Times like these
I often wonder how honest I should be and how much I should share during times like these, which is an issue within itself–the fact that there are “times like these.” Periods of my life (and in many others’ lives) are distinctly marked by public execution. For me, Trayvon was high school. Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille–college. Now, Ahmaud Abery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and more than I am even aware of, I’m sure, mark the time in my life where I venture out into the “real world” and try to hold down a career (while navigating what it means to be a privileged Black woman holding space in places where I often fear my existence somehow silences those who were not gifted the same opportunities as me). I fear being too quiet. I fear being too loud. I fear the day when I can no longer punctuate these tragic periods with the name, when there are just so many hashtags that pile up, that the identity suspends boundlessly in time hanging loosely on my consciousness like an ornament I cherish but can’t exactly differentiate from the rest. At times I think that day, where the names will blend together, is already here.
Their faces still burn into my psyche though, and despite the normality of it all, despite being “used” to this now, I still don’t know how to nurse the scar that keloids around my soul every time this happens.
There’s no way to share this hurt. I cannot package it up and reveal what it feels like to live in dissonance, especially because it is different for everyone. But I can tell you, it’s tiresome. It is like moving around everyday with a paper cut on your soul. The one you never know how it got there. One that people can’t really see, but you know it exists, because every time it’s touched, you get a searing pain that blinds you from anything and everything. How do you maintain your sanity through that? How do you smile, eat, breath, hope? How do you keep yourself from wincing from that stabbing feeling every time this happens? How do you keep pouring yourself into things whose importance seems trivial, at best, in comparison to the trauma?
The beautiful twisted thing about [many] black people is that the act of multitasking through pain isn’t foreign. Many know how to “deal” through masking. Masks, though proverbial, have been worn by [many] Black people far before pandemics. Though constricting, often we wear them to keep from leaking the pain and spreading it like this diseased thing that if caught in too close proximity, you may catch whiff of the bitterness, of the fear– of the pain in a part of your soul you didn’t know existed till one day, it just hurt. Understand, for many, if we let that pain leak we’d drown in it. If we “took time” now we’d rob ourselves of our future. There is no seeking refuge when you cannot flee a state of existence. There is no coming up for air when breathing is commodified and your spirit is spent. You may wonder where the benefit lies in “masking” and trudging through–there isn't. Repression, it’s a survival tactic not a coping mechanism. There is no over the counter coping mechanism for racism and even if there were, the side effects would probably be far worse than the treatment.
But understand, through this survival is resilience. When one pushes against resistance their whole life, those reps bore a strength that can move time, and that is what we will do. We will continue pushing forward on time, in our own unique ways. I cannot speak for all, but I know I speak for some when I ask that you just allow us to reset the clock. Acclimate yourselves to a new period, one which does not have to be memorialized. Do what you are able and do not fret when you find that it isn’t enough, because for a while, it isn’t going to be enough, but it’ll be something. Allies, learn how to balance your microphones and your headphones together and be ok with making mistakes, because you are going to make mistakes.
I’m going to keep saying we’re going to make it through because one day I will believe it with full vigor, and hopefully you will too.
