Consider it late at night in Cape Town, 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. We walk up to the drive-through window and place our orders with the lady who is only half paying attention, it’s cold but the laughter keeps us warm. Just as she’s sent your order to the kitchen she asks:
“What are you doing here?”
It’s often that I’ve been asked this question, the asker usually confused, curious, surprised or simply nosy. They question your presence in the space that you fill and demand an explanation for it. Why are you here? Who sent you? Do you know what time it is? The asker exercises their control over the space and makes you feel foreign in a place that you are allowed to exist. Now we could question why the asker feels the need to obtain this position, but rather let’s question why we allow them to make us feel this small. After all, you are allowed to be.
Many of us are made to feel small, insignificant and apologetic for taking up space. Whether it’s being shushed or being asked to withhold our opinions, tone down our sense of fashion, or being constantly questioned. In one way or another, the society that we live in is endlessly forcing us to be smaller, take up less space and become easier for the public eye to consume. But this is the mindset that will always have you apologising for simply being. Yet in all people being granted every right to exist by simply being born, why should we continue to live like this?
We shouldn't.
In-case nobody has told you recently: you are allowed to be. You’re allowed to occupy the space that you stand in. You’re allowed to laugh and make mistakes and with that fully experience what it means to be alive. One should understand that it is only you who can grant you the permission to exist, and with that seize the space, occupy it fully, and blossom beyond measure. Granting yourself the liberty to exist can take form in the ongoing conversation in your mind remembering that you are allowed to be yourself, that you don’t have to apologise for being human. It can take the form of being unapologetic with your existence, and refusing for anyone else to make you feel that way.
Currently, you’re reading one of the measures that I’m taking in my attempts to claim my space in the world. By no means am I a role-model for how to do this perfectly, but if anything I have a lot of mistakes that I can't wait to share! I wish to not only fill this space of mine but occupy it with every gram of passion that I have, because there are so many parts of myself that I have let society eradicate, only for my fear of being in-consumable.
For those who have never struggled with such an obstacle, I hope another article will draw you back to my blog, there's a lot yet to be spoken about here. But for those who have, I continue to challenge you to allow yourself to really be and share your experiences with me.
And to answer her question:
"I'm here to order McDonald's," said with a wobbly voice, but nonetheless said aloud to those that wish to make us feel uncomfortable in a space that was made to be occupied.
