I committed a millennial sin about a month ago and here is my confession. I went on a vacation to a tropical island and I didn’t bring my camera. Not only that, I left my phone in my room every single day. And finally, I went on this vacation alone. Not with my crew, not with my squad, not with my gang, not with my fraternity, not with my family, not with my brothers—just me. And I wandered, I had savory authentic dishes, I got scammed, I declined several propositions from prostitutes, I was myself mistaken for a prostitute and propositioned (That was interesting. Must have been my shorts), and I had conversations that made me question my stance on my country. All of these things made my soul expand yet I don’t have one picture to prove it so therefore it never happened.

I’m fine with it. That’s the portion of it that concerns me the most. I don’t care. I’m wondering what’s the purpose of confessing to a sin that I don’t feel sorry for committing. I guess this means I’m doomed to spend eternity in millennial hell. A place with no Wi-Fi where porn only comes in actual magazines and I have to listen to entire albums the whole way through and actually physically turn those albums over. If that be my fate then so be it. I’m beginning to guard my experiences more. I share them on social media less and less. I don’t even feel comfortable writing down which island I went to. I will say that it was one of the ones filled with black people. And they spoke a language other than English—except when they were talking to me. I will also say that I wouldn’t ever go back. It was an awesome experience but I felt an enormous stigma as a tourist. I wasn’t in an all-inclusive resort so I realized within hours of touching down that I was the economy. Everyone there depended on me to feed their families and I didn’t like it. I hated that the whole island is being raped by foreigners. There were billion dollar hotels and multimillion dollar carnival cruises that docked on the bay and none of these businesses were owned by any person from that country. All that they could do was work in the service of tourists or flee to a country like the one I was born in. I had come there for escape, for paradise, to have an experience akin to those I’ve seen on Instagram—I was a fool.

I took no pictures. I wished I could turn my critical thinking skills down enough to Turn Up the whole time I was down there but I couldn’t. I saw beautiful women and I will always remember them. I learned about the great prophets of that island and I won’t forget them. I felt the water of the ocean against my toes while the seaweed tickled my ankles. I embraced the fact that I was wrong about a lot of things after futilely fighting for their individual truths in conversations with islanders who knew better. I realized that I, even in my black skin, have privileges. I accepted that though I am the descendant of American slaves. Though one could argue that I am still in bondage—and often times I do—I am still an American. America is all that I know. Everything I have learned has been filtered by my government. Even the things that I believed to be radical I only was able to learn because my country allowed me to.

When I stepped onto that island I lived a different truth. A truth that couldn’t be captured in a photograph. It couldn’t be validated by X number of likes either. Therefore I didn’t partake in any of those practices that have set this era apart from all those preceding it. It was a sin that I committed intentionally and a sin that I will commit again.