Finding Me

by Viola Davis

That’s what most people don’t want. They want the young. They want the cute. When you get older, you change. You change physically. You change emotionally and a whole other area of life rears its head. Your body slows down, retirement; death becomes all too real. A lot of people are not in it for the long haul. They’re not in it for the changes the life journey brings—the health scares, death. I do want someone to grow old with.

I found out weeks later when I had the courage to look up how to comfort the dying that they don’t feel heat or cold in the end. They usually have visions of people in their life who had passed before them. They have them because they need permission to cross over. You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand.

All that kept playing out in my mind was, The purpose of life is to live it. The purpose of life is to live it.

He was a very nice doctor, but I said, “Let me tell you something, if I wake up and my uterus is still here, I’m going to kick your ass. Okay? Kick your motherfucking ass.”

After years of playing authoritarian cops, FBI agents, ambiguous lawyers, drug addicts, it’s hard to play just a woman. I hadn’t been given permission. Hell, I had seldom been given that permission in life, let alone onscreen.

As Black women, we are complicated. We are feminine. We are sexual. We are beautiful. We’re pretty. There are people out there who desire us. We are deserving.

Every painful memory, every mentor, every friend and foe served as a chisel, a leap pad that has shaped “ME!”