Queering* Myself

I am a writer who is afraid of writing;
I am a speaker who is  afraid to speak to more than two people at a time;
I am an activist who is full of courage but always fearful;
I am a reader who reads and dreams at the same time;
I am an educator who is constantly learning;
I am real and fake and often cannot tell the difference at a given moment;
I love people but feel safer on my own;
I am always on the run but cannot hide;

My home is where my heart is which may or may not be where my home is;

I love to take photos but after 20 years still cannot get it right – but just occasionally very occasionally I get it right and that makes all the failures worthwhile;

I am full of confidence and drowning in self-doubt;

Each day without fail I wake up with anxiety but I always manage to make it through the day;

I am visible and therefore vulnerable to shame;
I am invisible and therefore vulnerable to being silenced;
I am connected but full of disconnections to people, to situations, to experiences.

I have a longing yet my belly is full.  
I am imperfect but yearn to be perfect.

I have passed through many places, created many spaces, loved many people,  made many wrongs but in all my life I do not know what I have done.

This is me and with whom I must live with on the most intimate of terms  – but I know with the certainty that night follows the day that I am not alone in this.

Sokari Ekine

Sokari Ekine is a Queer Nigerian British Feminist, diasporic nomad, visual scholar, and activist, writer, educator seeking out new possibilities and ways of being beyond the normative and hegemony of whiteness, heterosexuality and native informers.
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