“Sometimes, I feel like I’m communicating with you underwater.” -Undrowned

Sometimes I feel I am speaking a different language from you, although we both believe we are just speaking English.

Is it because you are a man and I am a woman? Or because I appear less white than you? Maybe it’s because you are autistic and I am not. 

My mind tries to compute all the factors at play, but my heart is still racing and my tongue is still stuck. 

Over and over, I return to my body. Each time, the path is a little more clear.

In Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes about the way dolphins use sound both as a way of communicating with each other and as a way of knowing where they are in space. I wonder how much this is true of humans, too. Maybe it is ok to feel like we are communicating underwater. Maybe the sounds we make are sometimes not meant to communicate anything other than “I am here.” Maybe we can still connect with each other, even if we don’t think we understand.