I recently turned 34 and I don’t dwell on the past or think about how I happened to be where I am now. The ride is so insane, Six Flags will not have one of these before a long, long time.
My mom finally found a receipt I absolutely need for my immigration process even though my status is automatically prolonged. It feels weird to have your life depend on a paper notice, challenging the idea that microchips and biometrics are useful. Anyway, I will always feel OK helping my parents but I always feel so mad at myself for asking them to help me out, especially to find a damn paper. Sorry mom, I blame Six Flags.
I have been following Zimmerman’s trial sporadically, when the hashtag occurrence passes a threshold. It’s when I see Trayvon’s parents with all their dignity that I think black people are the strongest people in the world without a feel of superiority, just the feeling of being proud. Which immediately pops up the question in my head “where you at in my life, black folks? I haven’t seen you in forever”. This intense emergency of simply have black people around, more of them is burning my heart at a solar temperature level. I always have to seal the door very quickly after starting to feel this. And the door stays incandescently red.
I try to be careful, not to jump in the lava. It’s about that survival bias thing. But that feeling that I need black people around me more to feel better is so anchored in my bones, at least feels unstoppable sometimes.
Pragmatically I don’t want to think about it I have shit to do, son but what if it makes me crazy at some point? I always felt that if I cared about people around me, I’d be all right. It’s been true so far but it doesn’t really help with satisfying growing feelings.
Chilling with my black internet folks helps a lot though. Fake internet friends are not so fake.