Why would you think you aren’t good enough?
Why would you even hurt yourself?
Don’t you know you are the only one who can love yourself?
You got to be strong
And carry everyone on your shoulders
What is anxiety for a black woman anyway?
You are a black woman?
How can you have fear?
Black women don’t crack nor cry
Black women don’t bleed nor stumble.
It can’t happen, not to this black woman
Not to my daughter
You are just being over dramatic, a self pity party.
I didn’t want to die but I hated living like this.
Fear of want many might say and the way people surround me.
As a black woman, I pretend it’s okay.
I am not told I am beautiful, which led me to believe I can’t be…a black woman
No one notices
Black women do not have anxiety
But it is raw and suffocating
I did crack
I did cry
I did bleed
I did stumble
A hell of a lot
It doesn’t go away but manageable as most mental illness
As a black woman I still function
As most black women do but ten-times harder.