WHO WE ARE: DEE MULLON
“I had to sit with the idea that I identify with several of these titles. To choose only 1 would discredit other intersectional aspects of who I am and who I believe I’m becoming.”
As a daughter, I am caretaker, supporter, best friend, inquirer, decision-maker. I am the daughter that I believe I would want for myself, and the daughter I believe my mother needs to push her forward into her greatest self. The privileges and consequences of my daughtering continuously shape who I am becoming and I am forever grateful for my ability to be both a daughter and sister.
As a sister, I am my brother's keeper and my sister's return to reality. I am both a crutch and a disrupter. I give power and take it away just as easily, but never without consequence. My truest self has been discovered in the grey area of where having siblings of both sexes lead me. My role as protector has proven not to reach as far as my brother resides, and to reach too far beyond in aspects of sisterly love, overstretching my core to the point of exasperation, disdain, and love. This cyclical experience is something I have grown to accept as is, but I still constantly fight against it. Feels more like a double-consciousness that I attempt to address through friendships.
As a friend, I have fallen behind in my duties to check on my strong friends, and in this process, have recognized that I can no longer be strong for everyone else. My own priorities in life, love, and happiness now overshadow my desire for friends to live as their greatest selves in love and life. Friends who have been able to accept those parts about me have been promoted to family.
As family, I have become comfortable with the idea that blood is thicker than water. And though that is the case, it does not mean that blood can't be diluted with water-like substances which results in negative tendencies that are not expected from family. The most hurt I've experienced has been due to this genre, but I'm not sure if I would trade it for anything because it makes me who I am and grows me unapologetically in my sternness, blackness, love, hate, misguided intuitions and searches for the truth. As afraid as I am of the vulnerability I have with family, I am more afraid to not have that vulnerability. In this reality, I am who I am in all of its facets and whoever meets me has to adapt. That's where friends get tied back in and I get checked as a sister and daughter...