August 9, 2014: A Year in (P)review
It is August 9, 2014 today, and I have just started to unlearn hate, challenge ideas of G-d & Church, and actively practice being a carefree, queer black boy. I am a fetus of Black liberation. Or, as I like to imagine, in the process of claiming my newly freed self.
It is August 9, 2014, and I’m breathing, but unaware that I am waking from a nightmare repurposed as a dream streaming from the sands of white supremacy. My eyes have been moved rapidly to lull me from the truth but the gun has yet to go off.
It is the morning of August 9, 2014, and I have sleep and joy in my eyes, because I’ve spent most of August 8th talking, laughing, loving, lusting, thinking, listening, breathing, living, debating on FaceTime with JB, a boy who has continually captured me only to re-release me further from hate in the span of 3 months.
By August 9th 2014, I have even convinced the Universe I love not one, not two, but at least 3 boys I met through the Internet. Most importantly, I’m open and honest about it, and they know that they all have captivated me in special and meaningful ways. I am not ashamed by this nor have I coveted them all in the same ways. I’m the poetry I’ve read about.
It is approaching noon of August 9, 2014, and I am seconds away from my twitter and I’m opening it only because I’m anxious to hear from JB. I’m anxious to let him call me because each time it reminds me that I’m deserving of love, and it challenges me to think of the ways to reciprocate liberation to a soul so free.
It is noon of August 9, 2014, and I have my iPhone in my hand. Twitter is buzzing. JB is calling. I am woke. And Michael Brown has been lying in the street for an hour. I spend the remainder of the day crying, writing, listening, tweeting, and pleading with trauma, innocence, and what I no longer know of G-d.
August 9th is also the day I learn that another boy that I loved and met through the Internet will ultimately lose his younger sister in a fatal car wreck. I won’t be aware for some time, but when I do find out, I will reflect on how trauma is a shared cultural experience for Black folks, and that’s without factoring in all the personal trauma we face in the shadows of these events. When I think of him and August 9th, I will remember what it felt like to experience suicide ideation.
It is August 9th 2014, and I realize that I have to find the Michael Browns and Aiyana Jones of my community, because even if white supremacy kills them physically, I want them to at least know that they were better than what this world could offer them and to be able to name & speak out against the very thing that is consuming them. I want them to know because if they were to die by the evils of white supremacy their stories wouldn’t be rewritten to say they enjoyed it.
By the time it is August 9, 2015, I will then be an educator moving into my second year, trying to love kids that the world promises to destroy. I will be no less scared. I will be no more prepared. I will be no less sure that I will survive. I will have failed them in ways that I had hoped to help. I will be no more hopeful, but I would have made it 365 more days than Mike Brown did and I will have to keep loving and preparing kids to wake earlier than I did, and without them having to wake-up because one of them was gunned down and then left in the street for four hours.
By August 9, 2015, I will still be in the process of claiming my freed self, but now without the direct help of JB, who I will still love dearly.
By August 9 2016, I will have hoped to have made 365 more revolutions and will have escaped time as my central unit of measurement.
But today is August 9, 2014 and I’m watching the revolution in the streets and my mind unfold. I am hoping that August 9, 2015 treats me better than today. I am hoping that Mike Brown is the last black or brown body weaponized against itself for the use of white supremacy, but I know better. I am hoping I can do some good. I am hoping I can get some peace.
It is approaching August 10th, 2014 and I’m unsure what the future holds for me.
Update: it’s August 9, 2017, and I have left the classroom, because I couldn’t beat back the fear of not being enough to save myself or my students.
Update: It’s August 9, 2018, and I’m keeping my eyes on the future.
Update: It’s August 9, 2019. I’ve decided to love on the present as much as I have coveted the future.
