifice is any shred of belief I have in my abilities as a creative.
And as it stands, it’s one that will never require more from me than a pen and paper, or a blank doc on a laptop screen. Even as I write this, I painstakingly choose and unchoose words so worried, so sure that this is my “big shot” and I’m ruining it by simply trying to attain it. There’s a part of me that believes it’d be easier to give up writing altogether- that even though it would be the hardest and most absolute sacrifice I could make, it’d ultimately free me from this ache, this insistence to lay down in front of the stampede and be mowed over.
Somedays, that belief almost wins, until I remember what writing has done for me:
It’s brought me community (my website just surpassed 1k views!)
2. It’s gotten me published in international publications
Accessing Sterilization as a Black Queer Woman: Race, Gender, and Body Autonomy
3. It’s made me a better scholar and allowed me to deliver my thoughts on the world in a clear and concise manner.
4. It gave me a venue for working through trauma (I frequently write alternate endings to events in which I was harmed in conjunction w/h therapy & meds and it works wonder)
5. It serves as one of the only things that’s aged with me. I’m not an individual of many possessions, poverty tends to do that to ya but I’ve always had words and have kept every journal, notebook and poetry book I filled since my childhood.
I refuse to sacrifice writing because nothing else can make me feel this way. No painting or sculpture or knitting project I create could ever make me feel as human as sentences on paper do. That “big break” I’m always concerned with fucking up can come one day, and I want it to be because of my writing, because my angst isn’t novel and people find value in sharing space with me through my work.
Instead I’ll sacrifice confidence, grace, that last slice of pizza and all the glorious second puberty weight that went to my ass. I’ll sacrifice people who want to love me and nights that could be filled with laughter and community for this. This very moment where I’m writing a personal essay I’m already convinced will be hated by the people who see it.
My earliest lessons were in sacrifice but they’re not the only ones I’ve learned. I’ve acquired charm and wit, a quick and calm head under pressure. I’ve learned patience as I navigate an adult life where no one ask me to sacrifice as often as they ask me to smile. These lessons are newer, harder to make a habit and I’m not quite there yet. Until the day I am, I’ll keep my pages, stained with tears from frustrating days and lonely nights and smoke and wine, and all the other things I’ve learned to keep because of how often I sacrifice the rest. I’ll speak the language of sacrifice fluently between every English word I say and hear and email because that’s the inheritance of poverty.
And to think I used to say I wasn’t bilingual.