Yesterday was surprisingly gloomy for a June. I woke up in this introspective, my mind whirling full of thoughts that wouldnt go away. There were so many issues unresolved and unexplored. These were things that have come up in random conversations, as me and my girls ramble in long conversations that meander on random tangents:

My faith,my race, my skin tone, my relationships, my family, my privilege, my oppression, all that I achieved, every failed endeavor, lost opportunities, my conditioning process in academia, my personal connections, my isolation, my memories, all that I have forgotten, holding on, letting go, everything that I have disclosed, all that I cant say…

My mood shifted into a deep melancholy as I prepared myself for my errands, my heart beat extra hard against my constricted chest. A memory, I let out two sobs, pulled myself together and I went about my day.

Sometimes I feel as if my chest is pulling away from my heart. I become slightly light headed and feel as if my mind disconnect from my body. It is hard to keep balanced. This is when I want to sit something out. Or my longing for a particular state is becoming unbearable. Other times, I feel as if my chest is constricting my heart. And each beat is painful and exhausting. I try to ride this out, breathmeditatework through my thoughts. Sometimes I just sleep it off, drift off into a world of dreams with the hope that my subconscious will work it out. With every difficulty comes ease.

A lot of it comes from stress. But often it is rage against the injustice of a global caste-structure, a pervasive world view that has seeped insidiously into so many mindsets.

Sometimes I feel a primordial ache. I know I inherited some of these feelings while I was in my mothers womb. When I met my father 18 years after my parents divorce, he told me that he knew when I was conceived. He said, Were going to make a baby. I was a love child. My parents fell in love at first sight. They were married for several years and divorced after a series of tragedies and violent conflicts. My father always loved my mother, but was unable to truly love my mother, till the day he died. My mother told me she was very sad when she carried me. She also spent a lot of time reading and thinking. Her sadness and fear was a product of a so many forces, a society that circumscribed her, a community that rendered her without a voice, her love for a broken and wounded man who self-medicated and inflicted his rage on her, her constant striving despite all the obstacles to take care of her son and daughter while making way for her third child. With my brother, she hustled and was always on the move to make a living as a teenage expectant mother; my sister who passed, she was deeply spiritual; with my youngest sister she was emotional. We all carried my mothers imprint.

I think this sadness passed on generation after generation in our mothers womb, our grandmother, her mother, on back These women in my family tell me stories of the rapes and murder at the hands of officials; kidnapped child; death and violations by neighbors, strangers, and friends; the exploitation of professionals and civil servants; the beatings and abandonment by the men they love; the betrayal of their sisters and neighbors; the loss of children to the prison industrial complex or drugs; then all the secrets that have been left unspoken….