Excellent and Exhausted

A meditation on Black excellence, white mediocrity, and the ghosts we carry

I watch the whiskey sit on my table. Brown liquor in a glass with a tea bag now, because my throat is sore. As the brown spins, my mind wanders. Maybe it's because we just began 2026. I sip. Then sip again. The warmth fills my body. My throat numbs. I question: is this good? Taking away the pain but still not healing.

The whiskey sits in my throat and out comes the phrase. Not from me - from my teachers. The Black teachers who saw me, who pushed me, who saw the spark, the artist. Some whispered it. Some screamed it. Some just looked at me with eyes that said it without speaking: "You got to be 10 times better."

I have carried this phrase like a stone in my chest.

It fueled me. Got me to the Broadway stage. Stages in Europe, Asia, all over the United States. Brought me to your TV screen. Pushed me to work hard, to be excellent, to never stop climbing.

But I also watched white men walk with confidence for years. Watched them walk through doors so easily. Watched whiteness be the way to be. I code-switched my work for their comfort. One year I even prayed for the ego of a mediocre white man, because that confidence books gigs.

I am 10 times better. And yet I still feel out of flow.

The phrase that lifted me now cuts. When I don't book the job, I don't blame the casting director. I don't blame the industry. I blame myself. I wasn't 10 times better that day. Maybe I was only 5 times better. Maybe 7. I do the math in my head like I'm solving for my own extinction. Every audition is a test where failure means I don't deserve to breathe. Every rejection confirms it: I didn't work hard enough. I wasn't perfect enough. I fu*ked up somewhere and now I'm erasing myself to make up for it.

Excellence stops being a goal. It becomes the blade I turn inward until there's nothing left.

Then the ghost speaks. Voice like smoke and shattered mirrors.

Ten times better and still begging. Ten times sharper and they still don't see the blade. You think excellence saves you? Child, it just makes you bleed prettier.

Oh God. Oh ancestors, hear my prayer. I bleed because I know my voice is important. The work is important. And I need to bleed to be seen. This is the oxymoron living in me. Grateful for the push. Destroyed by the standard. A truth that in 2026 feels even heavier. Trump's America makes the mountain bigger, the fight more real. I have been 10 times better all my life because I was told to be. Yet I still struggle. Yet I still watch mediocre whiteness win.

I sip more brown whiskey. Heal and get tipsy at the same time. I want to believe the work is worth it. That my ancestors see me, that they nod when I step on stage, that they whisper "you done good" when the world stays quiet.

I will always be 10 times better. Because I am. I come from kings, and even on my worst day I am still good.

Excellence was never supposed to be armor. It was supposed to be breath.

The teachers gave me a lifeline and the world made it a noose.

So here I sit, throat burning from whiskey and truth, trying to untangle survival from suffocation. The ghost will haunt me tomorrow. And the day after. I will keep pushing through this house, walking these halls where "10 times better" echoes in every room. I believe the chains will break. I hope the chains will break.

But tonight, the tea bag bleeds into brown liquor. The glass empties. My throat still burns. And somewhere my teachers are watching, waiting to see if their gift will finally set me free - or if I'll spend my whole life excellent and exhausted, 10 times better than I ever needed to be.

Ten times better and I'm addicted to the burn. Chasing it. Needing it. The phrase doesn't just haunt me - I crave it.

The ghost remains. So do I.