Marginalization: to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group.
- Merriam Webster, about It
Now, we aren't prescriptivists here. Just because Merriam-Webster declares It to mean this does not mean that the word truly carries that meaning. Better yet, the meanings of words can hardly be expected to remain the same person to person.
It is a word I hear a lot in the context of me, my friends, and the broader world we live in, but surely no two people experience It in the same way. It is a fire, manufacturing our deviance, yet giving us the chance to experience each other in the sidelines.
I see you, the reader, as a framed picture of a mountainside, textured with detail finer than the camera could capture, yet presented as pristine and untouched for the viewer's pleasure. Each of your details can be explained away by the geologist, but your essence remains in a Beyond, perceived only by you, yet sharing an ethereal connection with the essences of your neighbors.
So too is It. We have our features—our hair, skin tone, our laughs and cries—but in our essences, we share It. We experience the fear of those who make It, resentment towards those without It, but most importantly, the recognition with those who also feel It.
In my experiences with It, It sometimes fades into the background. But, It's never not there, but It feels like a sphere of eyes, seeing beyond my skin, glaring daggers into my sense of person-hood.
I cannot name It, because to name It is to name myself, to warp my essence into a malformation that exists to strip me, to exploit my labor, to savor my body to for the gluttony of those without It.
As I have engaged with others who feel It, I came to recognize that It is not the same for everyone. But perhaps that should have been obvious. How presumptuous would I have been to have assumed that we shared the same essence? I see It in you, yet It's colored by the flora on your slopes, and continually shaped by the ecosystem you are. I would do a disservice to pretend I can even begin to understand your complexity from the still frame I have been permitted to only barely observe.
While It pushes us to the margins, we cannot forget It exists in the in-betweens, not in a Beyond. It is not immune to our acts of resistance, nor our sense of community. We can choose to exist, survive, and thrive in the sidelines, growing them larger, until the entire space is the sidelines. Infinite in the sense of having no end. It cannot exist without spaces to grow.
It is not impervious, only immaterial.
- xoxo