Lay Your Head on Me | Major Lazer

“Don’t be afraid of love”

I need this track today. I need to be reminded to not be afraid of love.

Because it’s hard to except love when you’re afraid. And I’m afraid all the time.

I’m afraid to be myself.

I’m afraid to be messy.

I’m afraid to speak up.

I’m afraid to say how i feel.

I’m afraid to fuck up.

I’m afraid to express myself.

I’m afraid to make people feel uncomfortable.

Because the cost might be too high.

Because I might be ostracized, or hated, or reprimanded, or punished, or fired, or in the worst case physically hurt.

That’s the part of racism that’s hard to explain. Not the limitations placed on me by the word. But the limitations I place on myself because of the world. Every morning, I wake up and put on an emotional straight jacket that protects me from the harm the world will inflict on me if I expressed emotions that would make people come have to deal with theirs. And it wears on you.

“Don’t be afraid of love”

On Drag Race, RuPaul reminds me “if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love anybody else?”

But it’s hard to love myself in a world that makes me feel so unworthy of love.

It’s hard to love myself in a world, that in small and big ways, makes me feel unworthy of just being…myself.

Because I am messy. I do speak up. I say how i feel. I fuck up. I express myself. And sometimes I make people feel uncomfortable.

And I shouldn’t be afraid to do all of those things.

I shouldn’t be afraid to be myself.

I shouldn’t be afraid to love.

I need this track today.

And I think I’ve needed it for a while.