When Worlds Collide
She began her career indoors, and the world passed by her window
Thema and I used to work together. She started in February in our DC office. In March, thanks to ubiquitous video calls, I spent many hours looking at her face hiding under her ball cap in her bedroom. She would listen to her team members talk, and I began to notice her expert side eye. She is queer, and she stayed indoors for her first Pride as a college graduate. She is Black, and she stayed in that room during the protests. I asked her to write about what it was like to start her career and have to spend it in isolation, cut off not only from her co-workers but from historical and cultural milestones taking place right outside.
What she turned in was a revelatory gift, and I’m so happy to introduce you to my friend Thema and “When Worlds Collide.”
by Thema Thomas
At 3am, if I’m quiet enough, I can hear people walking in the alley next to my window. My reminder that beyond the four walls of my apartment, people still exist.
Whether I’m scrolling through my timeline or working on an assignment because I can’t sleep anyway, these footsteps keep me grounded. After months of remote working, it was easy to never acknowledge anyone beyond a name on a screen—a face, too, if they were lucky. But when June came, and names turned into hashtags, and hashtags turned into movements, I saw those names as more than just words. I saw real people being murdered, taken away from the world before their time. People who would never reach their full potential. Footsteps that would never walk in the alley next to me.
Stuck in my apartment, my worlds collapsed. Everything—work, news, tragedies—all became my personal life. This is not how I pictured my career starting off at all.
Where I live, in this made-great America, Black people and Blackness have never really been accepted. Even growing up, everything I knew, I knew in a proximity to whiteness. Even though I had a loving family that taught me how beautiful it is to be Black, it was hard to internalize when I saw white faces every time I went to school. When I turned on the TV, I saw white faces giggling and smiling in advertisements before returning to a show about white children—with a single, token Black friend – if I was lucky. I grew up knowing I wasn’t valued, and, in turn, I shrunk to make others comfortable (even now, I catch myself laughing off microaggressions in fear of causing too many problems or code-switching to appear more “professional”). Without representation, even with support from home, I felt isolated, unseen. I can look back and laugh now, but I vividly remember running away every time my parents tried to sit me down to read Happy to be Nappy. I cried at night because my name is Thema Aminah—a Ghanaian name meaning honest and loyal queen—and not Kelly, like Barbie’s little sister. I rejected these truths about myself, hoping if I hated myself enough, no one else would get the chance.
Everything I knew, I knew in a proximity to whiteness.
I’m happy to say it wasn’t like this forever. Unlearning the self-hatred I’d gotten used to was a long process, but I emerged from the other side a more confident version of myself. It wasn’t something I woke up one day and knew magically. It took years of self-realization and educating myself—not asking people to explain things to me and do the work for me, but using resources that were already available to teach myself more about Black and LGBTQ+ issues, womanism, and intersectionality. I live my life as a young, queer Black woman. I wear my identity on my sleeve, proudly, understanding that each part of me intersects: I am not Black before I am a woman, not a woman before I am queer. I love every part of me, and I refuse to sacrifice any piece for only a portion of the respect I deserve. When I speak about equality and justice, I’m speaking about each identity I personally represent and each identity I don’t.
After years of education inside and outside of the classroom, I was finally independent and ready to begin my professional career. When I started my first job in January, I knew it was the beginning of an unforgettable journey. I remember planning my first day, writing out my schedule for Sunday night to make sure I went to bed on time, picking out my outfit to make sure I looked my best. The office was right around the corner from me, and while I flinched as the cold morning air hit my face, I enjoyed the thought of having this moment to myself every day before I went into the office. Even walking up the metal stairs, letting myself in with my key fob (and a satisfying beep) and saying hi to the secretary Pauline before making my way to my desk in the back were simple pleasures I knew I would take joy in every day. My manager did everything she could to make sure I felt included. Melissa had my current position two years before, and made sure I had every toolkit, guideline and handbook I’d need along the way. She gave me a tour of the office (and most importantly, the kitchen) and showed me her favorite places to work and take calls. Since our team worked across international offices, she made sure I had a personal meeting with every team member, each person welcoming and encouraging me. In our local office, we had celebrations for holidays and even a couple farewells with equal amounts of food and laughter. It was nice to be at a place where I felt like anything was possible. I wasn’t afraid to express my dreams and goals, and, when I did, my supervisors gave me the experience I needed to reach my ambitions. January and February went by, and I began to get the hang of my new environment. If I knew it wasn’t always going to be like this, I would’ve hung on to the warm feeling of community a little longer.
