Belonging, Belangian, at the Right Place, and Acceptance
Belonging, Belangian, at the Right Place, and Acceptance
AKA: The Shit I Think About When People Talk To Me
The Power of Words: Positive. Digital Photography. Self-Portrait. Gina Duran. 2018.
"You only are free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all." Maya Angelou
I was texting with my friend Sunee about future plans for The Collective radio show when it suddenly hit me that the words ‘there’ and ‘where’ come from the root word ‘here.’ And from there my world spiraled.
I began thinking about how wherever you are, you are always here. Whether you’re here, there, somewhere, and everywhere—you’re still here. Anywhere. Nowhere, because nowhere is not nowhere at all. It is here.
Which means we are always here. ‘Here’ translates to ‘this place.’ If we are always in this place where ever we are and ‘am’ means ‘to be’: Then when we say “I am here” we are saying I am this place. So not only are we here, wherever and anywhere we are, but we are this place. So, then why are so many of seeking to belong?
We don’t need to seek it. We already are a part of this place.
This made me think of Maya Angelou’s, “Letter to My Daughter” telling her daughter “you belong no place.” But belonging doesn’t just mean “the right place,’ in modern English. It originated from the German word ‘belangian.’ which means to be owned and possessed. Of course she wants her daughter to know she ‘belonged no place.’ Nothing and nobody can ever possess or own another living being. No matter how hard they try or have tried. After slavery and colonization we need to know that we ’belong nowhere.’ But we are also in ‘the right place,’ because we are here everywhere we are. Everywhere we are, we are already here. We are already in ‘the right place,’ no matter what anyone says. I’m not sure it’s possible to not be in the ‘right place.’ So we ‘belong every place–no place at all.’
Trigger warning: The following contains discussion of domestic abuse.
When I worked as a Summer Research Fellow, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in 2018, I struggled emotionally over my research on sexual violence. I wanted all women to have a voice, to feel like they had a place in this world. That they belonged. I started listening to Brené Brown books on audio, to get my mind off my studies and find a way to cope and at the end of Braving the Wilderness she quotes Maya Angelou’s letter. (At least I think it was Braving the Wilderness.) I wanted to carry Angelou’s words with me everywhere and nowhere, so I ventured out on a bus ride for the first time in a month to get tattooed in town. And no ,matter how long I have this tattoo of Maya Angelou’s words on my arm I am constantly learning from it. I feel like I have unraveled another meaning from it, once again. But a couple of years ago I unraveled it’s meaning to space and time, because place is space. We want to be nowhere, because that’s when we have finally reached a point of creation.
I flinched. That was probably the most disturbing thing I had ever heard. I struggled to understand why. He told people I had an affair. But he was the one who had an affair. He tried to convince me that I had an affair with the guy I was doing a class project with, when I wasn’t even attracted. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t need to know why he did those things. And until yesterday, I didn’t realize that when he forced me to know what it was like to have nothing and nobody, he actually gave me a gift. But, I didn’t see it that way when it was happening. I eventually tried to take my life and he took my kids from me, for three months, but had me babysit them. I proved that I was well and that it was all circumstantial, but it changed my life and my children’s lives forever.
To know what it’s like to have nothing and nobody is to not belong—which is to not be owned. He showed me what it was like to not be accepted by my family when he took them from me. And in doing so he taught me that the word acceptance–”an agreement to abide by the act on another”—which came from Anglo French—was closer but still not what I was looking for. As children the love we receive shouldn’t be conditional. We shouldn’t have to abide by rules to be loved. Why is there an agreement or condition being made to earn the love of people who didn’t like me, because I was a depressed child dealing with anxiety, caused by upbringing? There shouldn’t have been, but there constantly was. So taking my family was the least painful thing that he did to me, but he thought it was the worst and that he won something.
This made me think about how our bodies have their own memories and feelings and if our bodies are saying we want to belong even though we don’t want anyone possessing us, then we are telling our loved ones we want to be owned. I spent a long time wanting to belong and be accepted by my blood relatives. Yet, I didn’t want anyone telling me who I was or how to live. I didn’t want anyone controlling me, but constantly found the opposite. Maybe it’s what the little girl in me wanted, because she didn’t know that belonging was being owned.
Now that I understand the etymology of ‘here,’ ‘belonging,’ and ‘acceptance’ I understand that “know(ing) what it is like to have nothing and nobody,” is the greatest thing to ever happen to me, because I am free. It has taught me so much. And like Maya Angelou said to her daughter at the end of her quote, “The price is high, but the reward is great.”
We all live here and here is everywhere, anywhere, somewhere, and nowhere. Here is ‘this place,’ and no matter where you are you are always here. You ‘are’ here. This place is every single one of us, so let’s make it the best of all of us.