oh gurl, just enjoy your vacation

Katie Numi Usher
4 min readSep 26, 2023

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Things I’ve learned from this recent trip to western United States of America, was a culmination of what I have felt with lesser and greater intensity in the 10 years that I have been visiting here, is that disappointment is a given, and while dreaming and hoping may seem like futile endeavours, lacking the very essential wherewithal in a capitalist society, thankfully, prayers never quit. I finally got a good long cry on Sunday morning. Airport crying, I feel, is the best, no one knows you and no one cares, so you can just cry freely and not baffle nor fumble trying to explain what you can’t even understand yourself. I am ever more convinced that travel is only for people with credit, debit or some digital pay, because trust me —I have suffered this so many times and I am extremely hesitant to do so again - you’ll be in that airport, and on those long flights with nothing, unable to do anything. I have written about this here:

Thankfully for me, my ancestors ensure all goes to plan, no missed connections, no cancellations, otherwise, I’d be totally unable to help myself and without anyone else to assist me.

I am very dubious if intimate love is actually available for everyone. Forgive my taut foray into an assumed scarcity mindset but unless people are intentional about truly loving and caring first for themselves and then others, I’m not sure if I can see everyone attaining their own greatest love story of all time. That’s pretty clear to me now. Knowing what I know now, I certainly regret every failed attempt at nurturing anything that bore even mere resemblance in the absurd hope that it would obtain value it never had to begin with. I have begun to wonder if I’m the kind of woman that men desire greatly but cannot ever love. The wider question in the background is surely whether or not cis-gendered heterosexual men have that ability these days. One look or listen at their social media posts and podcasts and there is so much to be desired. It’s not even a question of if they can love as yet, but rather do they even like us at all, based on how they view us in their utterances? For years, I have been watching from the sidelines for my peace of mind. I’ve got a few friends and some relatives who do love and respect me deeply. I need to make that enough, I need to stop browbeating myself into seeking out if there’s anything else beyond that for me out there. If it is or isn’t, stressing myself out about it won’t do any good. I did get some wonderful news, and I am keeping my fingers crossed on that.

I had a few beautiful moments and I am savouring those. I am trying really hard to have that balance out the disappointment, the hurt, the dashed expectations, seeing people’s true nature in it’s full, raw ugliness, and trying to tame the ”girl why dafuq you even came out here!!!” refrain which has been scraping at my scalp this whole time.

Anyways, no more box braids for a while, I sit way too long to have to take them out so fast and still have to fight to style my hair daily. Those kaneklon fibres aint that cheap anyways. Also what a waste, I’m sure the environmentalists would find less plastic spending extra short times on my head, but forever in landfills very agreeable, since they are certain, and erroneously trying to convince us, that it’s the small “green choices” of individuals and not huge necessary changes from multinational corporations that will steer us away from this hellscape climate crisis.

I began to wonder if I am just that sad, bitter, ungrateful 37 year old, I’ve often been accused of being. Maybe I am constantly unhappy, not because unsavoury shit happens to me — because unsavoury shit happens to everyone, all the time, in vastly different ways and at varied levels of damage — but because i don’t spend enough time being aware and grateful of and for what does work. Then maybe the toxic positivity people are on to something, unrealistic, non-existent constant positivity regardless if the world is on fire all around you, as the opioid of masses. I can feel the tears in the back of my heart as I write this. I rest knowing they won’t manifest themselves until I’m alone again.

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Katie Numi Usher

Black woman artist and writer trying not to be dissolved by (post)colonialism