There's a girl who spins flips and cartwheels across my mind. 

It's the last pass across the floor in her routine 
and she's giving it her all.  

The feat seems impossible, but her body is trained for this.  

All of what's inside, erupting out in power, strength, freedom, abandon.  

When everything is tight and pressed down, everything holding her down like a spider's victim. 

Then, there she goes.  

As she flies she is free.  
She is wild.  
She is agony and peace.  
Confusion shaken out and drained. 
Oppression confronted and discarded, spinning off her with her sweat.  
She is strange.  
She is beautiful.  

As she lands it with precision she knows it won't be her last pass. Because the twisting inside won't stop.  She wants to go on until she snaps.  Until her control is spun out and what's wild remains.   

There's a girl who spins flips and cartwheels across my mind.

My White Privilege Disorder

So, here's the thing.  I am confronted, yet again, with my own naivety.  I live in a bubble of white privilege- because I can.  My brown-skinned kids only buy me so much street cred in the diversity department.  You see, my disorder, let's call it WPD (White Privilege Disorder), is that I continuously fancify that I live in a world different from the one it turns out I actually occupy.  

I'm wondering:

How many times do I have to travel to a third world country to believe people really are starving over there...oh, and dying of all kinds of preventable diseases like TB, AIDS and diarrhia? 

How many times do I have to listen to the back story of an addict to accept that it's legit not their fault and I don't get to judge them?

How many times do I have to be cat-called or grabbed (starting at age 10) to admit that sexism and objectification of women is a thing.. a real, sick thing?

How many times does my (black) son have to be stopped by cops walking home from school before I believe in racial profiling?
  
What's wrong with me that I get to walk out of these situations, these conversations, these heartbreak images, and pop myself back into safety.
What the hell, Woman of Privilege?!
I guess it's cause I get to.  
I think it's self preservation.  
It's not wanting to be on edge, on defense all the time.  
It's wanting to believe the best (cause that requires less of me).
It's denial.

Well, enough.  Two days ago our country elected a racist, sexist, narcissist for our next president.  We fully knew he was all of these things, and more, and yet we voted him in anyway.  So my bubble just popped...again...and I face reality again.  Turns out it's never gonna be time for denial, self preservation, getting off of defense. It's always gonna be time to fight.  And even if I'm tired, I'm not half as tired as my friends, my family, my fellow humans who walk around in their minority skin, their marginalized identities, their shltty circumstances.  So, for them, I'm gonna fight.  Not sure exactly how yet...but I think it starts with keeping a pin with me so that I can continuously pop that damn bubble.