Systemic Relativity

by thereisnosurvivorsguide

It took me nearly 30 years to realize that when other people said they had no food they meant they didn’t like their variety of choices. 

Which is also to say that for over 30 years I offered half of not much to people who had plenty. 

Perhaps it doesn’t matter much, if we’ve already decided that to have no food is as relative as we’ve decided everything else is. 

But of course I’m still sharing with folx who will always have more than me. And of course it matters.

It matters in the same way it matters that the young woman I just talked to can’t vote this year because she can’t afford to replace her birth certificate to get the required ID to register. In the way some of us are far less likely to ever have to replace a birth certificate or experience any of the reasons this kind of thing comes about. Or how often others of us will need to. 

Relative to the ways that the most marginalized of us continue to offer the most of ourselves with the least amount of time/resources/safety but still somehow always have enough. To share with those who have plenty. 

Often I’m grateful that not everyone has experienced the kinds of trauma that lead to a limitless amount of enough. 

But mostly I think that’s what we need to give up in order to balance things out and make sure everyone has some. 

I know, I know. You need to put your oxygen mask on first. 

But what if there have always been a set number of oxygen masks?

And what if they’ve always been inherited through privilege lines?

And when does everyone else get to breathe?