Leaving Lisbon and Leaving the studio
Throughout the time I've been in Lisbon and specially in the start of my transition I struggled a lot with how people perceived me as I became more unapologetic in the way I expressed myself. Unapologetic may not even be the most accurate word, but conformable, yes. I was definitely getting more comfortable with parts of me that I was making amends with. After so many years of chronic pain and migraines that only ceased when I began to understand how cis-heteronormativity was literally killing me.
To explain that to certain people who I thought understood me was literally hell. It hurt a lot realising how many people I would have to cut ties with because I was not willing to negotiate my boundaries or my sense of worth that came from knowing how much differently and carefully I had to move as a black trans person.
In the illustrators studio where I was working at the time in Lisbon (2017-2018) I was the only black person as well as the only trans/ queer one. As I started to undersand better the intricacies of being black and trans I became more vocal and would express myself with comments or online posts and content that shed a light on the reality of black, immigrant and or indigienous people globally. I felt there was so much more I needed to know and share because I grew up with the completely colonised view of the world and thought, if I am black and I feel this way about all of these things that were sold to me as truths, then white people REALLY need to know about this.
I cannot stress enough how the shock of realising that I was living in such ignorance made me angry. At the time, this anger was even criticized by my relatives, which I understand because in Portugal we as black people growing up in the 80's and 90's were not allowed to express ourselves about the racial issues with the imposed narrative that Portugal is actually better treating immigrants and that we had it good because the country likes to think of itself as warm and kind. We always had to bow our heads. I remember looking at my father when we were in the hospital or the bank and I saw the way that he talked to people when he was angry and I would get so embarassed, I just wanted to dissapear.
Nowadays I understand how it must have been crazy to deal with people who are racist to the root and not even aware of it and while there is no visible movement of anti-racism and decolonial practices as we see today. If now it's difficult I can only imagine then.
It's really crazy how much I had to put up with while growing up to then coming to a studio on which I just wanted to practice the craft that I've practiced all my life to be three times better than my peers, to then be told that I'm the one who is being racist (foreal they brought the inverse racism shit). I've been so angry for not having the mental health to practice my craft and then being told that I complain too much for being black and trans by people who have no idea of what it is to do a complete 180º to your life just for the need of recovering yourself from all of the exaustion of trying to fit into white heteronormative spaces. I had to learn from my mistakes but I decided that I was not going to apologize to people who don't want to learn that they also do these mistakes. Evolution is not linear and it's not solely individual either. If you're not aware of the things that you can do better through the connections you make with other people then you're most probably living in your own fairy tale. That's why some of us end up doing everything to keep living in delusion, denial to the point that is so violent and the potion taken to keep oppresive powers thriving truly.
It's been 7 years since I've been in that studio and for so long I've never made it public of how incredibly damaging it was for me having to put up with illustrators who are white, cis, privileged and don't move an inch to share awareness about anti-immigration and anti-rights groups and movements that have been working diligently for years to be where they are now. To share working spaces with people who instead of supporting you as someone who works with them and has a strong body of consistent work, try to censor you because they feel their identity threatened. Because they made their identity also based on the colonizer mentality which clearly is crumbling with voices rising from the appendices of history to bring the forgotten words that were taken out of the book so that the atrocities they did could never be named.
How much can you function with anger, rage in your systems? How long? It definetly can be and it is a motor but every motor needs rest and what black, indigenous and racialised people have to do constantly is managing the times on which to be anger and find ways to smooth the effects it has in their systems. So much fire can lead you to burnout when 1st: you don't understand or are not connected with your community and 2nd: you don't know how to access your own self to find out how to soothe yourself. We are able to regenerate when connected to our sense of self and what racism does is taking you out of your capacity for regulation in your body.
It would be simple if this was just a simple surviving thing that everyone has to do just like when if we're in the wild our senses need to be alert for dangers of predators. The thing is that there are people constantly working in way to make racism more pervasive and hidden, so the work is never done. You have to constantly be aware and awake so not to let your energy be taken away from you. because if it happens some people will still blame you for "giving away your power", missing in understanding that as much as you love yourself, your skin or what makes you you, nobody can love themselves out of systemic oppression or genocide.
Some people don't move unless the issue is affecting them directly and I think this has something to do with dulling the senses to stay comfortable using history or science only in the parts that are convenient for them without telling the whole story. It is convinient for them to do so. Of course that not everyone is fit to be vocal about what we face as human but many times they send signals that they are much more open and understanding than what they actually are. It's very perverse the way in which even in community we are tricked into believing some very well intentioned people because of the way in which knowledge and language is used to commodify resistance movements.
What some of some describe as imposter syndrome can be actually just a product of not seeing yourself represented in a more multifaceted and complete way, which leads us to believe that we are alone in our struggle when there are more people who share the same or very similar issues in navigating the world.
To convey your feeling is something hard to do when you're constantly bombarded of ways in which you are made to believe that you should express yourself.
After these espidodes in the studio of illustrators and comic artists I was sharing space with in Lisbon, I decided to leave the space because I could not spend any more energy trying to convice or teach people who were not willing to even consider that the fact that they are white is something that they should check with themselves, and who refuse to believe me even just as a person (without thinking about race or gender or social class).
It was exhausting to do so and I left. I left this studio, illustration groups and gradually the whole community itself as I saw how far we were from each other in terms of the understanding of how we cannot move in the same ways through the job market. I could keep going but the price to pay for my mental health and self preservation was too big.
I could only do so much, at the time.
Still, I love myself for taking the decision to leave. It was not easy and the following times were very difficult in terms of feeling confident when creating, because I had to build my confidence from a different place than where I was used to, where I was comfortable. I thought that as long as I drew more and I kept practicing I would be safe as in, people can say the shit they want about me but they can't say shit about my work because I know it's amongst the best if not the best. Then I started to question, why do I have to place my worth in my ability to draw or convey my feelings in a way that people think it's cool or enough or, beautiful. am I not allready all of these things and drawing is just a channel through where all of these parts of myself are expressed? Why do I have to reduce myself into my skills? Why can't I just be? Like Alice Walker says, I'm not a rose but I am a marigolld and I can just be the flower that I am, to grow and bloom and just flowering. I can just be humaning. I will not be discussing about what is human or not (because I believe that once you start fighting to be recognized as human you take the risk of becoming a beast) but I can be humaning.
It's so sad to know that once we start realising how well we can carry ourselves by being just the person we are is when we also start spending time grieving the parts of us we left behind for understanding how distanced we got from our own selves and our agency.
Understanding "I was never too much" or "I didn't need to put up with so much" really hits you when you spend some time at peace with yourself. Self-love can come up. Dressed as rage to clear the path towards your conscience, so that you're aware that somethings need to be pushed out to make room for better. Other relationships with yourself and the people around you.
In the end I don't feel like talking so much more about this because there are other things that need attention in my life right now. It's going to take some time to digest how all of it impacted my capacity to express myself throught visual art for so many years. But even so I needed to put this out because I never really talked about it publicly for fear of having to keep arguing with people about things I thought were already a common understanding, while losing the energy I need to survive (something they will never have to think about).
