Growing up, I had a short list of emotions to cycle through: happy, sad, fear, and anger. I couldn’t quite grasp the other ones: shame, grief, vulnerability, and emotional pain. I didn’t understand anxiety, so I had no way to explain the fluttering in my chest and rock-hard feeling in my stomach that paralyzed me at any given moment. I didn’t understand why I had to keep these things to myself; I just knew I had to. I had to keep performing. And there was no air—for me, a dark-skinned Black girl who had been damaged and used. There was no air for me to be anything but what “they” said I was.
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