r/cptsd_bipoc

As a little black girl, red nail polish was “too grown” and I had to pick another color. I couldn’t wear shorts around male company. Whenever my hair was straighten, my ends had to be bumped, or it was considered too grown. I couldn’t say that an adult lied, I had to say that they told a story. Getting color in my hair was grown as well. My private parts always had a special nickname “diamond”, “cookie”

“Nobody is supposed to touch your diamond,” my mother says

Can anyone else relate or add to how their household was?

If I see a Palestinian flag and a white profile pic, I know that person is going to be a racist asshole. Before it was hashtag BLM and a white face. White people like to fight for groups of people who cannot criticize them in any way: the unborn, Palestinians far away, BIPOC anywhere but the ones who organize alongside them.

They support POC and Black people in an abstract way and will treat the ones in their own community like shit and push them out. They’re all performative.

Interactions like this really spark something up for me as a person with cptsd and obviously racial trauma. I can handle the stupidity but it just always presses on a nerve.

I posted my poem on the subreddit to get feedback on the style, the language, the overall poem - and you used it as an opportunity to tell me about how I should find my people, you’ve dated a black man and people called you a snow bunny. You also had the nerve to explain why racism is an issue from your white understanding: it’s not ignorance but societal conditioning.

You then explained how your Black friends let you touch their hair and you let them touch yours too. But it wasn’t driven by malice and of course not everything is.

Please reread the poem and realize that this shit isn’t about you, but it actually is about you because you’re exactly who I’m writing about.

I feel so angry, almost all the time.

TW: pretty much all the triggers.

I’ve been raped, I’ve been called horrible racist things, by my (white) mother, by people at my job, even a now ex-boyfriend, strangers on the street. I’ve been literally burned, I’ve been abandoned on the side of a mountain in sub freezing temperatures. I’ve been called stupid, idiot, everything imaginable. I’ve been spit on, I’ve been strangled, held at gun point, all multiple times. I have PTSD.

I am so fucking angry. I know I need to let it go. I know it would be to my own benefit. I know it’s been years and I live in a much better place, with much better defenses in place. Today this white bitch (whos been arrested for domestic violence and everyone still loves her) told me to try hetting a fucking hair straightener. I’m raging. Even then, I still sat there and was like “…yeah”. I didn’t smile at her or laugh but I wish so badly that I could be unrestrained.

My boyfriend tells me to stop being angry. He told me I’m an unhappy person. But I don’t want to let go of this anger. I feel like I have a right to this anger, it’s the only thing I have. My memories made me, and it feels like to deny this anger is to pretend that none of that stuff matters anymore. It feels like a betrayal to let it go. But I feel like I’m supposed to, I have to.

It, once again, makes me angry.