Recently, a colleague, a friend said to me “Fernandez, you know what gets me about you? I have been trying to figure this out for a long time. It’s the fact that you just say things, straight, with no filter. You have no exit plan either. You say them and then you just exit the conversation.” I sat there. I smiled and laughed as he re-enacted how I tend to act when I am in the zone and have not garnered enough mental energy to engage in small talk. I am a blunt woman.
Yet, later in my solace, I began to wonder. Was there truth to what he was saying? Was I indeed a different person who spoke with no regard to the rebuttals of others? Could it be that I engage in conversations as if I am short-winded? As if, speaking more than an allotted word count in my mind would indeed cause others to believe that we were…friends? I ruminated, yet attempted to run from my own thoughts like the plague. It took me a while to sit with and analyze my own reality. I based my lived experiences against another’s perception of me and I realized that I have often been described as “blunt”, “straight-forward”, “needing to provide a little grace”. Yet, rarely am I ever described as being simply honest. The level of purity that floats along with the sails of this six-letter word, could not possibly apply to an adult brown woman. One still attempting to manage the voice of the little brown girl deep within; the brown girl who was once told “Don’t say things like that” or upon entering the workforce, “You’re not here for your opinion.” The negative connotation that is often attached to being blunt is frequently unwarranted.
The dictionary defines being blunt as being “uncompromisingly forthright”. That I am. I am truth shown brightly in a world that is all-to-often filled with lies and deceit. Being blunt is a necessity. No, I don’t dip my words in sugar nor do I layer them with gold. I am with a certainty still working on masterfully managing my tongue (after all, being tactful is a different skill set). Yet, to be “uncompromising forthright” bears a title that beholds strength. I am strong and I claim courage in a land filled with filters, retakes, and BBL’s. The unwelcomed truth is a friend to me while most are comfortable with sitting in their own lies. I may not have many words, but when I speak, I will settle myself into a realm of realness that most wouldn’t dare reflect. So no, I am not too fond of conversational filters and I may not have an exit plan, sometimes I’ll just leave. Yet, I have learned that love rests in a space that holds honesty coupled with accountability and I have my hands filled with each.
Special Note: A quick read that helps with comfortably taking up space is Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Settle into that for the winter.
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