I have wrestled with this for months — how to address the despair that many of us feel heading to the ballot box in the next few days. We are angry. We are exhausted. We are furious. We are grieved. We want nothing more than to dismantle this society that continues to work exactly as intended — keeping so many marginalized humans in bondage, operating off of proud imperialism and colonialism, funding a mass genocide, and upholding white supremacy at all costs. 

My grief didn’t care that I wasn’t ready. My grief needed to escape. It was already bursting at the seams. I couldn’t keep it concealed for much longer. God used this documentary project as an unexpected catalyst and vessel for my grief to surface and process what it needed to. My grief needed to tell me that I could no longer fool myself. My grief needed me to feel it, embrace it, and let it consume me. My grief needed to remind me that the love I have for my father did not deserve to be buried, and that grief is simply love looking for some place to land. 

The moment the world implodes with, yet, another political or humanitarian crisis and everyone’s think-tank caps immediately spring into position, the only thing I feel inclined to do is hide. I find myself mindlessly scrolling as I internalize my panic and anxiety. The pressure to have the perfect academically intelligent response to the events that just occurred is looming.

My protector, my rock, and my best friend was gone. Just as I had experienced in the dream, I felt his essence vanish from my body. I felt an emptying, physically and spiritually. My core, my being seemed to evaporate just as he was disappearing. The breath vacated my lungs. Surviving this was unthinkable, unimaginable. Life as I had known it would never be the same.

I grieve for us because you and I never got to experience that euphoria. Instead, our connection was severed immediately upon my arrival. They ripped me from your arms and determined our destiny without consulting us. They second-guessed your abilities because of your disability. Our society, built on a supremacy of able-bodied whiteness, decided that your disability, your race, and your class were inferior and treated you as such. They stole your autonomy over your body and they stole my only need as a baby in the process: my maternal connection with the only mother my newborn self knew.

So, I’ve somehow arrived here. I blinked. It’s 10 years later. I’ve reached the age that I used to tell myself would be the magical age when everything would finally feel aligned. I’m here. And, so very little feels aligned.

I often have to remind myself that Beyoncé is a regular human like me. She has arms and legs, fingers and toes, fears and worries, anxiety and peace, grief and joy — just like the rest of us. The genius of her work is proof that she is in a league all her own, not because she is some beyond-human species that is above the rest of us, but because she put herself there.