Twenty-Something Renaissance This is me growing into myself.

 Demetria L. Lucas' Real Talk: Should We Air Our Dirty Laundry? had my mind running suicide drills.

I wasn't so concerned with the race issue. I was thinking about what happens when black girls who grew up with drug dealers and learned at an early age to drop when they heard gunshots become the young women their families sacrificed so much to mold. What things do we gloss over during mimosas with black girls who were raised to be socialites?

I exist in multiple worlds and I'm careful not to speak too much about one in the other. At home I don't say certain names because I'd hate to feel like I dropped them.  I don't give too many details on too much of anything. I just tell folks things are going well. And when I'm away, I rock Oakland pari and shy away from discussions about local headlines that have become national. Like black folks in a room full of whites, I try to only talk about the good. I say we are amazing. I say we are trend setters. I say we are revolutionary. I defend us to no end. I do not say we are also effed up.

When I posted Murder to Excellence, I felt some kind of way. Yes, the piece was about my wanting to make more of an impact, but in the end I felt like I was exposing some ish I shouldn't have to people who didn't really need to know about it. I was fine with my Oakland folks reading it. It was for them. But I hated that this truth would also be accessible to "others."

This weekend another baby was shot and my really good friend was robbed at gunpoint. My brain went into overdrive. I wanted to write about all of the emotions that came along with the news, but felt bad that I'd be giving blog space to the negative ish in my hometown again. I felt like I was betraying us yet again. I reasoned should write about the Art and Soul Festival instead. Maybe a fly restaurant I couldn't wait to get back to or how I missed running the lake. Anything but what was plaguing me at the moment.

Growing up friends and family always had advice on what to do in "mixed company." You learned what women should and shouldn't say around men. And you got the "act like you have home training" lecture when some well-off person took the little inner city kid out of their element.

But we were never taught how to be completely truthful, unashamed and unapologetic.