Do better, you have to be better!

So my initial reaction to hearing that Vocal had a contest geared towards writing, I thought let me see what’s up. Sure enough, I submitted an entry prematurely not reading all the details in its entirety. Naturally it was rejected, and naturally I was frustrated. Then I thought, well maybe I need to dig a little bit deeper and really get an understanding of the contest rules. To my surprise it involved Tik-Tok! First thing that came to mind was, oh great I can’t escape social media if I wanted to. Reading a bit further the contest was about “For you” and highlighting someone who was not popular or viral. Immediately I was sold. Now was the tricky part, who to highlight? After browsing my “For you” section tirelessly (all of 30 seconds) I realized that the person I should highlight is myself. For me.

The video I’m highlighting is basically me ranting about how people who are in positions of power are abusing their power. You’re probably thinking this is nothing new, this was pre COVID, and will continue after. Well with that mentality…yes! I beg to differ though. Times are changing, and people are changing. My biggest frustration, is that there is still a lot of good in this world, but we only highlight the negative, the ratchet, the trends, and the gimmicks. If you don’t have a big enough following your deemed irrelevant. If your body is not the ideal canvas, your considered average, ugly, or basic. If you don’t rock the latest fashions you’re in the words of Andre Leon Talley, “drekitude”! It’s disheartening that we value people in power, let me rephrase that, people who have money more than we value ourselves. Instead of coming together and utilizing resources to end COVID, or homelessness for that matter, you have folks doing obscene challenges and risking not only their lives, but the lives of many others, all for money or clout.

What really grinds my gears is that the majority of people partaking in these behaviors are people of color. As a black gay man, especially in a time where there is a lot of uncertainty, its mind-blowing! We are constantly being depicted as unworthy, uneducated, a threat to society, and so on and so forth. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it is currently to be a black man in America, let alone gay. Constantly having to look over my shoulders, even more now because I don’t know if I’ll be pulled over. Told that because I have light skin or color eyes, I’m not black enough. Yet I face some of the same prejudices that many of my brothers and sisters face. Maybe, not to the degree that most, but nonetheless I’m still black, I wake up black, and there is no changing that. Then because of my sexuality, my life and the lives of many others who represent the LGBTQ+ community are deemed not enough. Where is the fairness in that?

I say this because the time to change is now, but the change starts within yourself. I’ve had to overcome many obstacles in my life, but the biggest obstacle was myself. Time and time again I felt the need to put on a façade to hide who I really was. When you start putting on these masks it’s because there is a lack of something. My lack of something was love for myself. I constantly put people before me. I constantly was seeking love in other people, before I loved myself. I constantly was seeking validation from everyone else other than myself. It got to a point, I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror because I was living for everyone else, except me. So when the opportunity came to write about someone “For you”, there was no doubt in mind that I would write about me. I love me, I love me today, I love me tomorrow. I am worthy and deserving of better for myself regardless of what another person may say. Writing is my passion, and I pour my essence with everything that I write. People will say things that will try to deter you from your goal, if you let them. I was tired of allowing people to make decisions for my life. This was one decision I made for me.