You are worth archival, you are worth keeping.

Black gxrls, don’t let your best ideas die in your notes app

I started writing

to be in control of my own greatness. Because to know me is to know that I am so full of greatness that I just casually sprinkle it out of me all of the time. To know I draw others to me by disposition, creed, and word.

But I relied on others to show me my greatness. By fault of memory or not knowing my own value, I couldn’t hold on to it. So I asked others. “What was that thing I said again? You know that really good one? YEEEEAH. About the… oh gosh what was it again? Do you remember? Dang!” To be lost to yourself and the memories of others. To have no greatness but for the consumption of others. A living breathing Rolodex of TikToks at your service, no replay, no categories but constantly on auto play whether it’s convenient or not. 

What is the importance of being able to describe people in ways, not defined by their service to you? The ways in which having a sibling or close cousins helps you remember yourself. The ways my family must remind me what it was like to see me be young. The ways in which I feel like a receptacle for so much knowledge. The ways in which I can’t tell you what awards or accomplishment I all had because it was a given that I was accomplished. So special, so sparkling, so full of potential.

Not that my awards were celebrated. My being alive was always celebrated though. More than most (shoutout to my parents for two birthday parties every year!). I know I’m a selfish person because I find myselves struggling to describe people through ways other than through myself. I’m working on it. Still not sure if it’s a character flaw or neurodivergence.

Can the people around you describe you in ways that are not related to the times you are in service to them? 

Black gxrls, don’t let your best ideas die in your notes app, in the casual brilliance of your being and book margin ink. You are worth archival, you are worth keeping. I say this to you, I say this to me.

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*Me publicly stimming while I pull this article out my notes app and give it the final razzle dazzle*