“They deplored any joyful tendencies in me, but I was their Zora never the less.” -Zora Neale Hurston

How fabulous a quote this is sheerly for the way it sculptures every person who someone may see as “odd.” Zora talked about being set apart for the color of her skin, but I talk about the color of the soul. I talk of the color MAD CREATIVITY.

Plato referred to himself as “a gadfly” and Emily Dickenson tried to test her sanity with pigment to parchment. They were “deplored” for their “tendencies?” but it is those same characteristics that now endear artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Lord Byron, and William Blake eternally to humanity. Their fits of creativity rendered them sometimes cast off by society until the final workings of their art were presented, digested, and sought after.

Not to compare myself to Picasso, Van Gogh, or Wordsworth, but I believe that the stamp of my being bears the same creed as these artists. We are colored the same hue deep beneathe the skin, our own race of majestic insanity.

They call me odd (I hear them gawk sometimes in disbelief). My race is few and hard to recognize at times- especially when it tries to change for fear of realizing, as Zora did, how different an individual is when stuck against the backdrop of another race.

Daily I experience the racism. I hear “Tolerance for all colors!” yet I see no one looking at the colors deep within that really make up who a person is. The color of skin creates prejudices against a mortal, physical body that will pass away. But the racism I experience is against the color of creativity that paints an eternal, immortal soul.

Written Junior year of High School as prompted by Mrs. Richardville in AP Composition

______________________________________________________________

So I've been thinking a lot today about the concept of family. There is a root that makes you what you are. And that root is comprised of greater reaching root system that tie you to others and help you "name who you are." Without an intrinsic grounding provided by knowing my extended family I have been forced to create a nameless bond with the only thing that has stuck with me for so many years. That being my status as different. Yeah, I don't think like everybody else--and that is ok--however I have been naming myself according to my mental illness.

So I'm sitting here thinking about what family means, as this weekend I had an opportunity to spend time with extended family in another state. I seek to find a grounding outside of the unstable nature of my mental illness.