Yesterday was not a good day. I was feeling that.
Today I woke up and asked why? Because there was discomfort? Shame?
I can't and won't get into the thick of it. It involves my own shit, and so much shit from others. And in the end, the question of Why am I here? I called my son, we haven't talked in a while. I knew it was important to talk about stuff. It was good. I love him.
I stitched a bit, not to escape but to think. Stitching helps me think.
And then my nephew, my youngest brother's oldest son, he lives in Montana, I don't see him much but I do follow him on social media. I caught that he posted this. And I am putting it here because of it's honesty. And how it is just the best he could say. To break the silence.
I have been trying to put into words something, anything for days now. Watching the state of the world I have rarely felt less like I have anything worth saying. I am a white male in my early thirties that has lived the last decade of his life in a community in America that is over 90 percent white. I know less than nothing about the experiences of most African Americans across this country.
.
I have quietly cried a lot listening to the news lately. I keep listening because it seems like one of the least things I can do. I haven’t watched the videos of George Floyd dying (I get my news in audio or text form, radio, podcasts, and newspaper websites) but I have seen the pictures and heard the audio of that man being murdered. I listened, four years ago, to the audio of Philando Castile being shot in front of his girlfriend and her 4 year old child after doing everything he could have possibly done to get through that traffic stop as a model citizen. I thought about what that poor kid went through a lot after that.
.
These suck in my mind from listening to them, and these are two to many, and yet there are so many more. Trayvon Martin, and Akai Gurley, and Eric Garner, and Terence Crutcher, and Tamir Rice, and Mike Brown, and Freddie Gray, and Breonna Taylor, and, and, and...
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We as a country are failing on so many levels right now, law enforcement is only one of them, but we have been failing at it for a long time. And I believe law enforcement is necessary for a functional society but it must be there to protect and serve everyone and if you can’t see that there are places and people in this county for whom that is not true you are being willfully ignorant. And if you can listen to that man being slowly killed and not understand why there are a lot of people who feel the need to stand in the street and scream and maybe even break things you have no empathy.
.
I can vote, I can protest (I hope safely because I am also scared shitless for all of my higher risk family right now, thanks COVID), I can donate what little I have to spare, and I can listen, and it will never feel like it will ever be enough. But maybe if enough other people can too, it will be.
I spent the day considering so many changes. Looking and wondering. How to be more useful. I caught a few thoughts, made a few calls, found a few paths.
Drank a glass of really shitty wine.
And the sun has returned today.
So life goes on, how will we make it right? Time will tell.
