I Did It On Purpose

I used to whisper my dreams like confessions.
Half-formed. Half-felt. Half-mine.

Because somewhere between expectation and exile, not knowing who you are became synonymous with failure.
Especially if you’re Black. Especially if you’re brilliant. Especially if your gifts don’t fit neatly inside a career path or a LinkedIn headline.
We were taught to produce, not to become.
To obey, not explore.
To commodify a calling before we’ve even dared to name it.

But I’ve learned that purpose doesn’t always arrive with clarity.
Sometimes it shows up as a question, a tension, a life that doesn’t make sense to anyone watching—including you.
Sometimes purpose wears the face of a mistake.
A wrong turn. A heartbreak. A breakdown you survived by instinct and grace.

They’ll say you’re lost.
But what if the wandering is sacred?

Because I did it on purpose.
The wandering. The doubting. The delays.
Not because I had the map—
but because every detour has been part of the design.
Because what I’ve lived is not separate from my calling.
It is my calling, just not yet in terms the market knows how to measure.

No one tells you this:
You can live decades without the words for it and still be walking straight toward your purpose.

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I once mistook visibility for validation.

Because when you’ve been invisible long enough, attention can masquerade as affection.
But some spotlights were never built to honor you—only to consume you.

They celebrate you when you’re digestible.
When your divinity is soft-spoken.
When your labor serves the system.

I’ve been called inspiring by people who would never survive what I’ve lived.
Praised for my strength by people who overlooked my exhaustion.
Seen—only when it served the story they wanted to tell.

And for a while, I let it happen.
Because attention gets mistaken for care when you’ve been conditioned to survive on scraps.
Because the spotlight can feel like shelter when the margins have been your only address.
Because applause can disguise control when you’ve never been taught to trust your own voice.

Purpose doesn’t demand proximity to power.
It requires proximity to self.

I trained in silence, behind curtains stitched from code-switching and careful smiles, in cities that seduce you with shine while draining you of substance.

“And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”
—Audre Lorde

The truth is—
you can be praised and still be perishing.
You can be chosen and still be off course.
You can be paid and still be starving.

I thought being unseen meant I was behind.
But I wasn’t behind—I was becoming.
Rooting. Rebuilding. Relearning how to move without performing.
And now I know I am aligned.
These days, I measure purpose in peace—not applause.

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I used to measure progress by proximity.
To recognition.
To accolades.
To the version of success that someone else handed me.

But potential without direction becomes its own kind of cage.
And I nearly suffocated in the waiting.
Waiting for permission.
Waiting to be proven.
Waiting for a breakthrough that would make sense to someone else’s algorithm.

Now, I move differently.
Not faster—freer.
Not louder—truer.
I say yes where the yes opens me.
When the silence turns electric.
Where the no feels holy.

I’ve turned down rooms that shimmered with opportunity but smelled like erasure.
I’ve said yes only where my spirit could exhale.
Because what I’m building is oxygen.
It expands your chest and checks your ego.
It clears the noise.
It confronts everything that tried to silence it.

I move for clarity.
For alignment.
For longevity.

I speak what I know and let the truth do the heavy lifting.
I walk like I trust the contract I made with the Divine.
This is commitment.
This is devotion.
And I am living in agreement with my assignment—whatever it asks of me.

It doesn’t arrive—it assembles.
Layered through memory, gesture, and timing.
It speaks in pattern, pressure, precision.
Every time I followed, the ground met me.
Every time I trusted, it spoke.
I follow it without translation.
I hold it like truth.
And I keep choosing it—on purpose.

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There is no missed purpose. Only a life that kept showing up in the places you were taught to dismiss—your rage, your restlessness, your refusal to settle.

You’ve been learning through experience.
Not wasting time—gathering it.
Not falling behind—building context.
Everything you thought disqualified you was actually preparing you.

We are not here to perform purpose.
We are here to perceive it.
To see the patterns in our pain.
To name the intelligence in our instincts.
To understand that the work we’ve done to survive is part of the architecture of what we’re here to build.

“When you get, give. When you learn, teach.”
—Maya Angelou

There is no formula.
There is no final draft.
Purpose is not a chase.
It’s a choice.
Again and again—in how you show up, how you serve, how you honor the question that won’t go away.

Every past version of you has been a rehearsal for this one— the version that no longer waits for clarity to be external.
As an embodied thesis:
As the moment you realize that what you’ve endured is your evidence.
That what you carry is already qualified.
That your survival is not separate from your assignment—it is the signal.

You are not lost.
You are not late.
You are being shaped by the very road that taught you how to walk.

Your story was already in motion long before the rules were written.
You’re not becoming who you are by accident.

You’re doing it
on purpose.

One love, ESS xo

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References

• Audre Lorde – Poetry Foundation

• Maya Angelou – Official Website