I’m Not Woke
Woke (verb) past tense of wake: 1. to rouse from or as if from sleep, 2. stir, excite. an experience that woke old feelings, 3. to arouse conscious interest in, alert. Example: After being sick for several days she woke up feeling better.
Sleep (noun): the natural, easily reversible periodic state of many living things that is marked by the absence of wakefulness and by the loss of consciousness of one’s surroundings, is accompanied by a typical body posture (such as lying down with the eyes closed), the occurrence of dreaming, and changes in brain activity and physiological functioning, is made up of cycles of non-REM sleep and REM sleep, and is usually considered essential to the restoration and recovery of vital bodily and mental functions, a condition of body and mind that typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the eyes are closed, the postural muscles relaxed, the activity of the brain altered, and consciousness of the surroundings practically suspended.
Sleep (verb): 1. To be in a state of sleep, 2. inactive, dormant, 3. be at peace in death; lie buried. (Merriam Webster, 2023)
I wonder, can one be woke if they’ve never been sleep? Before the first alarm bells rang for school days, sleep had already been washed from my eyes. Centuries old genocide, enslavement, and exploitation kept me up. Racialization and marginalization make napping illusive.
I would love to sleep. To curl up under the warm blanket of mediocrity camouflaged as meritocracy and exceptionalism. However, I can’t, lest I forget that the blankets are tainted with smallpox. Awake, conscious of every step because, when I allow myself to listen to the lullabye of, “make America great, again,” the great dreams become nightmares of: eating the bowels of pigs with weeds called greens while working in fields, crows named Jim attacking with dogs, strange fruit swinging from trees that upon closer inspection could be me.
Four hundred plus years of insomnia has taught me to be on high alert. I do not have the opportunity to luxuriate in the blissful ease of the slumber of the unaware, who distort a King’s dream with the lullabye’s next verse, “content of character.” For some reason, the dream’s definition of character has been changed in an effort to assassinate me.
What does it feel like to doze? To shut one’s eyes to the pain and suffering of others, reaching a comatose state so deep where you can’t even feel your own? I watch the sleep walk through the world, bumping and bruising others never waking. I’m perplexed, how does one stay sleep to the cacophony of cries?
When the sleep cause too much destruction, I scream, “WAKE UP!” Sometimes I scream until I have no voice. When they finally rouse to see their destruction they yell back, “YOUR BEING WOKE DISTURBED MY SLEEP!” No reaction to the carnage caused, only anger that the apple cart of unconsciousness had been toppled.
I’m not alone in my vigilance. When I see the others, eyes blurry, voice hoarse, we acknowledge each other with a nod. It is then I wonder, what would happen if we too decided to sleep? To find a dark corner and rest our eyes? Would we fall into the dream-filled sleepscape of the unaware, or would the nightmares of the day haunt me? Would I awaken? I’m not quite sure. It’s a state in which I’m unfamiliar. In a chicken-egg paradox I wonder, can I be woke if I’ve never been sleep?
