It took me a week just to vacuum

DEEP SIGH

I don’t even know where to begin. I feel raw. Like all of my nerve endings have been filed down with sandpaper. My eyes cannot even produce any more tears. I know that I am not alone in this feeling right now. With everything going in the world, my twitter feed is filled with messages about exhaustion and self-care and taking care of your mental health.

So unless you have been under a rock during 2020, you are aware that we are living through a pandemic. And if that wasn’t enough, racist white cops still found time to murder us—which is really beyond me. Wait, I take that back it really isn’t that hard to fathom because we live in America. A country that was legitimately founded on stolen land. A country that stole my ancestors to build and amass wealth for generations before we would ever be free. And now my generation is TIRED! We are exhausted and we are in the streets protesting and screaming and yet all can be talked about is the “looting” and “rioting”. Honestly, Tamika Mallory really said it best—we learned this violence from you.

This past week, I found myself typing up an email to my academic department because their silence was deafening and heart wrenching. To constantly be reminded that my Black body and Black mind only matter if I am producing for their institution which makes them look good. We are tired of virtue signaling! We are tired of dying. We are tired of acting like everything is okay.

Honestly, I am sure that you have read a multitude of think pieces written by people with differing views of what is happening in the country right now. I am sure that you have read many statements addressing different takes on what they would do if they were protesting and out there in the streets. That the “violence” protestors are doing is drowning the real cause—and this what is making me exhausted. All the differing takes that really don’t fucking matter.

All of the differing opinions and all of the different comments and fake solidarity posts and virtue signaling has me worn down, as if I wasn’t already worn down. I put down my baking soda to vacuum and it took me a week to actually get around to vacuum it up. There was something about the action of pushing the vacuum over my carpet that reminded me of all the pushing I was already doing. Pushing aside my feelings. Pushing through a doctoral program as one of few Black students. Pushing through a 3 hour Zoom class. Pushing out papers and applications. Pushing for my Black voice to be heard in my discipline. Shit, just pushing. I couldn’t do any more pushing. Whatever muscles are used in that pushing motion were (are) fatigued so please don’t make me do it.

But that’s the thing: I have to. I cannot let this baking soda sit on my floor much longer. I cannot let myself sit in my feelings. I cannot let myself be overcome with grief because I have deadlines. And ain’t that some shit. Black women are always required to keep moving when we just want to sit tf down.

I am not writing this post to tell you how i feel about what is happening outside in the streets because I know that if something happened to my husband in the hands of police I cannot promise you that i too wouldn’t burn something to the ground—literally fuck target. But i am writing this post to process my own emotions about this.

Knowing that I went to a protest and my father told me that he was protesting the same stuff when he was coming up. My dad is 62 years old. That shit makes me even angrier. And that is really the crux of it all to be quite frank. The fact that it seems like we have made zero progress. The only thing America has made forward steps on is not enslaving us. But to be quite honest, slavery just goes by another name now.

I haven’t been able to sleep at night peacefully. I am afraid if i close my eyes long enough the videos of Black women and men dying in the street will keep me up. I roll over and stare at my husband as he sleeps because this is the most peaceful I have seen him since all this began (again). I try to savor every moment of me being awake next to him because what if it is the last time I see him alive? That really is some bullshit ain’t it.

So, I will eventually get around to vacuuming but not today