Neti-Neti, not this, not that.

Neti-neti is a form of meditation that helps the individual understand the nature of brahman (absolute reality) by first understanding what is not brahman.

Last week I sat in a salon chair for six hours while a west african woman wound strands of my hair around themselves in small sections all over my head. Her fingers leaving the nape of my neck or the crown of my skull only to sip her gas station coffee, perhaps to answer the phone. Six hours she worked while I sat with my hands in my lap, meditating through the pain of each twist. They must be tight she says—use a steamy towel to relieve the pain.

I do not know if I hoped braids would make me blacker, more beautiful, less racially ambiguous, but I did hope in them for something.

I did hope to get to know myself but the intensity of the emotions that surfaced shook me deep inside.

Sweet and sour tears came from my eyes later, flooding the crevasse I’d cracked open by exploring this side of my identity. This black side of myself.

I touched the shaft of my braids to recall the texture of rope. My neck ached against their weightiness to suffer bondage.

My scalp protested for days, resisting against the searing tightness of the braids through self-immolation.

I remember making lists in front of the mirror of which traits I had taken from my black mother and which I’d been so regrettably cursed with by my absent white father. I don’t recall a divide before he left. I don’t think I was half this or half that before then. How I loathed the red in my father’s skin and the pink in mine until I noticed how much simpler it made my life compared to my darker relations.

My “white girl hair” the color of sticks was the fount of disbelief whenever someone asked ‘what are you’ and was told my origins.

I counted myself lucky to have manageable hair that swayed when I walked. It allowed me passage into social acceptance, and the option, truly, to hide if I wished. Often I did.

I accepted that I was black but not quite black enough for headwraps, twists, olive oil and satin pillow cases.

I enjoyed my privilege, calling on whichever color suited my needs from moment to moment. I meditated on concepts like

Yin and Yang, good and evil, happy and sad, black and white, duality, opposites, polarity with the truth of my existence between.

There really is no conclusion to this story. I have braids. I am not more black or more beautiful. I am more aware of being perceived in my white community. I am less able to hide. And through this experience I am less afraid of not being enough, whether that’s black, white, smart, funny, talented, soft, strong, this, that.

Who am I really? And do I have time to figure it out before joining the cosmos as dust?

Probably not.

So I remember Neti-Neti. Not this, not that.