Last night I went out on Halloween, something I don’t think I’ve ever done in my entire life. I was with a group of people, most of whom were total strangers, and we gathered to take in a play at the Arts Club on Granville Island.

I sat next to one of the strangers who told me that she’s trying a new thing; she’s making an effort to be social with friends at least a couple of times a week. “If I don’t,” she said, “I just go to work, come home, sit in front of the TV or Facebook. It’s too easy to lose yourself in that.” I nodded in agreement.

I’m trying to be more social and circulate more, but I can’t seem to get out of my own way. When I connect — really connect with someone, I want to be with them all the time. Henry Rollins described it as the OCD part of a relationship, and I know that level of intensity can be off-putting. So I play it cool. I withdraw. I refuse to reach out when there’s nothing I want or need more. Time passes, and the connection is broken and I’m left with nothing to show for it but my own neuroses.

Now that I’m older, I have less tolerance for playing games, but the motions feel so familiar that I make them by rote. What would happen if I said “Look, I really like you, and I’d like to be friends”? Or what would happen if I just hugged someone, personal barriers be damned, just to truly feel a connection that’s more than just emotional?

We have so many ways of creating and sustaining artificial distance between each other. We can ignore texts, pretend we didn’t receive emails, let chat messages go unanswered. I think these technological mediators have made it entirely too easy to forget about the people at the other end.

So here’s a deal I’m making with myself and with you. If I reach out my hand, will you promise not to slap it away? If I circulate and get out there, will you meet my gaze with no expectations or hesitation? I promise to do the same for you.

Life is far too short and far too precious to be coy.

Remember the encounter with the Morris Men from earlier this year? It turns out that a graduate student at UBC is making a short documentary film about the Morris men that “(examines) the the discussion that emerged from the controversy” (quoted from email).

I wrote back to the student and thanked her for contacting me, but declined to participate.

A good friend asked me a while back to help her with a project she was putting together to talk about sensitive conversations that have helped her grow and shift in her thinking. She’s a very warm, wholehearted person who has a huge capacity for understanding and empathy, but I told her that while I’m happy to have those conversations with her as an individual, I wasn’t interested in broadcasting my words to the world.

You see, I don’t want to be Your Black Friend. I don’t want to be The Black Expert.

Often there comes a time in situations like this where a white person wants to make a point about whether such-and-such opinion about black people is rooted in fact, that person will use me as a reference, as if to say “Well, my black friend Cecily says this is OK.”

I’m nobody’s get out of jail free card.

I can’t talk about the incident with The Morris Men anymore because I’ve said all I care to say about it. I’m not interested in having this conversation with The Morris Men or anyone else if they’re not interested in talking about themselves and their role in the perpetuation of racist thought or actions.

I don’t want to talk about this because I don’t want to stop being a librarian, a woman, a Southerner, an American, a Canadian-by-Choice, or someone who rides bikes. I don’t want to stop being black, but I don’t want to be a stand in for an entire group of people either. I don’t want to talk about it anymore because I don’t want to become “That Black Chick” in the eyes of the world.

There are a lot of books you can read about race, popular culture, and the intersection and interplay of both (most notably bell hooks’ Black Looks: Race and Representation amazon|library), and as a librarian, I will gladly help you pull together a reading list. But that is where my responsibility ends. I am not here to educate you, particularly if you haven’t put in the work to unpack what “whiteness” means in our larger society and what it means in your own interpersonal relationships and the way you see the world.

I am not your passport. I am not your certificate of accomplishment.

I’m Cecily.

It occurred to me that I feel legitimately happy for the first time in years.

Oh sure, money woes are never ending, and my health is uncertain, but somewhere along the way over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned to see my way through to the other side.

I’ll never be a grinning, empty-headed optimist, and I’ll always be serious minded and realistic, but I can see and feel a warm glow around the edges that feels comforting and centering.

It’s nice here. I think I’ll stay for awhile.