Everything is Colonial Violence and I am Tired.
- Ino A. Kodjo
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
this is an unedited free write.
Today, I have got nothing else but like gut wrenching, jaw clenching, looping energy in my body. What’s that called, anxiety?
From the slaughter/enslavement and genocide of both innocent and criminal people and wild horses to domestic violence and missing children rates in my community. I am so tired. Not lay down tired or even cry tired.
I am fuck shit up tired. I am so tired I can feel unbridled and indiscriminate rage are boiling in the pit of my belly. Then I will be the danger, hmm? But nothing that brought me to this point. Very very toxic culture to live in.
“WE ARE NOT ANGRY ENOUGH”
what if anger isn’t a mobilizing emotion for everyone? What if it only gets you so far? What if you need ALL the emotions, my nigga?
If you ask me I can’t do nothing cause im not happy enough. My body literally barely have the energy to get water in the morning. I’m not depressed, I am battling despair. There is a difference.
Who will even read these words? My little body is so disrupted. All of the violence has made cultivating love safely nearly impossible. All of us are capable of enacting colonial violence but it doesn’t seem like enough of us are invested in learning a new way of life. Any time someone enacts colonial violence on me I gotta regulate their nervous system, then explain, then wait to be believed, and that’s the hard part for people. Understanding and believing that they can do harm, they can’t face that. So it loops back around to me. I must be liar, childish, dramatic, reactive, insane….you name it. This wound has been living and breathing and thrashing in my body since I was born. You know some people don’t even believe Black babies when they cry?
I am losing faith that any other dynamic is possible for me in The United States.
I’m still navigating recovery from The Very Bad Thing and figuring out what I actually need. What is my actual capacity. Any time I’ve tried to do this in a group I am treated very poorly by one or more members and I choose to leave or am asked to. So, I won’t get to decide any of that, I fear. Violence begets violence, hurt people hurt people. I lost every tangible pathway to freedoms in this country when Trump was elected and my ex boyfriend lost his fucking mind. Our relationship shifted from a cool pond of compassion and sweet love to a desert where one guy has a well and the other one doesn’t. Like how do I love safely when political inequity is set up on purpose and the person supposedly fit to love me can just vibe through that. Just gaming through my oppression and completely emotionally unavailable. But that’s patriarchy. Like these men think that being the only bread winner means they bought us. They think whatever difficulties they face at work entitles them to act a goddamn fool at home. So that’s what I been going through. Reaching out for help and being told “let that man love you” because he hasn’t punched me yet I guess. I don’t really know.
When trump got elected, I opted to stay with my boyfriend (now ex) instead of traveling alone, because I was afraid of getting raped again or worse. But it’s like all violence, so what does it really matter? i can stay here and be casually abused and neglected by him and possibly everyone until the connections between my brain and body are so faint and disfigured that I die or I can go try something new that might trigger several trauma responses at once? And if im immersed in a new culture what then? Will I be punished or cared for? How much of what I read online can be trusted? Is this a real travel agent? Or an AI bot.
Is this a real artist retreat or a sex trafficking ring. Like — that’s so much bullshit to think about. I can get a job at another school and vomit twice a week from the stress. I can keep applying for jobs and keep getting rejected because STL is a berybtransphobic city do not be fooled, and we now have no protections.
You all beg and beg and beg for artists who care, Who will sing about the data centers and paint about re-indigenization. You beg for rawness and vulnerability and expansion. I deliver. Over and over my work is suppressed to I am ignored because im not cisgendered. Because im not selling my body or the idea that if you were rich enough you could buy it for me. Guess what man? all of that is violent too. All of our music is violent and that also makes me quite miserable. All of our pop culture worships violence. You give all of your coin to agents of white supremacy. You are paying them to step on you at this point. Not hot!
I thought God wanted me to be a singer and maybe she does. She probably does. I wanted that too. I do want that, presently. But not if it costs me this much. Trying to stay in the United States to get noticed by the “right” people so I don’t have to wonder off to another country alone is costing me too much. I think wondering off alone might be the thing that saves my life. Every other avenue keeps me tethered to someone who doesn’t even have the ability to stomach what I face. I’m not sure where I’ll go. Benin is calling to me. Lots of places do.
