Sagittarius New Moon Insights

I was out shopping in SoHo and pretty much everyone who works at the shop I was in was a person of color. So the person I’m talking about appeared to be a Black woman who works with a bunch of other primarily Black and brown people. And I’m walking around with my in-store shopping tote, and I try on some stuff downstairs, but I decided to pop upstairs just to see what I could find. While up there, I see some jeans and remember, yeah, I do need black jeans. Like, I can’t just wear only leggings, I need some sturdy black pants— you know, for more formal occasions— and since my old standby of black, fitted pants has gone to shit, this is going to have to be the next best thing. So I’m walking around, checking out the pants. I haven’t bought pants in years, like I said, I wear leggings. Well, I’ve bought pants, but not jean-like pants. So I’m trying to figure out which kind I need, and this person who appears to be a Black woman becomes very visible to me. Like I notice her, and I know it’s because she’s noticing me. And not in an “I’m checking you out” sort of way, which would have been annoying in a totally different capacity and at some level validating, but in an “oh, you seem suspicious” type of way. Like, “I just want you to know I’m watching you” sort of way. 

I’m used to racial profiling in stores by now, being a dark-skinned Black person in America. I keep my hands where you can see them in any store because I know I’m the most suspicious to Western eyes even though we all know that statistically, white girls do the most shoplifting (just like white guys commit the most drug-related crimes). So, I notice myself sliding into that self-conscious space of regulating my behavior to be less intimidating to those around me, but I try to shrug it off because... who the fuck is this bitch anyway? Sis, you have tattoos all on ya neck and you work as a retail associate. We are both working class femme-presenting people of color. I try to let it go, hoping that I’m being paranoid but knowing that I’m not.

So I’m checking out these jean pants, trying to figure out what at this store is going to fit me because, though I’m quite thin, I am also tall and quite obviously shaped like the African female that I am. At this point, the person bumps into me again, but this time literally. She’s like “oh, sorry” and I’m like, “where are the fitting rooms on this floor?” And she points them out to me. 

So I go and try on the pants, I love them, they fit perfectly, it’s awesome because this almost never happens which is why I don’t wear pants— I wear leggings. But the entire time, I’m battling myself. My first instinct is to think of barbs that would set them straight and put them in their place like, “maybe you don’t realize that I’m literally wearing Dior Homme right now, so I probably don’t need to steal your mass produced jeans. Then again, how could you?” And immediately I think of Kanye. “Even if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coup.” And I remember, there are no places. They have been indoctrinated to think of me as an enemy, as someone who could cost them their livelihood. And I’ve been indoctrinated to feel like I have to prove myself primarily through the acquisition of capital and arbitrary material goods. I’ve been indoctrinated to forget my inherent value which is incalculable. But through lifetimes and generations of trauma and oppression that is literally scripted into my DNA, taught to me by media, and enforced by societal policing, I’ve been made to feel that that’s not true. And if I work hard enough in a system that is designed to disempower and destroy me, with all of its barbaric and savage chips stacked against me and people like me, that someday I’ll be worthy. But that’s not true, not only because there is no buying into the billionaire boys club that, through rape & exploitation is rapidly destroying life on Earth, but because I am always worthy. I don’t have to prove that to anyone, least of all someone who is projecting their own primal fear onto me.  All I need to do is remember that, and every time I bump up against that blockage molded in the ego by plutocratic psychopaths, I just need to remember that.

“I am worthy, always and in all ways. I am valuable, always and in all ways. I am loved, always and in all ways. I am wholly Aligned in that Truth, always and in all ways.”