Take Up Space

As a sleep tech, I come across a wide spectrum of people, all in search of the one thing many of us take for granted: a good night’s sleep. The setup process is long and involves putting wires spots that patients might find uncomfortable. Combine that with the fact that a sleep study involves me watching my patients all night through an infrared camera, and you have a recipe for discomfort and self-consciousness. It’s why, during the 45-minute setup, I try to engage with my patients on some level. Sometimes I can’t, and it’s a silent 45 minutes. Most times, we exchange pleasantries and have enough conversation that they’re distracted from the wire placement. It’s a rare occasion that we actually have something to talk about.

A patient I had this week (who, for the sake of legal and job security reasons, will be referred to as “PT”) had some body art I found cool. There was a tattoo on their thigh featuring a constellation bound within a human shape, and the words “take up space” written in, well, negative space. When I asked what it meant, PT said “It’s a reminder that it’s okay to exist in spaces that normally don’t include you.” I felt that, deep. It’s hard to be taken seriously as a Black writer. And because we live in an environment where the worthiness of the effort is only defined retroactively by its success, anything less than fame and fortune automatically labels someone as a failure—especially in the creative arts.

The time and place in which I grew up had low expectations of Black children, expectations which were reinforced in school. I have vivid memories of a white teacher at my elementary school telling a class full of people her assessment of my future, involving brooms, mops, and fast-food joints (my mother came to school a week later and verbally tore her a new one, but

The Fab 5 by Franklyn C. Thomas

that’s a story for another time). Those reinforcements are so strong, that an early beta-read critique of my first novel was that the characters, as teenagers and student-athletes, spoke too properly, knew too much about the game they played, to be believable as Black teens in a bad neighborhood. The suggestion was they should talk more “jive,” and that notion infuriated me to the point where I ignored other flaws in the book and its narrative. (Plus, these kids swear plenty.) These reinforcements are horrific and serve to ensure a lengthy cycle of underestimating one’s own talents, and limiting one’s prospects.

PT was right. It’s absolutely okay—necessary, even—to exist in spaces that don’t normally include you. Professionally, creatively, politically, whatever. It’s how brick walls and glass ceilings get broken.

#writing #race #creativity #expectations #thefab5 #shamelesspromo