FINALLY. You’re Listening. This time, DON’T FLINCH.
I don’t want to chat. I can’t take care of you. You have another chance fix your wrongs. And this time, DON’T FLINCH.
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I went into gall bladder surgery in early March with the desperate anticipation of an addict: Please, please give me the drug of long, dreamless sleep.
I am so damn tired. I am 400 years of broke down and exhausted, and so are my family, our friends, the people down the street whom we don’t know but still love.
I don’t want to chat. And if you are brave enough to call me, now that I have my bearings back, somewhat, you better be woman or man enough to take it.
But my advice right now? Don’t call me. Don’t call me and cry. Don’t ask to sit at my feet and learn. Don’t text me. And don’t flinch.
Don’t flinch
White people, for reasons I cannot fathom, you call yourselves confused about this most recent barrage of violent deaths of black people at the hands of other white people. For some reason, you think passing around the videos and applying hashtags shows you care. And for some reason, despite being told over and over, despite being shown over and over, despite being begged to stop, over and over, you say you weren’t aware that this was happening to us. And for some reason, you don’t understand why we raise brows at Fourth of July antics, at the insistence that we cheer a flag that oppresses us.
For some reason, your concern about a dog being jerked around is louder and shriller than the anger at a false police report. For some reason, your concern about justifiable rage is more than your concern about the reasons behind the rage. You’re more upset about a church burning in another country than about the grieving people here who drag themselves into offices and school conferences and listen, again, to how they aren’t articulate enough or their kids are not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough for you.
I know the church was pretty. But I’d burn the Mona Lisa and the Louvre my damn self if it got your attention.
You instead turn it around, and demand that we be civil. You demand we contain our pain. You demand we ignore our own humanity. That stops now.
You instead turn it around, and demand that we be civil. You demand we contain our pain. You demand we ignore our own humanity. You insist that we gaslight ourselves. That stops now.
And for some reason, you don’t see my tear-swollen face when we are in the same damn room and sitting at the same damn table. Have I gotten that good at explaining it away? Did you even ask me then what the problem was? You might have, but you only had five minutes to talk, because you had a meeting. You had to be somewhere else. Let’s do lunch.
You flinched. At each chance, you flinched.
Perhaps the macabre twist of a pandemic was you couldn’t flinch. You had time to pay attention and look me, with my full anger and desperation and exhaustion, in the face. That is, when you weren’t calling yourselves “slaves” for being asked to stay at home.
Our cry is not new. Our humanity is valid.
Maybe my answer to “what’s wrong” should be “you should know.” Period.
After Charlottesville, we told you yet again, and you saw, yet again, you still didn’t care to get it. After the Charleston shooting, you didn’t care to get it. You flinched. You didn’t care to get it after Michael Brown. After Sandra Bland. After Atatiana Jefferson. After Breonna Taylor. After Ahmaud Arbery. After James Byrd. After Rodney King. You flinched every time.
After baby-faced Emmett Till. You have seen his picture. Do you think it’s just for show?
After countless lynchings. After countless of our girls have gone missing, unaware to you because they are black, so to you, they don’t count.
You’ve had chances to fix this. We have told you. You take a baby step forward, and then you flinch. That flinch kills us.
After pointing out how the “war against drugs” was vastly different wording than the “opiod crisis,” and how the faces of black children were applied to “war,” and faces of wholesome middle-America white kids applied to “crisis.” After being shoved into red-lined food deserts, which completes the deadly job that our inherited health crises begins, a result of generations of genetically altering trauma. And then being told to exercise more yes, that will help while holding two underpaying jobs for which we are overqualified and still not making rent or mortgage, if we can even get a mortgage, and then being told we should have worked harder, this is America, you can do anything, so sorry, we should do lunch.
You didn’t fully get it after George Floyd. Instead, you said “if he can say he can’t breathe, he can breathe.” This unmitigated piece of trash.
And now, you’ve gotten it for maybe two minutes, and you’re falling apart. I don’t care. Figure out how to deal with it. Don’t flinch this time. Your kids are out there marching, and god bless the babies. They’re not flinching. Maybe you should ask them.
But don’t call me. Especially if you and I haven’t shared a drink or a meal, more than once. I don’t want to talk. I am not a caregiver to anybody not my children, and for the record, all black children ARE my children. I am not the M word in that movie about the green-eyed, hoop-skirted brat that you seem to love so much.
I can barely form sentences and write, which is what I am supposed to be trained to do. I can barely go an hour without breaking down and crying. I’m crying now. Damn near keening. I woke up crying. I cry daily at 4. That’s not new. That’s been forever. Daily, at 4, I have a panic attack. Medicine has lessened it, and I’m good at pretending.
Today I’m supposed to interview two people about the generational and current traumas that black children face, and I can’t even get myself together enough to set up a Zoom. What the hell. That story is the entire reason we all weep from the time we are born until the day we die.
I’m lying to my family so they can lean on me, like my Grandma would want, but they know. God knows I don’t have anything left, but we’ve all been running on empty from jump. Today I’m supposed to interview two people about the generational and current traumas that black children face, and I can’t even get myself together enough to set up a Zoom. What the actual hell.
That story is the entire reason we all weep from the time we are born until the day we die.
Again, so it’s clear, Do Not Flinch
Yes, I know you want to know what to do. Tell us, teach us, yadda yadda. But you knew what to do to assure subjugation. You can figure out how to undo it. That space is going to be uncomfortable. Suck it up.
I’m writing this because it needs to get out before my blood pressure goes up any more. I am afraid you are going to flinch. I am afraid that this will be another blip on your radar.
Don’t flinch.
Don’t think I’m crying right now because I’m grieving. I’ve been grieving all my life. I’m crying because you finally, FINALLY are listening. You FINALLY comprehend a tiny bit of what we all have felt for all our lives, before we were even born, and it is a slight relief to hand over the crush of that weight.
I am crying because I have space, energy, just for a minute, a second, to let it out.
YOU also have a moment. I will continue doing what I do, but YOU need to not flinch. You need to not back down, or slow down. You need to find your own strength, your own humanity, if you have any left, and draw on it with a force that attempts to equal (because it will never equal) our fury and grief, and take this moment, and do what’s right.
Don’t flinch. Don’t. Flinch.
It occurs to me that I am crying, also, because I fear you are going to flinch, and screw it up, one more time.
