One of the hardest things for me to do was acknowledge that I did straight up take bumps from both Black and non-Black kids for being black and nerdy growing up (a former white friend did actually call me the whitest black guy he knew once) but also that I turned that into bad armor. (2/5)

Growing up Black & gifted when some peers will project resentment & strangeness & "not-Blackness" on you both makes you terrified of failing to live up to your potential but also isolates you from grasping how the expectations go to your head, and I had both of those issues going on. (3/5)

Teenage me definitely ignored some flat-out racist things that happened to him to fit in, and used Black Excellence as a crutch to deal with it, but some days I remember a LAN party I went to in high school and regret it to my bones because of some of the anti-Blackness that happened there. (4/5)

In some ways I'm still healing and processing from all of that, but sometimes I reflect on things and see how close I got to being *really* unhealed from it and becoming someone who let that rejection make him into a bitter, meaner sellout o fa person. (5/5)

Oh fuck yeah homie, once you get your first couple it's downhill from there