Straight face only means I want to fight. Any kind of smiling is passive aggressive. Looking sad means I want to fight. And of course looking angry means I’m angry with you and specifically you and nothing else. The only way to Fix My Face is to just hide it entirely.
I really hate my ugly ass face for all other reasons, but being unable to order food in person without a cashier thinking I’m angry and willing to fight over the pettiest thing possible is the last straw.
I can’t wait until I don’t need to work anymore and I can just shut myself away from society and be a white vtuber or something. If I really want fast food then I’ll do no contact delivery so the deliverer doesn’t assume I’m angry at them for literally doing their job.
Can’t even apologize for bumping into someone without them assuming I’m angry that they’re in my very important way. Whoops, sorry, excuse me, doesn’t matter what I said, it’s passive aggressive and I want to fight.
Can’t say anything is fine or okay, can’t thank anyone, can’t wish them a nice day, can’t greet them, can’t say anything without it being taken aggressively. And not saying anything at all is silent treatment, or passive aggression.
Can’t thank anyone for a gift. Every holiday, I was “ungrateful” for everything. My smile was fake and the thank you was sarcastic. I hate holidays, birthdays, and gifts for that reason.
So many black women glorify this as “culture”. I might as well be the only black woman who isn’t petty, passive aggressive, or overly willing to fight someone. I really wish I had just died at birth since clearly something is wrong with me.
I see this everywhere I go. I used to work a job that had a lot of black people along with other minority groups. I had three separate filipino people and one Indian person ask how I can talk so naturally with the black guy I talked with frequently there. I think one of them just had the hots for him, but the others asked if I don’t find him scary. Like what the actual fuck he’s easily one of the nicest guys I have met. We would talk tech daily and discuss things like how to make computers easier to use for our grandparents and prevent them from being scammed. But it kept happening. The job has high turnover so new people would come in and be scared of him for no reason. What the hell were they seeing that I wasn’t? I still don’t get it and I think about it a lot because he was like model level handsome with a natural smile that I would have thought nobody could ever distrust. I guess my childhood belief that good looking people had it easy was even more wrong than I thought.
I totally get you on the gifts thing though. I don’t visually express emotions like other people and have gotten to the point where I just tell people not to get me anything since I’m incapable of expressing gratitude whether it’s there or not. I really wish I had a solution here for both of us.