Right now im writing an album called My Name is Ino, introducing myself and my story, expressing my sentiments about the worlds history + current events, exploring my ọgbanje nature and related lessons in love. This is maybe the fifth or sixth album I’ve written since I was raped that I can’t get off the ground. Creative spaces are not accommodating for people with mood or memory “disorders”, queer spaces are often predominantly white here and STL is notorious for pedestalizing abusive artists.
I’ve got to go somewhere else! But how, like I said surviving being strangled and putting my own psyche back together doesn’t seem to be enough for the masses to latch on to and it’s also significantly disrupted my ability to hold a job. I am not going to humiliate myself here by recanting my trials with western clinical and therapeutic systems, just know I tried. It costs money to create anything that would make getting and keeping people’s attention easier. OR it costs me my integrity , or my pride or my safety. And im just tired of all of that, of there always being a cost I can’t afford. Tired of morning panic attacks. Tired of AI job interviews, tired of pleading for people who say they love me to see my FULL humanity and just share the privilege they were born into. Tired of getting tricked and trapped into dynamics where my body becomes currency for that foresight and consideration. Tired of serving a collective of human beings that don’t seem to see me at all.
I really want to make music, but I cannot do that and scramble for safety at the same time. That’s why my blog isn’t consistent. I don’t have enough safety. For those of you who don’t know I had to go no contact with my entire family because of queer phobia and abuse. So I really have no support. I started ballet because I missed dancing and need to be around people and now I can’t afford that anymore either.
Perhaps…..
it’s time to stop doing every thing and just go away for a while. That’s the step I keep skipping out of fear. I don’t know where I’ll go. I’ll try to still write to you all. Maybe God will prove me wrong. Maybe in the stillness I will find the answer and be able to make music anyway.
Before I go, please understand that anger does not produce creativity in a way that serves us long term. It creates a ricochet of reactive responses that leave us more drained and distrustful of one another than anything else. Like to keep it a buck a lot of shit we could try means getting in tune with your creative body and nature. But you think those things are a waste of time because of the ways you internalize whiteness and its expectations for you.
“WERE NOT ANGRY ENOUGH!!!”
No, we’re not creative enough. Anger stalls you, it makes itself into too many different masks.
Creativity and nature show you the way. Yall not tryna win!!! You want everything handed to you. lol. You only see winning through bloodshed which is also just whiteness again, puppeteering you without your knowledge. Scary stuff.
We don’t need more anger, we don’t even need more money. We need trust and creativity. We could fuck up data centers with roaches probably like really fucking fast. So, if you’re reading this start a roach farm today. I’ve seen roaches fuck up apartment buildings in less than a week. Roaches love crawling up in electronics because of the heat and moisture that gets trapped in them. Raise the cockroaches and tell them what to do. We gotta be like Willard about this, I’m so serious. Have y'all see this movie?
I’m being serious in a facetious manner but…M
maybe the answer is the same for me…find a way to lean on nature for help, to be myself. I’m just the only person I know living this way with integrity, so it’s scary. Especially looking at all that could happen to me if I step off the ledge of anger and find another way to move through life. A life of anger creates blind spots that often foster more internal abuse first, before any external good can be reached. Anyway, slug slime can make humans really sick if they get it in any of their orifices or in an open cut. It can even cause a coma. I’m not sure how to create protections for marginalized people with this yet but I know it’s possible. Will get back to you. Here’s a snippet of a song I wrote about everything I just said to you. If you see it on socials,please share! On top of everything else on my nerves I’m shadow banned…..again. I want to pop off by word of mouth like back in the day. Like when I was comin’ up.
If you’d like to support my journey or artwork monetarily, you can shop here https://www.anansisdream.com/new-collection-1
Or donate to Venmo: @Nineindreamland
Modupé and I hope we talk again. 🌷
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