This past weekend, I was in the Outer Banks on a joint retreat with the women from my church and the women from another church in a nearby city. This retreat happens yearly but I had only been once, two years ago. It was a lot of fun to spend time at the ocean, hearing people’s stories and learning more about them, and I even got to get into a hot tub for the first time! And while I’m glad I went, I felt like the weekend highlighted a particular “tension” I’m currently living in. And of course, I have to write about it. Sometimes I write for fun, sometimes I write to practice being a more disciplined writer, but sometimes I write for sanity. This is a sanity post about my weekend. It’s not my intention to offend anyone with this post, but if you know me personally and you’re feeling some type of way after you read – feel free to hit me up. I promise, I love you. But I also have to do me and be real.

I’ve mentioned once before on this blog that I often have this strong urge to disappear. I should clarify that I don’t mean disappear as in dying or committing suicide. What I mean is that I wish I could be invisible, observing life but not participating in it. Sometimes, these feelings do create what one might consider to be suicidal impulses. For example, during the retreat I went out by myself to the ocean early in the morning before everyone was up – and I wanted to walk right in and sink to the bottom. Not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted to be invisible. Somewhere in my mind, I feel that if I am gone I will still be able to observe the world from afar and just be part of the universe. Outside of my writing – where you can read from afar and I can be far and we don’t ever have to really communicate – I haven’t really had the desire to let anyone into my life in any meaningful capacity. I’ve always been a loner and to a good extent I have always liked it that way.

So I’m out on this beautiful beach, and the tide is so high that the water comes all the way to the back of the sand where people normally lay out their blankets. I’m standing in the water just wishing it would wash me away, and I realize that it’s a little past the time that I was supposed to be back to the house for our first session. The topic of the weekend was friendship, which seems really benign but actually hit me kind of hard.

I have never thought much about friendship. I obviously want to be a good friend to others – helping out where needed, listening when needed, and encouraging people when needed. I want to be a kind person. I want to be a considerate person. I want to be compassionate and put others before myself. Throughout my life, people have consistently come to me for advice and trusted me with their secrets – even without knowing me very well. But, I don’t necessarily feel comfortable with people befriending me. I want to help, but not be helped. It’s probably something to do with this invisibility thing. None of my friendships for the first 30 years of my life were very deep. But over the past four years or so, I’ve been around people who seem to take friendships more seriously and are more intentional about the relationships in their lives. It’s been interesting to observe and several times I’ve felt like maybe God wants me to move in that direction.

The retreat sessions talked about covenant friendships, resolving conflicts in a friendship, and the importance of friendships that disciple and point you and your friends to Jesus. I didn’t feel I had anything to contribute to the small group conversations so I was silent in each session, but I was listening. As I listened to the women in my group share their experiences with their friendships, I felt like I was getting a glimpse into a world I never knew existed! At first I thought, “Cool, I could try this.” But aside from (and connected to) my being more comfortable lurking in the shadows, there’s another barrier to deep friendships – especially in the city where I live – that felt more clearly pronounced as Atatiana Jefferson was murdered while we were at the retreat.

To explain I’m going to start with Z.

Z was a “friend” of mine that I worked with years ago. Z was definitely racist. She liked me because I was palatable to her. I’m not saying this because it’s an assumption, but because she’d said it herself: “I like you. You are so smart. You come to work and work hard. You’re not like the rest of your [Black] people. Lazy and ignorant.” Z often spoke freely like this. I didn’t always know how (or if) to respond to a lot of what she said. Some of it I ignored (like when she insisted that Obama is the anti-Christ), and some of it I just had to take a deep breath and keep working. On the rare occasions that I did speak up, she got all fragile on me and shut me down. Then she would be super nice to me for a few days. On one hand, it was pretty uncomfortable – but on the other hand I appreciated knowing exactly where I stood with her. She never called me any names. She never excluded me. She was always friendly with me. But her daily commentary was extremely hostile to people of color. Back then, I lived in a diverse community and had lots of POCs in my life. It was easier to brush off Z’s comments because both at work and outside of work there were plenty of POCs in my community that I could fall back on, so to speak. I could share her comments with other POCs – they could share with me the hostilities they’d faced – and we could eye-roll and keep it moving. My friendships with these people were still really shallow, but at least I didn’t have to explain my existence to them. These friendships were easy. They understood the jokes, the language, the music, and the cultural norms. Since there was no pressure to represent my entire race, I could relax and be myself. In fact, I could be the shallowest version of myself without being perceived as stupid, lazy, ignorant, or crude.

