A few days ago, I was heading into my office early before I hit the gym so that I could put my lunch in the refrigerator. Over the course of my 20-minute drive, I started thinking about how much I was putting my life in danger . I’d be going into the office before anyone else was there. I’d be dressed in gym clothes. And if a cop were to somehow catch me leaving the office, there’d be no way he or she would believe that I actually work in the building. And when I’d try to show my key or ID, it could be mistaken for a gun. And I’d be killed. For the rest of my drive to work, I thought about all of the scenarios. I thought about calling my wife and telling her what I was about to do so she’d know in case she got a call that I’d been killed. I started to post on Twitter that I’d be heading to my office and I wasn’t trying to break into anything, so that there would be a written testimony for when the media brings up some detail on my past to justify my death. These are the things I felt I needed to do to prepare for the possibility of running into American police. Because being Black in America means I’m perpetually putting my life in danger. I ended up just going to the gym and not even trying to go to the office early. ================ I remember hearing stories of suicide bombers in places like Baghdad and thinking about how terrifying it must be to not know when the next bomb was coming. This was right after 9/11 and we were inundated with stories of how dangerous life was for a Middle Eastern kid living in Al-Qaeda territories. In America, I’d felt like disasters on a 9/11 were scary, but they’d only happen at places like the World Trade Center or the Statue of Liberty. These kids in Iraq, though, were scared of being bombed at their coffee shops or buying fabric from the market. That just seemed like an entirely different terror to deal with. It haunted me to think about living in a circumstance in which any attempt to leave my house puts my life in danger. I feel that same terror. In 2015. In America. I’ve seen actual video of Black people murdered by police while driving to work, getting gas, riding their bikes and walking down the street. In 2003, 1.5 people were killed by suicide bomb every day in Iraq. In 2015, 2.3 people are killed by police every day. I don’t say this to compare the fears or say which situation was worse, but I do feel like we are living in a war zone. A country where citizens are in fear of a government-funded regime that’s determined to murder individuals with no recourse. And this can happen on our way to the store, at the park or on our own front porches. I’ve known too many Black men whose wives won’t let them go to a CVS to pick up a carton of eggs after dark. I know too many women who have to send text messages every 15 minutes of a road trip to reassure friends and loved ones that they haven’t been stopped by a cop. This isn’t living. This is surviving in a war zone. And we all have PTSD. I’ve seen PTSD firsthand. My father was a Freedom Rider and Civil Rights activist who saw friends die. He’s had police guns pointed at his temple and he’s woken up wondering how he survived the previous day. I’ve seen kids in New Orleans who survived Katrina and wouldn’t take showers even a year after the storm passed. Some kids, whose parents abandoned them to survive the storm, can’t be left alone for fear an adult is never coming back. I know the effects of PTSD well. And we all are suffering from it. There’s only so long we can watch people who look like us get gunned down daily and witness the murderers suffer zero consequences before it starts to affect us. It’s hard to imagine sometimes that the deaths of people we’ve never met before could affect us so much. That we’d not want to go to work the next morning or hang out because we were too affected by people who look like us getting killed. There have been days when I’ve seen a hashtag and haven’t wanted to get out of bed in the morning. A few weeks ago, I took a couple of days off of Twitter and was afraid to get back on because I didn’t want to see all the new hashtags I’d missed. Last night, there was another kid murdered by police in St. Louis and the script is the same. And it’s triggering. Police feel threatened. Boy accused of having a gun. People want answers. Gas bombs. Rubber bullets. It’s a nightmare that we relive every day. And it has tangible effects. America feels like a war zone. I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like my life matters here. I feel like I’m at war in a battle that where I don’t have any weapons. It’s hard to tell myself not to live in fear. To defy the gun barrels aimed at my Blackness and enjoy my life. To tell my son that he can enjoy his youth and feel free here. Sometimes just feeling human seems impossible in America. Happiness is survival here. Functioning is a luxury. I just want to stay Black and live. And a lot of times, that’s the best I can do.
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We All Have PTSD
