Let me be mad.
Black women have more than three emotions. The three emotions most of the world think that women have is: rage, love and bitterness. And they think they all work together to only keep us hard as bricks. I can assure that, that is not what it is at all. Let me tell you something else, too! Where every Black woman was mad, she was once happy. She was happy! She got mad after no one listened to her after she got mad! After she felt nobody cared for her, and she had to do everything herself.
Everything.
Let me tell you a second thing. Sometimes it gets easier for a Black woman to be mad than to ever be happy. She lets no one else in; no one else’s opinion matters. No one can get into her heart and head to help her through that rough time which made her so her, and so angry. From that she takes it all out on the world.
The entire world.
From being neglected and mistreated, she has the right to be angry, man! She has a right to be angry and unhappy. You have to be able to realize that two things work in the life of every woman-not just black women. Those things are decisions and time. The things which make one woman happy would make another woman want to set it off depending on what time has passed. You have to be able to realize that the emotion of bitterness doesn’t come into or from a vacuum. It never does! Bitterness, rage, being that level of angry normally starts on the inside and works its way outside. Sometimes it’s not always easy to just let it out! Sometimes it comes out in an eye roll, an ugly Facebook post or a vicious, shady voicemail…but it comes out.
It always comes out.
But the scary thing is that it always comes out.
But let me tell you something else too. Give a Black woman time to be mad. Give her the space to be upset even if you don’t totally understand why she is. Let her know that love is still hers if she needs it. I promise that she does and will. But realize that black women are not these robots! We have stories and feelings and histories and stuff that still affects and messes with our sleep! We have a right to be heard, and understood—without being expected to just soldier on. Where do people think that trauma goes? Where does it go other than inside us…making a home in where happiness could be at.
Black women deserve to be happy to! But sometimes those feelings aren’t always so rooted, dear ones. Sometimes we are just mad because the day has thought to piss us off—and mad is the best way to express that disappointment. But again I say, let me be mad.
I’m not always mad at you. Dang!
[image author’s own]
The Ideal Firestarter 