Surrender

I’m supposed to be writing a reading journal for my class tonight, but instead I am here. Barely getting through this flood of information about my privilege and the oppression I have contributed to just by being, by breathing. 

It’s funny how a song can speak the words you didn’t know you needed.

I’ve been given messages all my life about my superiority. As a Christian who believes in the “one true God.” As a white person who is inherently better than the “others” around me just because of my skin tone, and never expected to be stereotypically good at a specific sport or subject in school. 

As an individual with middle-range socioeconomic status, seeing others as dirty or lazy. As an able-bodied person, growing up with the word “retard” thrown around and the idea that they need saving because they can’t do anything themselves. 

As a heterosexual who was always expected to get married to a man, and who never has to worry about displaying affection in public or around family. As an educated person who never had to worry about not having access to financial aid. A person with no major illnesses that restrict my ability to work. As a person who could more easily get a job simply because my name is “white-sounding.”

As a person with a car, a home, a pet, running water, a/c and heat, a well-stocked fridge and pantry of healthy and junk foods, easy access to a printer and internet and my computer that I’m literally writing this on, shoes that fit and aren’t worn out, and all the endless pieces of the puzzle that unintentionally tell the world that I am better. My privileges are endless.

 Yet with all these privileges, I still feel unworthy. Yet because of these privileges, I feel unworthy. Unworthy of contributing to the conversations about oppression and discrimination. Unworthy of loving the people I’ve been told all my life to avoid. Unworthy of allying as an agent of change. Unworthy. Unworthy. Unworthy.

 And the unworthy lie is digging me into a hole. A hole that contributes to the systemic racism, religious oppression, sexism, heterosexism, transgender oppression, ableism, ageism, weightism, classism, and all the other -ism’s that I’m missing because I haven’t had to experience them in my little bubble of white-Christian-heterosexual-middle-class-able-bodied-and-more-ness.   

So when this song came on – in my queue of probably mostly white artists – as I was reading about religious oppression, I deeply felt the words “This is the moment I surrender.” Because I’m tired of allowing the hole to swallow and I’m tired of contributing to the -ism’s. Though I know it won’t be perfect from here on out, that perfectionism is just another white oppression I get to surrender. Though the song is about surrendering out of a no-doubt heterosexual relationship, I surrender to the fact that I have contributed to oppression. This is the moment I surrender to this toxic relationship with my privilege, and move on to learning from and using it in order to be a positive ally and agent of change.

I surrender even in just posting this. It is scary and vulnerable to post because I know I didn’t get it all right, I left people out, and I am saying some pretty challenging things to the way I grew up. I will offend people, it is inevitable. I will oppress people, that too is inevitable. But I can choose to push past it and rally around the oppressed as much as I possibly can knowing, believing, and hoping that I am and will always do my best.