A letter once entitled, “my politic is alive and she will kill me.”
“Everything about the world fills me with doubt.” —@hoziersgfLJ, on TikTok.
I write this essay in response to a video LJ made me on TikTok, where they name how long and wide and vast the fear is. Long and draining, endless, exhausting fear. They asked: “How can I be compelled to action when I don’t have enough to act for myself?”
to LJ and everyone else floating aimlessly in fear:
I am sitting in a last minute Airbnb in Amsterdam drinking chamomile tea and realizing I have failed you all by hiding myself. Many (many) people ask and ask me how I find the energy to do all this fundraising, this education, this content. If you’re asking how I can possibly muster up the extra “energy,” I have been lying to you all by omission. I don’t have any excess energy. I peel myself out of bed and beg on my knees for enough reason to get through the day, every day since I was fifteen. I promise you I am just as exhausted, every bit as fearful as you.
Friends: I am so scared of the internet. I am terrified of people seeing me as more or less than human. I am bone-deep terrified to shine my politic brightly because it absolutely will put a target in my back. I am scared because I can never return to a life where I can hide away indefinitely and without guilt. I am here on the world’s stage and there’s work to be done.
I am lying to you all, each and every one of you, if I tell you what I believe without telling you why. And also lying if I tell you about my hopes without telling you how frightened I am, how tight my chest is, how many nights of sleep I watch evaporate as I turn the state of the world over in my mind like a penny in my mouth. Leave me to my thoughts and I cannot think of anything else; we’re dying right in front of each other.
Including me. I am dying right before your eyes. People often describe me as a light— like I emit this soft, radiant glow that attracts people to me. What you’re seeing is my flesh on fire. The grief I have for this life and this world burns me alive.
And I (like you, like all of us) have spent the last two years swallowing these coals of grief and desperately trying to keep composure. I shuffle forward with class and school and traffic and grocery shopping and pretend like the death does not hurt. It burns the back of my throat and I smoke to stay calm. It burns in my eye sockets and I have a glass of wine with breakfast. I have spent the last two years trying feverishly to medicate, to numb myself, to calm down and I am out. I’m out. I don’t want to be numb to this grief that kills me anymore.
I need to re-introduce myself.
Hello, my name is Ismatu Gwendolyn and I believe a couple of things.
Because I am African, I believe in a free and fed motherland. I believe in an Africa that gives freely and easily because abundance is boundless. I believe in an Africa that is bound by nothing and in want of nothing. An Africa that soaks and rejoices in her own riches.
Because I am Black American, I believe in self-proclaimed freedom. I believe in snatching my body back from the empire and resting in it. I believe in communal sovereignty and indigenous solidarity. I believe there is no justice in the carceral state and that all must come down in fire and brimstone. I believe a just world is one where the least of us are the people that lead us with kindness: our elders, our children, our disabled, our fat, our queer. They must go first— the power they have to share could part the seas before us.
Because I am a sex worker, I believe all power and all of the sting belongs rightfully to the worker bee. Blessed are the laborers because we make and steward the earth. I believe that economic justice is one of the highest forms of love. I believe that queerness is the future and that the future is freedom.
Because I am the child of farmers, of chiefs, and of food scarcity, I believe that food sovereignty is the keystone of collective success. I believe we must sow the earth with diligence and love instead of profit-driven greed. I believe that Mother Earth will shine her face upon us if we treat her soils and her spoils like they are our most precious jewels, because they are. I believe the indigenous of the world lead us out of climate disaster and towards reconciliation with the earth and sky.
Because I am young, I believe a better world is en route. Not just that better days are possible, but that they are en route. A reborn world is exploding like the rising sun— soft at first, small, just a glimmer, then awash with color and clouds and glory. I believe I will see a worldwide end to apartheid and colonization. Palestine will be free in our lifetimes. Iran will be free in our lifetimes. Sierra Leone will be free in our lifetimes. The United States and everyone laboring under its economic exploitation will be free and fed and full. Oppressed people will eat until they are full. This world is coming like the dawn.
I will have a world I hand to my children and say, “look what we made for you. Look what we kept for you.” My daughter will be so proud of me that she will put this world I have made for her on our fridge. This is the cry on my person every morning when I brace myself for the grief and I peel myself out of bed; I am on my knees and I say “Lord God carry me through this day even though I would rather die because I believe we will win. I believe that we will win. Prove me right. I know I am right. I know you are near to the broken hearted. Pick me up and carry me through this day. Oppressed people will eat until we are full.”
AND WE WILL.
Listen. Listen to me. I am doing this for you. I was not always in a state where I could get up and burn like this— this slow, luminescent death like a candle dripping wax. I want you to hear this and understand that you cannot outrun the grief of this world AND that you are not supposed to!! You’re not supposed to run!! Feel the exhaustion and let it sink you to the ground. Let your body breathe and hurt. The heartbreak will bloom and crest and it’s breathtaking pain. Like, it could not be worse. Yes, this world is built for you to suffer and no, nothing has changed. If you never wish to feel that pain, the pain of nothing changing— I will never blame you.
I don’t run from the grief; I am compelled by it. Grief and love for me are synonymous. Grief and love are the same. And I cannot run away anyhow— my politic is alive and she will kill me if I try and run back. So I will burn. And if I burn alive with grief, it will all have been for the love of myself, and of my communities, and love of you all.
I have to much love for this world to sleep easy so I will see a day where we all have peace or I will die. And if the world wants us dead anyways… what is there left to be afraid of? Even in all this, I float like a balloon in an endless sky. I have so much hope; I can see it spreading. Just like fire! Like dandelions! Unapologetic and everywhere. Hope is contagious. Hope rises like the day.
I will be here for you. I will be up here, flying, blazing. If you ever feel through your grief and you are tired enough to hand over your body and let it ride you; if you ever reach a day where you want love to set you on fire: I am here. You are free to use my wick of a body to light your way.
We are doing the work of the earth and she will bless and keep us for tomorrow. Tomorrow is freedom. For today, I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
Ismatu Gwendolyn
19| a manifesto: dear internet friends, I’m burning alive.