Mind is fuzzy but I’ll try & make sense plenty. Bagombo Snuffbox meets Ibram Kendi.
I feel a million traumas all in me all at once. And this country keeps repeating itself. There is no way to say it other than: they want to see us dead. They mean to see us littering side streets, empty carcasses no longer able to scream “I can’t breathe.” What with the breath being stolen from us, how can we even scream?
I feel our collective trauma multiplied by my individual traumas. Protests are dying down, fires quiet. But every video of another Black man dying is something so indescribably violent, it tears me apart. My soul feels tattered and no one can understand that feeling but other Black people in this black-hearted country.
On top of that, my girl just broke up with me. At least, that’s what I think happened? I… I don’t want to talk about it.
My face is numb like it’s been shot by a cocaine gun. I can’t smile. My insides are depleted. I can’t breathe. My lungs are collapsed under the weight of my heart, too swollen. Too swole. I can’t sleep, tear ducts dried shut. I can’t breathe with all this murder on my twitter feed. Now I’m walking to the store, hoping coffee will let me feel something, anything.
The thing about depressive holes is that once your body gets used to not moving, it slows down. After two or three or infinity days laid up in bed, your body understands the signals that your mind is passing: slow down, we are injured. Maybe not a bodily injury, but something deeper. Mind-Pain is felt in the body, though, so maybe it’s not even that deep.
What I’m trying to say is I’m hurting something terrible. I am alone and hurting and I just want to get away. Get away from my damn room that’s become a prison. Drive until nothing makes sense anymore, or at least until everything makes sense again. These are the most raw thoughts in my heart but I’m still holding back a lot because I don’t trust myself enough to not publish this on my site. It’ll probably go on my site. And I might regret it, but that’s ok. I hope someone reads this and understands.
Chances are I’ll keep writing until the feeling comes back to my face. Until the weight on my cheeks is removed, allowing the corners of my mouth to turn upwards in a smiling motion (not to be confused with an actual smile).
Where’s Claudia Rankine when you need her? Here she comes:
“In the night I watch television to help me fall asleep, or
I watch television because I cannot sleep. My husband
sleeps through my sleeplessness and the noise of the
television. Eventually it is all a blur. I never remember
turning the TV off, but always when I wake up in the
morning, it is off. Perhaps he turns it off. I don’t know.
Some nights I count the commercials for antidpres-sants. If the same commercials is repeated, I still count
it. It seems right that pharmaceutical companies should
advertise in the middle of the night, when people are
less distracted and capable of tuning in more and more
and most precisely to their fearful bodies and their ac-
companying anxieties.
One commercial for PAXIL (paroxetine HCI) says sim-ply: YOUR LIFE IS WAITING. Parataxis, I think first, but
then I wonder, for what, for what does it wait? For life
I guess.
Across the screen, this time minus audio, flashes:-Claudia Rankine, DON’T LET ME BE LONELY
It remains on the screen long enough so that when
I close my eyes to check if I am sleeping, instead of
darkness, YOURLIFEISWAITING stares back at me.
OK, I have to pray now. Bye.
Your writing really has a way of capturing how the seemingly mundane days in our lives as black people, and you especially as a black man, are too damn much. It’s not normal to be exposed to death as much as we are. You sound like an empath too which makes it 10x worse. Social media breaks are mandatory for black people at this point. Thank you for sharing that Claudia Rankine excerpt, I’ve never read her work. Take care.