04/29/2022
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️Ever since January, I've been craving and digging on Kindle and Netflix for something new, something interesting and emotionally gripping enough to read or watch when I had unprecedented amount of free time having resigned and underemployed due to 5th wave. Either both algorithms were wrong for the longest time or it was God's way of testing me... And God opened a window tonight...Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special. I first knew her through season 1 of How to Get Away With Murder, and was immediately amazed by her vulnerable performance. Although I didn't keep watching the series because it was hard to keep track of lies, I'm very bad at them, it did lead me to Google her and then I was absolutely floored by her performance in Fences which opened up my world to August Wilson. But I never really knew her on a personal level at all. Fast forward to the present, I watched this interview and within maybe ten minutes I was holding back tears because I found this uncanny but also cathartic resemblance to our lives. She had it much much much harder than I had it, but the racism as an immigrant student, and then shown compassion that washed shame, the tough but definitely definitely love her parents gave her, the subtle but sometimes not so subtle sexist moments in a woman's life, the decision to become a teacher before realizing your first love is and always has been to create art down to even the fact that we both went through scumbag after scumbag and got down on our knees and continuously prayed to God, please give me a good man and made a pact that if that happens I will stay steadfastly in church...was all sooooooo similar. And the most transformational thing that happened in the interview was that even now as she was at the "peak" moments in her life professionally, there are still dark moments of imposters in her life who treated her as commodity and gave her pressure but she learnt through therapy that happiness is a journey not a destination, that there will always be good and bad moments in life but know there will always be light after if and you will be able to find solace even in an isolating pandemic ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️