DS, I haven't posted a follow up for a while because I've been thinking of something. It occurs to me that by living you are changing your world. It might not look like it but who knows - the couple of people you've told might find someone else in your situation - perhaps a friend.
And your problem exists all over the world. Your experience is a lot different than the one I'm about to share, but there's a common emotional element. The more we become aware of the real problems you face and the real problems others face, the more things start changing. The change is of course way too slow but it does happen.
This is the piece that caused me to think of you. I highlighted the clause that brought you directly into my mind. Your circumstances are vastly different but reading this gives me the sense you are emotional sisters. We can't change your situation and we can't change hers. But we can be here. We can listen. We can understand. And I know that what John Donne wrote is true:
Part of the article:
It is always a reminder that I am a target, and my brother doubly so. It is a warning that blacks are guilty by nature, that we are born waiting to die, and that, if we make it to end without an officer’s bullet (or six, or 41) inside of us, then we are lucky. It has nothing to do with who we are, whether or not we sag our pants, what we do for a living, if we have ever committed a crime or if we have never once touched a gun. Increasingly, it seems, remaining alive only has to do with luck. Increasingly, I am learning, remaining alive while black is a radical act.
But more than anything, it’s getting so exhausting to be black: To spend all day on edge, obsessively reading the news and the hashtags and the DOJ reports and making myself feel worse and worse about the color of my skin. Opting to walk a few extra blocks to the second-closest subway station from my job because I spotted officers patrolling the first’s entrance and my heart races nervously whenever my eyes land on their guns. To stand, embarrassed, at the front of a drugstore while a white employee empties out my backpack because I spent too long in the nail polish aisle but didn’t purchase anything; to be accused of stealing because I’m black and the store didn’t have the shade of purple that I wanted.
...
I am no stranger to feeling sad, to being inconsolable, to viewing the act of getting out of bed as an impossible feat. Yet this is much bigger: this is a constant war of needing to do something but feeling too defeated to even think. It’s depression through anger, all of my outward hostility about systematic police brutality sometimes turned inward at myself for not being able to change things. All of this forcing my body to shut down mentally and physically, to spend too many hours curled up in bed trying to make myself as small as possible — as small as the world views me — and cry myself raw about feeling helpless, and to know that there’s power in simply being black and alive and confident but sometimes being too stuck to even do just that.
And your problem exists all over the world. Your experience is a lot different than the one I'm about to share, but there's a common emotional element. The more we become aware of the real problems you face and the real problems others face, the more things start changing. The change is of course way too slow but it does happen.
This is the piece that caused me to think of you. I highlighted the clause that brought you directly into my mind. Your circumstances are vastly different but reading this gives me the sense you are emotional sisters. We can't change your situation and we can't change hers. But we can be here. We can listen. We can understand. And I know that what John Donne wrote is true:
Part of the article:
It is always a reminder that I am a target, and my brother doubly so. It is a warning that blacks are guilty by nature, that we are born waiting to die, and that, if we make it to end without an officer’s bullet (or six, or 41) inside of us, then we are lucky. It has nothing to do with who we are, whether or not we sag our pants, what we do for a living, if we have ever committed a crime or if we have never once touched a gun. Increasingly, it seems, remaining alive only has to do with luck. Increasingly, I am learning, remaining alive while black is a radical act.
But more than anything, it’s getting so exhausting to be black: To spend all day on edge, obsessively reading the news and the hashtags and the DOJ reports and making myself feel worse and worse about the color of my skin. Opting to walk a few extra blocks to the second-closest subway station from my job because I spotted officers patrolling the first’s entrance and my heart races nervously whenever my eyes land on their guns. To stand, embarrassed, at the front of a drugstore while a white employee empties out my backpack because I spent too long in the nail polish aisle but didn’t purchase anything; to be accused of stealing because I’m black and the store didn’t have the shade of purple that I wanted.
...
I am no stranger to feeling sad, to being inconsolable, to viewing the act of getting out of bed as an impossible feat. Yet this is much bigger: this is a constant war of needing to do something but feeling too defeated to even think. It’s depression through anger, all of my outward hostility about systematic police brutality sometimes turned inward at myself for not being able to change things. All of this forcing my body to shut down mentally and physically, to spend too many hours curled up in bed trying to make myself as small as possible — as small as the world views me — and cry myself raw about feeling helpless, and to know that there’s power in simply being black and alive and confident but sometimes being too stuck to even do just that.
Last edited:
