Member-only story
This is Trauma. I Guess.
CW: racism, trauma, self harm.
How I got here.
The news cycle. the police led assaults. the murders, watching people debate the humanity of people who look just like me, the calls for the killing of people just like me- y’all already know.
Since this current bout of awful, I’ve been deep in trauma response. As I get older the inevitability of specifically anti-Black racism has taken a whole new kind of toll on my well being. The recent extra judicial murders of Black people hit me differently, there is a whole new level to how I feel.
When I see the faces of the Black folks murdered, they have become my children. Something in my early 40s brain, attaches some idea of lost motherhood to them and I can’t take it. When I was very young, too young, I looked up Emmett Till. I remember very distinctly I had an encyclopedia and I sat under a table at the library and the first thing I saw was his ruined face.
I read every word of that entry and as has always been my habit I held the information like a terrible secret. I told no one what I’d learned, instead I had nightmares. I dreamed I was Emmett, a dapper handsome boy with beautiful skin. I dreamed about being hunted down. I thought obsessively about it. I can pinpoint the start of my racial trauma to that day.
