Missing the City

I am originally from Boston, but just spent thi spast summer living in New York City alone and felt like myself for the first time. In both spaces I have a level of anonymity, privacy, security, and joy to exist. My existence is simple. I am one of many on a train car, cafe, museum, sidewalk. I cherish the small and mutual interactions I have with people. I know there are other things happenin garound me that trouble me and leave me feeling exhausted after a day, but nothing compares to the exhaustion I feel in college. 

I know I am meant to be here in the grand scheme of things. Reading about my disenfranchisement doesnt bother me as much as it used to, which is definitely related to the desensitization I have been feeling in everything around me, but it is also controlled by classroom spaces when to float on the surface and when to dive deep. What bothers me the most and leaves me in a breathless panic is to feel like no one understand what I am talking about. There are levels to this lack of understanidng rooted in my previous/ questionable education, class background that didnt support my ability to be a learner or educator but a worker, race: as a Black person that floats through spaces in a very particular way by being both mixed and light skin, on top of my gender that is always tossed to the side because I am cis. Everyday I sit in spaces that bombard me with theory and statistics about how I am disenfranchised, eat meals with people that talk about it and those that are overtly racist because they are purely vile and live under the weight of insituttional carelessness. I can never leave. At least in the real world I have physical separators that allow me to build memories in spaces; here they are all housed under the frailest roof known to mankind for four years. Nothing can shock me anymore because I see it everywhere. Even the sudden pop up of those fancy water filters is a haunting reminder of lack of filtered water thorugh Philadelphia and our communities. My bubble was popped when the cops tried to take my brother and I away from my family repeatedly in disbelief that my mother could ever birth Black babies, let alone willingly do so. None of this is shocking. The theory is comforting; I now know where it is rooted in a theoretical sense, but that doesnt help the current suffocation I am feeling. Im grateful to be where I am/ working to be because I have never been more intuned with myself, but the price of that is heavy.