Hello, World. It’s me, a 48-year-old white woman with white hair, waking up from a whitewashed existence only to see white men holding oversized paintbrushes dripping with white paint standing between me and the white wall of my self-knowledge. I am Truman, finding the outer wall of a small and tightly scripted existence. Surprise and contempt are smeared across the faces of these men as they see the stain of their paint cracking and peeling away in the scorching heat of my horror, borne of my growing awareness of what I have missed out on.
As the cracked paint falls to the ground around their feet, the brilliant and bold multicolored human mural of lived experiences is revealed. It is overwhelming and maddening because the whitewashed walls of my small existence did not reveal the truth about who I am and what I am made of, and they especially concealed the world from my view. My existence was to continually supply men with the paint they used to whitewash a world, so my focus would always be on them.
Men and the women who enable them require spotless perfection from me — a thing they will never achieve. This is how I gain value from the system of human capital. Perfection applied to serving patriarchy. No such state of perfection exists on this Earth, yet it was the standard by which I was warned that I would be judged in this life and long after I die into the next plane of existence, whatever and wherever that is. To be accepted into heaven, I must embrace the idea that God is a white man with white hair like mine. He ascribes to the patriarchy’s bullshit, which means his brush and paint bucket are the size of the universe, so don’t even try individuating; it won’t work. I am a drop of white paint in the big bucket in the sky.
Their message fits the mold in my mind that they created. But something is off. Something is missing. Something big. Something I have felt before in moments throughout my life. Something full of light that shattered the darkness. Love. Love is missing. As a result of this, I detect untruths in this propaganda. Wherever someone’s personhood is marginalized or attached I see the white patriarchy behind it.
Gradually I begin to see a faint hint of color wherever I look. I am like Jonas, the giver-in-training, finally seeing color and the lives and loves other people experience. Once one sees it, one cannot unsee it.
Cue the old devices of disapproval and shame-baiting. Cue my disregard for their abuse. Cue my grieving over almost half a century of life and opportunity for open-heartedness lost to being on the wrong side of the line.
I have more to say about this. But I need to get the broom and dustpan so I can clean up this flaked-off white mess and get back to join my new friends at my new mural. I see a new picture of what can be in my mind, and I have a few new colors on my palette.