Then came March. Within my first few months of employment, I went from going into the office every day, chatting up coworkers, and getting the hang of a scary little thing calling networking to being confined to my apartment’s few walls and windows. As the months passed, I accepted that my first year of independence wasn’t going to be everything I’d imagined. I said goodbye to seeing my linesisters at the next Howard Homecoming. I said goodbye to personal milestones like my first DC Pride.
“We thought you were out there.”
“Out where?”
“Turn on the news.”
The most difficult part about working remotely: The longer it went on, the harder it became to distinguish my personal life and everything else. Projects I completed, work conversations I had, news I watched, books I read – everything blurred. And for a while, it was no big deal. Finishing projects at 3am because I had nothing else to do, joining every company social event because I was desperate for human interaction—I let my work consume me, become me.
But as the world said goodbye to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Brayla Stone, Oluwatoyin Salau, and so many more, all my problems felt small.
With every new name, I cried. In these people, I saw my friends. My cousins. My sister. My dad.
I remember the moment when I realized I saw myself, too. A day I’d been working a little longer than usual, a day I threw my phone across the room so it wouldn’t taunt me while I tried to focus. When I finally put my laptop away for the day and grabbed my phone, 10 missed calls covered my screen: Mom. Then Dad. Then Nailah, my sister. Then, Mom again, and so on. I chose one of the calls to return, and my chest tightened as the phone barely had time to ring before my mom answered the phone, panicked.
“Thema? Oh my God, y’all, it’s Thema,” my mom said before I could confirm, “We thought you were out there.”
“Out where?”
“Turn on the news.”
I grabbed the remote and flipped the channel just in time to see police tear gassing protesters near the White House, in front of the church steps I stood on less than a day before while protesting in the same spot. I suddenly realized, before I got lost in an assignment, that’s where I told my parents I would be again that day.
After assuring I was okay and sending pictures to prove it, I ended the call with my family and returned my attention to the TV. As the scene replayed over and over, I realized how fast someone’s life can change, and how easily it could be mine.
The next day, I logged onto work as if nothing happened. I felt hollow as my coworkers went on with their daily routines. As my mother’s frantic cries replayed in my head, it was hard to do the same. As their lives went on while mine felt frozen, I thought of all the untold stories where moms’, then dads’, then sisters’ calls stayed unanswered. All the names-turned-hashtags that don’t trend.
Every day, on the news, on our feeds, we see painful images reminding us of the unjust world outside our bedroom walls. But additionally, what I don’t see when I scroll through my timeline or turn on the TV hurts even more. I see COVID-19 updates, but not the disproportionate number of Black women it left behind. I see names of Black people being murdered under the guise of police brutality and white supremacy, but not the names of Black people now gone because of violent homophobia and transphobia. To you, it may seem selfish or nitpicky, but it is hard to feel seen or validated as a queer Black woman when everything that I am is ignored and undervalued.
For some people, this was only a moment, a temporary adjustment to maintain their reputations as inclusive and socially responsible.
As the protests fade from the news cycle, #BlackLivesMatter stops trending, and companies switch out their rainbow for monochrome, I feel my value in society shrinking again. It’s not that those gestures meant much anyway, but that these changes only perpetuate my biggest fear: For some people, this was only a moment, a temporary adjustment to maintain their reputations as inclusive and socially responsible. Some people have the privilege of turning their backs to injustice and carrying out their lives, knowing they’ll never be affected by the phobias and the hate that fuel our nation. I can’t go back. We have to make sure our messages include everyone, especially those experiencing everything I’m describing. We can’t speak out because we want praise or accolades—we have to do it because it’s right. If we’re doing it for shallow reasons, we might as well not do it at all—the ingenuity will seep through.
When I scroll through social media and find myself on a company’s page, I can only hope that the person behind the message is like me—feeling, sympathizing, hurting, stuck inside four walls. Knowing what I’m going through because they’re going through it, too. Speaking up because they know it’s more than a phase—it’s someone’s livelihood. When the statements are real, we can feel it.
If it’s not someone like me behind the message, I hope that person knows other Themas are out here, feeling unseen, watching where they choose to speak up and where they choose to stay silent, wondering if they actually mean what they say, and checking back in to see if the action items in their Black Lives Matter statement were ever implemented.
I beg you not to forget the people and the stories that broke us this year. We’re watching, waiting, and we need you.
Follow Thema Thomas on Twitter @theomas_.
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