A Brown Girl’s Worth – Shall I Wait for You to Discover Me?

A couple of days ago, I had to make a visit to the emergency room. Like most, I definitely hate sitting there for what always seems like a waste of time. You get charged for a gazillion exams before being told, “We don’t see anything. Just make an appointment with your primary care physician.” Like, my three-year old gives me better care when she’s pretending to be my doctor. Nevertheless, there I was. When the ER physician finally came to see me, he was totally dismissive. There was no urgency in his movements. His energy was just bad. Maybe it was Mercury retrograde or something. I really don’t know. He sat back in his chair listening to me speak of my pain with a look of disdain. He was so totally disinterested. I attempted to lighten things up by making a light joke. He pretended not to understand what I was saying. Awkward! I felt like he thought I was some hypochondriac who needed a place to rest for a bit. Still, I kept describing my pain while ignoring his dismissive demeanor. He went on to ask me if I thought I might be stressed. I told him that my job can be stressful at times, so this was a possibility. As he proceeded to examine me, he asked what I did for a living. I’m guessing he was shocked because his body language dramatically changed. He went from non-attentively slouching in his chair to sitting up so straight I thought he might tip over. I could have just died right there of silent laughter. The attention he was now paying me was quite absurd. My question is, why?

His change in behavior obviously meant that he thought very differently of me after knowing what I did for a living. At first, I was tickled. Geeze, man! Are you serious? Then, after giving the situation more thought, I became slightly bothered. Actually, I was a notch over a tad bit angry. Instead of trying to diagnose my illness, he attempted to diagnose my worth. But, he was wrong. Before even talking to me, he had decided I was nothing, nobody. He had decided that I wasn’t worth his undivided attention and energy because of his diagnosis of who he believed me to be. Why should I have to “do” a certain thing before I am regarded as something or somebody? I went from being tickled, to feeling angry to being sad-very, very sad. I started looking at what I was wearing. I thought about my hair and how my Sisterlocks must have made him misunderstand me. Well, I was due for a retightening that very day, but… Anyway, I searched my mind to find the answer to what I could have done to make this situation different. What was it about me or what had I done to make him believe I was less than? 

PAUSE. Check Yourself, Girl! Does anyone ever need a reason? There could be a million reasons why people make up things about you in their heads. These assumptions do not define you. Further, it is not your job to prove anything to anyone. It could be the color of your skin, your gender, your hair, your height, your walk, your vocabulary, your scars. It could literally be ANYTHING! Using energy to determine why someone thinks something about you is ridiculous. You may never find out people’s why. When you know that you have not done anything except exist, why care about someone else’s hang-ups? I went to the ER because I was in pain. Turns out, he was hurting more than me. My very being was upsetting to him, and I was actually okay with that. That was his problem, and it was most definitely not mine.

There I was trying to fit into his world when the real problem was he couldn’t fit into mine. He didn’t change his attitude because of my job title. He changed it because he now felt that he was interacting with someone who, in his small mind, wasn’t just another brown, undeserving dummy. I was someone who could think, who could make meaning, who could respond, who could question his words and actions. For him, I was probably someone who could and would speak up for myself. Unfortunately, what people like him don’t understand is that we don’t need anyone to discover that we matter. We just do. We’ve actually had it with people’s discovery of things. It doesn’t matter where or how we live, what we do or if we do anything at all. We exist, and we are deserving of ALL OF IT, even before or without someone assigning their meaning to us.