Clarissa

Dear Journal,

I am trapped. My whole life, I have always had the master forcing me in everything. I am here in Philadelphia, not under his scaring gaze. But how can I make a break for freedom when my family is still there, my children's situation not made any better by my own freedom. Would I be selfish to leave them there while I run away from the horrors that they would still be facing every day. I have seen men do it, make a run for it, and we have not heard of them since. Maybe this means they were successful. But how then, could I be successful if I abandon the children that need someone to raise them, that need some kind of love in a place where we are constantly told we are nothing. Nothing but tools of the master instead of the children of God that we are. They can never understand us, and I can not understand them, how those that profess to be Christians can be so evil, create so much anger inside of me that if I could I would gather an army here and bring it down with me to obliterate his house. But I must prioritize my children, even though I can't see a future for them that does not make me cry. The tears are out of love for my family, and that love cannot be ever beaten from me. Here, in Philadelphia, I am in a city that is not filled with ghosts and demons of death and despair. However, those ghosts will follow me and are too strong for me to fight alone, I need my family. And my children need me to help fight them back at home, in the way that we can, which is staying together in the face of a life that is governed by terror.

-Clarissa (from page 71 of AR'N'T I A WOMAN?)