Back to the retreat.

I’m up late at night, just browsing the internet when I came across the story about Atatiana Jefferson. I already said last week that the Botham Jean case felt like a “last straw” for me, and less than a week later I’m reading about another murder of an innocent Black person in her home. It made me feel physically sick. I’m not the type to talk through my feelings but on rare occasions I don’t mind talking. I thought about bringing up Atatiana’s murder, but I was the only Black woman in the house, and I didn’t feel like ruining this white girl vacation with all of my Black feelings. So I sat on a couch downstairs and read about Atatiana as my white friends upstairs played games, laughed at jokes, and enjoyed each other’s company. Please note that I’m not blaming them for having fun and I’m not saying this to make them feel guilty. I am just stating what happened.

In the morning, while I was still thinking about Atatiana – one of the women from the other church approached me and asked me if I felt comfortable, heard, or seen in “these spaces.” By “these spaces,” she meant the abundance of white women by whom I was surrounded.

[Side note: I suspect she asked this as a result of an unintentional (but still somewhat offensive) comment that was made by someone from my church as part of a story that was being told. I let the comment go. And the woman who approached me didn’t bring up the comment, so I can’t be sure if it had any bearing on our conversation – but I did wonder.]

This woman and I chatted for a few minutes and I told her about how I’d never really had deep friendships before, and how we moved from a culturally diverse area to a seemingly white, conservative part of the country – just in time for the 2016 election. I told her that the church we attend feels like a family to us, loves Jesus, and has a heart for reconciliation of all types, including racial reconciliation. But I also said “Yes girl, it’s rough”.

If I wanted to be invisible before, it’s really bad now. Living in this city makes me feel like I have to tread carefully, not lift my head up too high and not make too much noise. I don’t have any Black girlfriends nearby. I’m not even ever in any Black or otherwise minority spaces anymore. We’re only three hours away from home, but culturally speaking – it feels like we live a world away. And in this new world, everyone is so nice, but unlike with Z – I never can tell where I stand.

Our retreat was about building deeper friendships, but how? How can I be deep with you if I can’t tell whether you’re nice to me because you’re a nice person, or if you’re nice to me because I’m palatable? Maybe you only like me because I’m “smart” and “hard working” and “not like the other Black people.” Maybe I add a little culture, but not too much culture. Maybe you don’t like me at all, but feel the need to be politically correct. Maybe having me as your friend makes you feel better about the existence of racism. Maybe you keep me around so that you don’t have to feel guilty.

How can I be deep with you if I can’t tell whether or not bringing up Atatiana (and the long list of those murdered before her) is too black a thing to do in a vacation house full of white women?

Is that too harsh? I’m not trying to be. But I often feel on edge because I’m not sure whether or not my existence offends certain people around me – people who are nice to me. People who never call me names. People who never exclude me. And when I wonder if my “existence” offends, I don’t mean the fact that I’m alive. What I mean by “existence” is that to certain people it’s always going to seem as though I make everything about race. Those people have a choice in whether or not to make something about race, but the truth for me is that my very existence on this planet is defined – from day one – by race. And that fact is so much more felt here than it was in the culturally diverse area I came from.

At this point someone might want to remind me that my existence is defined by Christ. And that’s true. But Christ is also the one who made me a Black woman, put me in this country, brought me to this city, and allowed this Black, introverted loner to feel convicted about friendships at a retreat with a bunch of white women, in the midst of another climax in our never-ending national saga of horrible race relations.

I’m not too sure why God brought us here, but here we are. I miss home and I know I complain about this place, but I am going to settle in and make the most of it. I will be less invisible if that’s what God is asking. I’ll believe others’ motives and build friendships. I’ll be here. I’ll get involved and get dirty and do whatever is helpful for us to all grow together.

I just needed to write about it first.