i don’t really feel anger or even fatigue. i just kinda feel... nothing right now.

the page keeps turning, but the same words are written and it’s impossible to close the book unless my name gets added to the next page.

i remember the first time i bawled over the murder of a Black person here. it was in Dec 2015. i went back home from college for winter break. they announced on the news that Timothy Loehmann, the officer who murdered Tamir Rice, would not be indicted. i wept for hours.

i’d cried plenty of times before that moment, of course. we’d lost tons of Black folks in that time, especially. but that event really shook me to my core. my mom came in the room and i just fell into her arms and bawled.

it felt like an unshakable moment. and every moment forward, i always tried to measure my grief to that moment. and when i didn’t quite feel that pain, i tried to make myself feel it. to no avail. i never quite felt that pain again.

i always hoped i wasn’t being desensitized, but after years and years of anger, grief, sadness, frustration, confusion, i’m at a point where feelings feel too... vapid.

i only see one solution.

but i think i am realizing that not feeling doesn’t necessarily mean i am desensitized. it just means i cannot afford to have my heart ripped out of my chest after every death and every shooting.

i know where i want (us all) to go. that’s gotta be enough.

i guess this is just a public reflection. i’m hoping Jacob Blake pulls through, and hoping for the continued safety of all the folks who’ll take the streets tonight and beyond.

somewhere out there, there must be Life for us.