So many emotions fill this place, my body. I can’t remember if I ate a real meal today. I cried when I realized what today was having let my dates, times, suns, and moons all switch places since quarantine began. Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She is someone who I will forever speak about because of the investment she put in me as a person though she is no longer here with us. I cried again when I realized yet another hashtag and another viral video of death replayed on my timelines. It seemed like it happened so fast that we as a black community couldn’t even let out a sigh of relief for a black man who got to walk home from central park this time.
One thing that I remember about my grandmother was she would always tell me in every situation whether I was complaining about my siblings, parents, or trouble at school “Treat people how you want to be treated. I don’t always get it right but I try my best. Each year as I got older one thing that I learned that cannot be denied is that color blurs the beliefs of how some think they should treat others. There is a different standard of treatment, of what’s allowed, of what is looked over. It breaks my heart to have to relive trauma weekly it seems as of late because of the unfair treatment of my community.
When I would sit at my granny’s table and ask her about her life one thing I remember is the calmness in which she talked about situations that had obviously caused her pain. She was born in 1915. Just a child during the times of The red summer of 1919, the Elaine massacre, and the 1926 parade of the Klu Klux Klan in Washington D.C.. I don’t know if that behavior was something she learned because of the times or inherited but I think it passed me by. Feisty, fiery she used to say to me when I would get upset. I feel it all and it sets fire to my insides so much so I want to explode. Explode because here we are yet again not fully healed yet asked to remain calm by those who don’t want begin to understand.
We would talk about everything. I imagine that if she was alive today I would have picked up the phone to discuss the wrongs of this world. She had an input in almost every single one of my decisions. In middle school I stumbled across Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and read it in a day. Upon finishing I thought to myself I would like to be a woman like her and like my granny who experiences life. Then I would like to write about it. So this is me experiencing life as it currently is, as painful as it is, and writing about it.