Now... it makes sense
I want to tap back into The Netherlands.
Perfection does not exist, but excellence does.
In 2017 I experienced city infrastructures and public social gatherings that WORK. Experiencing life in The Netherlands was the safest I had ever felt as a person living in a dark-skinned Black, femme presenting, androgynous body. Now, I understand that as a person in a dark-skinned Afro-Indigenous body with an autistic and gender expansive/trans masculine experience of life - if I felt relatively safe as a femme in the Netherlands, I know that I’ll feel relatively safe in my masculinity as well.
On a solo vacation to escape the oppressive celebration of genocide, I spent a little over a week in November exploring all I could - with the mission to find and learn about Black culture in European countries.
I experienced proof of life and self-love, bubbling up at the surface in Rotterdam. I interacted with open, warm-hearted, and generous Black people in shared spaces.
I experienced access to medicinal resources without restrictions.
I experienced access to Caribbean foods that rewired my understanding of island flavors. You haven’t tasted curry until you’ve had Surinamese curry. The plate I had, alone, has had Rotterdam on the forefront of my mind since 2017.
I experienced care, at every turn; even in Amsterdam. I had all the experiences I needed to navigate a bike-paced city with functional public transportation options.
I was fed by the people's cultural connections and quality living innovations. Rotterdam is a place I am not overwhelmed by, enough so that I can actually begin to repair my nervous system in their day and nighttime environments.
At that time, the Netherlands had the potential to fulfill my need for a place of stability; as I witnessed how it served all who are in search of its strengths. I assume my status as a visitor mostly distorted my view on the Dutch version of systemic anti-Black racism. However, the racism I did experience, didn’t stop shit. It didn’t break me. It was nearly, a mild tremble. The ghosts of my ancestry’s past don’t live here. Which means, I can actually rest here.
I hope the cities I experienced (or others I’ve yet to) can still be, healing, for me.
The mishandling of COVID fucked up our collective quality of life, indefinitely. I will never have the same experience of any place I revisit. However, I hope the people of the Netherlands were able to persist, somehow, through this shift. I hope they still care about public health/safety in the ways I saw it modeled in the past.
My body is exhausted. I need sustenance and a place to land. I’ve been displaced for too long.
I need the space to rebuild and re-energize my whole self. That space does not reside within crumbling societal environments. Only instability can exist on cracking and dysfunctional foundations.
While I am certain there is a societal breakdown occurring in the Netherlands due to their peculiar political positioning in a very public genocidal campaign being led by Israel and enforced by The US and UK…
I also believe their social positioning has revolutionary potential that can inspire different ways of living for people that are forced to live in societal deserts. People who know there is so much more to life than what is in front of you, and are searching for ways to find it.
My mind is free. My body... is still behind bars of barriers, weighing me down. Physically and emotionally. I can't hold this weight. I can't lift it alone anymore. We're not meant to.
Sigh.