I remember exactly where I was when Mac Miller died. Kendal and I were sitting in my Dallas apartment, an apartment I loved and still love, even though it resided in a city I hated and still hate. We were despondent. Outside, the sky was gray, rain pattering against my fire escape, the whole earth seeming to share in our grief.
Mac is the only artist that I have mourned as if I knew him, the only celebrity whose death affected me as if he were a friend or family member of my own. Every year, on his birthday or the anniversary of his death, I listen to one of his albums, repost a eulogy on my Instagram story.
There was something light about the way Mac lived life. And it was evident, even as a fan. I know many fandoms feel this way about their faves, but Mac was beloved by everybody. He smoked weed with Snoop Dogg. He was shouted out by Jay-Z. He has a feature with Bun B. His closest friends in the industry were hoodrats and hustlers, people who would only stand beside and behind a pasty white boy from Pittsburgh if that pasty white boy were worth standing beside and behind. Mac never used a Blaccent, never pretended to be more hardened or less privileged than he clearly was. And he was happy. It exuded from his music, in his interviews. He was tortured, that much was obvious, too, but he lived life with a fervor and gratitude that was genuine and self-evident.
I have been told I present this way, too, that I make people feel more comfortable being themselves, that when they speak to me they feel heard and unjudged, that my brand is “hot and unhinged,” that I have a “great smile.”
I believe these things are true. I know that I am loved. I know that there are so, so many people out in the world praying for me, rooting for me–people that I have been blessed to know for years, who have hugged me when I cried, scraped me off bathroom floors, and people I have been grateful to know once, who have stopped me in the bar, told me their life story–because there is something about me that makes them feel loved and seen.
Growing up, my parents used to say “If you’re going to be in it, be in it to win it.” The unspoken, “If you’re not going to win it, don’t be in it,” was implied. My brother and I are gifted enough that we will exceed expectations at nearly anything we try. So the work of our adulthood has been figuring out what we care enough about to give the entirety of our essence. Because that’s what “being in it,” requires. There is no half-doing. There is no halfway. If I am going to give, if I am going to try, then I have to give everything, be everything.
My friends and I call this “Whole ass or No ass.” My therapist says that this is a healthy way of reclaiming a rather constrictive, prescriptive, and corrosive narrative from my youth. And, sure, it’s more fun to say. But I’m not convinced it weighs any less. I’m not sure it costs any less. I don’t think it requires any less of me.
To whom much is given, much is required.
Luke 12:48
At some point along the path of adulthood (with all the pain that path has incurred) I decided to give my whole ass to us, to people. I love people. I love our minds. I love our stories. I love the nuance and pain and irrationality of our silly little infinite existences.
And so, yes, it makes sense that loving us as much as I do, giving the entirety of my everything, 100% of my whole ass, to every human I meet, means that I am loved almost infinitely in return. Here is the Catch-22. I know how to give. I am grateful to receive. But I have no tools with which to sustain, no receptacle to contain, this much love. I am overwhelmed by love. I am exhausted by love. I struggle with the reciprocity of love. I cannot hold in my mind the reality that my gratitude to be trusted to listen, to study, to see, means that people are also grateful for me.
And I am insufficient, unworthy, ill-equipped. Because I don’t know how to give less than my whole ass, how to be less than totally present–but only for the two hours we are on the phone, for the three minutes a text takes to craft, for the nights, beneath covers and stars, that turn into days. While I am rationing my 100%, giving everything I have to everyone I can, at once so little and so much more than I can sustain–the people who love me remain. Their love maintains. I do not know how to reconcile the steadiness of this love when I’m the one that’s grateful. I’m the one not giving enough.
You love the one you’re with.
Carolyn Sue Bratton (Grandmother)
oneBlack experience 