A Frequency of My Own

by Kimberly C. Jones©

For as long as I can remember
I have been considered something—
put into a box with a neat label,
a box that never quite fit,
a label that never quite spoke to the essence of me.

As I grew, the labels changed.
They became less about me
and more about the parts of me
they didn’t understand.

I never quite fit the mold of the box—
the standard that was set long before
I became a part of this world.
And so, I became too…

Too little
Too big
Too shy
Too different
Too much of a contradiction
to what they thought I should be.

The contradiction came in many forms…
I was too White to be Black
and too Black to be White,
And my existence between the two worlds buzzed around me
like the static on a radio searching for a clear signal.

I was just too much for anyone to understand—
They tuned into the echoes of who they thought I was,
because they never learned how to see me.
And I never learned how to see myself.

In a world of labels,
the box became my cage.

But somewhere in the quiet,
beneath the weight of every label,
I began to hear a softer truth—
a voice that did not come from them,
a voice that rose from inside the cage
and called me by my real name.

It was faint at first,
a whisper beneath the noise,
but it was mine.
And slowly, I learned
to turn toward it,
to see myself
without their shadows in the way.

And once I learned to see myself,
the box began to loosen.
The labels lost their weight.
The cage I’d carried for years
revealed itself as paper—
thin, fragile, its words covered in the ink of those who wanted to tame me.
And as it fell away into hollow pieces—
I knew it was never meant to hold a life like mine.

So, I stepped out, slowly,
softly,
into my own truth—
telling my own story, uncontained,
no longer asking to be understood.
I began naming myself
in a language that finally felt like mine.