a message to E.

Hey E, sorry that I didn’t write you earlier, I was in a panic attack in the past 2 days for the US border situation and trying to figure out what I should prepare —— it was a real violence on mental health. I feel so sorry for the director case. I was thinking about it a lot. I feel life is a constant struggle between fighting against and submitting to reality and power. And if we are in between we get judged by both sides. we are also constantly used and tokenized because of this, when they need radical voices they put us in, when they don’t need they leave us behind. These days more than ever I’m also struggling with my in betweenness constantly as someone from third country living in Europe, feeling not belonging when I have to explain why I don’t have as many choices again and again. It’s frustrating but real, at school at least we all seem to be equal as students but in society I am judged differently almost immediately. I’m writing you now because I cannot sleep in the middle of the night and keep thinking about what a life in marginality really mean and look like. It must be so tough. We can talk all the glory things about being in the margin makes us resilient and sensitive to other struggles, but it is tough in the first place. It’s a toughness that i face every morning when i wake up and open my eyes. Maybe we don’t need to be always positive, we can allow ourselves to be sad sitting in our toughness together. Thank you again for the wonderful weekend and offering your home to us. Temporary but so precious. Hug you, Q. ——— reply from E. Dear Q, sorry for my slow response, I have been floating around a bit, trying to get some distraction. The distress of life is a real thing, right? Especially with your sensitivity and intelligence, you realize and feel it even more what it means to be an 'other' in so many ways. That's sometimes the burden we have imposed on ourselves, paradoxically so, because in our desires to understand our situations and address the injustices we and others face, it becomes like putting on a pair of glasses to the world that you can't put off. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. Once you understand your difference, you feel even more different. The reason why I am so obsessed with the Undercommons text is because it proposes a kind of way out, in that they do not propose to 'fix' the brokenness we feel in and because of a system that is fucked up, they do not propose to pay of the debt that is imposed on us, but rather empower us to embrace that brokenness, to remain in bad debt. This helps me, in many ways, to understand that with that outside-ness we are actually in a better place. Of course this is all nice on paper, but it is in being broken together, therefore its always and undercommons, that we find real strength. So lets just be broken together, understand that in that brokenness we are all but broken but finally find the joy to be ourselves and with each other. 25/04/04