Moved continents to be you and then you miss all the things and people who are oceans away.
I am searching for something. I couldn’t tell you what.
I cut all my hair off, I stopped assigning importance to people a while back, but instead noticed their craft, their values, but not them. I stopped working to be the best Professor in Collagen research, I stopped pretending to be someone else. I stopped pretending to want things I never wanted. I stopped lying. I started listening, I started hearing something trapped. I started realising I needed to explore the trapped sounds in my heart. No not a murmur, the sound of being. So I started to search for something.
Everywhere I looked I would find a little piece of not me. I moved to Berlin for a year or more, partied like mad, not me. I worked at the best institute for collagen, not me. I moved to London to speak English, close, but yet, not me. I worked at the best university in the world with the best professor in the world, not me.
I kept searching within my culture, within my work, within what I thought should be me. But after every corner, I wouldn't be there. Made me feel a little fragmented. Just bits of not me.
On paper (LinkedIn) I am a scientist, regenerative medicine and molecular physics were my game. I was not the best, but I was up there. I got to work with the best. Close enough. I dreamed of Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac and the days of Bell Labs. I secretly admired Feynman for going to Brazil and playing the bongos. I hated writing scientific fluff and I sat on a pretty high bioethics pedestal. Then I saw when the chips were down, no matter how much you loved your research, you could lose it because someone was more powerful than you. I bruised and bled for science. But I had this feeling I was meant for something else.
On paper, I am a black girl but also in the mirror. Which meant I needed to have straight hair, work twice as hard, and not have a 3rd world accent. In the first months of High School my AP History teacher told me, “Stop speaking that Voodoo language”, and I stopped. Now my English is a mix between Guyanese-British-Swedish-nonsense. I guess that would constitute less voodoo and more wtf. But that is the struggle of being black in America. So I ran, I left it. Only to come face to face with it everywhere I went. I remember in Cape Town after a string of racists events, I asked my friend why do people keep attacking me, and he said: “because you walk like you belong”. hmm. Maybe it is because of the struggle of every person before me, but why shouldn’t I belong. The only time I felt like an imposter was when I thought of being a Professor, writing grants and watching others do the science and get lambasted for not following the trends.
"On the inside, I am dying to find me. I just want to say I am. Not what I have accomplished or what I can accomplish. I am. I am a being."
Every surf trip I found a bit that was me. Every surfer I met and person connected to the water, I heard their words and felt that they were in the same frequency as the sound in my heart. So now I sit here trying to contemplate how to tell people that the little bits of me that I love, are alive when I surf. The pieces of me that make me whole are out back, watching a set come in. I realise that there is a sense of loneliness in it. Well, I didn’t really realise it until a friend said, “Gosh Abeni you must be so lonely in your mindset.” And I cried. I am still, ever so much, wanting to connect to not only the waves, and the ocean floor (via wipeouts), but to others like me. I cannot be alone in belonging, in wanting to sit out back and watch a set come in. I am not alone here, I can’t be. But in my culture, in my science, in my skin, I felt alone.
Leaving academia behind, embracing the sun so I get darker; I am searching for my own culture. Hence all the trips. Searching for a surf home. I was just told I have one at Westward Ho! Gosh, you don’t know how much that means to me, LevelUp! Yet, I am looking for a place that when I step out on the sand/or rocks; no one can tell me that I don’t belong and no one can tell me how to be. Only the gods and their sea will determine my ride. And I will always love that ride, that sea, and those gods as much as they will always love me.
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