In law school, they constantly talked about how “you can’t unring the bell;” it means that once something happens, you can’t return to a situation where the thing didn’t happen.

Think of juries hearing inadmissible evidence: they can’t unhear it and it will affect their verdict.

I bring it up now because… white folks. What are y’all doing?

Systematic oppression has existed since the foundation of the country; it CREATED a situation where current prez could get elected. White folks treat his presidency as an isolated event and him like a boogieman.

His presidency officially greenlit and emboldened a type of people that ALWAYS existed. He didn’t create these conditions; these conditions created him.

White folks are treating voting him out as if you CAN unring a bell: “Let’s get him out first THEN worry about systematic bad”

And I keep asking “what happens Nov 4?” And they keep going “I dunno but won’t it be better?”

And I ask… BETTER FOR WHO????

And they say “…minorities?” but we both know it means they can just go back to ignoring things cuz there’s a Dem in office and that’s all that matters…

Cops were killing us when Bill and Barry were in office. Joe helped both of them terrorize brown people on the other side of the globe while locking up black people here.

And “good” white people didn’t care, cuz their comfort necessitates our terror.

They aren’t screaming at us to vote for Joe for OUR safety; it’s for THEIR ease of mind.

And it’s fucking PAINFULLY obvious. You cannot unring the bell. You showed marginalized folk what your priorities are. Bell’s been rung. He will eventually die, but THEY are standing by.

One of my least favorite and yet also favorite personal trait is my inability to let a sleeping dog lie.

I fucking love it for its simplicity: I don’t believe “bad” people deserve a second of comfort.

I hate it cuz it leaves me without a poker face when I’m actually harmed.

We all know the names of my enemies by heart. Eli, Jim, etc.

But I rarely say the names of those who HURT hurt me. Ex: it’s been 7.5 years and I still only refer to you-know-who as “Chicago.”

I’ve spent the last two weeks HURTING like hell, and Sunday… it finally broke me.

You cannot unring the bell. I made it a mission in 2020 to weed out toxic relationships. By the start of March, it became a cursory introspection of my interpersonal relationships with white people. By June, utter rage at their ignorance. August, I dropped out of my own life…

I can’t unring the bell. I can’t unsee the utter indifference. I can’t I feel the pain carelessly inflicted.

I’ve been calling all the thread-writing I’ve been doing since early august “a natural progression” to this 2020 mission, but I hadn’t considered the toll of such growth.

Then Sunday came. Along with it, grief. I mourned a rung bell; a lost trust. I accepted a truth I not only already knew, but spent an entire month writing THREE DOZEN threads about:

There will always come a moment when white folk must pick between me and whiteness… and I lose.

The comforts of whiteness will always prevail. Every white person in my life has a certain tolerance level for my “antics,” but eventually, the novelty of a black friend will come at too high an ask, and they will abandon me to preserve a system of oppression they allegedly hate.

I’ve known for a long time but always felt “I can solve the riddle and save the history book of my life!” I’ve known the risk of friendship was higher for me, the danger higher for me, that the inevitable disappointment would always land at my feet.

Sunday, I finally accepted it

And the unraveling started in a moment of joy. God, what a fucking pretentious sentence.

Anyway, I got a message from @yogawench; she was excited about a video I had sent, Sonya Renee Taylor’s “Divest from the penal system in your head” on IG.

She was rightfully excited; it’s a powerful video. It reframes white guilt about one’s complicity. It rightfully inspired her to do more.

But it was the “it’s everything you’ve been saying,” the admission that it’s fucked up it took her this long to act that got me.

Not at first. It’s not the first time a white friend has said that. But I do think it’s the first time a white friend has meant it, and I think that’s what stung. What made it linger and fester in my brain is it’s timing - again, been hurting for 2 weeks - but we’ll get to that.

But what DOES it say about friendships with white folks? That somebody who’s in my phone as “Mrs. Six Fingers,” somebody with whom I’ve been in a 3+ year group text where we and @sourcederived speak daily is only just now inspired?

What does it say about me? About her?

But, timing, I know the questions lingered because last week, I was questioning myself about acquaintances. And THAT realization on Sunday really got the emotional spiral going!

[Editor’s Note: I’m hitting “Tweet All” then taking a break. Cliffhanger!]

Ugh, this is missing a tweet about assumed best intentions and the power of cumulative effect:

I believe that everything she’s learned and heard from me had an impact on her; it’s just that the times we’re in (and my abrupt disappearance from the group text) was the final push.

Well… fuck. I got really fucking high…

Refreshed and ready to finish my thoughts but after sleeping on it, I’m left questioning “who is this thread for? Them or you?”

Am I trying to call out white folks or am I just airing dirty laundry in the void?

Neither. I’m reclaiming me.

So this is a story about Sunday’s emotional breakdown, but it doesn’t start Sunday; that was just the tipping point.

Friday, I purged 40 white Twitter followers and about *280* contacts in my phone… Sunday was inevitable. How’d we get to Friday?

Last week I had two brief, disappointing, disappointingly brief convos with @maddiesaywhat. Tagging cuz 1) I respect and like her too much to have y’all run like the gossips y’all are and be like “Tym said…” 2) I have zero to hide. This isn’t about her; it’s about me.

Hell, if anything I owe Maddie a “thank you” for getting my brain thinking about this stuff. If I’m going to spend my summer reevaluating interpersonal relationships with white folks, what about the casual acquaintances???

Whew… the casual acquaintances.

My convos with Maddie forced me to ask “what am I supposed to do with white friends like her?” It was directed AT her Thursday, but by Friday I had pointed it back at myself.

The convos stemmed from my disappointment in her recent social media activity cuz y’all don’t think.

Y’all just post your hollow activism shit and your BLM and do you ever stop to think what the black folks in your life think about it? The performance?

Our discussions ended on the topic of “emotional labor” and the misconception white folks have about it. So let me be clear:

It’s already exhausting just existing NEAR AND AROUND Y’ALL! We have to navigate a world that wants to kill us while also navigating the fragile emotions of our white peers as they discover their own complicity.

Those convos were another bell rung, something else to mourn.

She suggested I ask about her offline activism, I pushed back that asking white folks anything requires more emotional labor than y’all realize.

Final words was me asking “the fuck you know about emotional labor if I have to spend this much to be told you want me to spend any?”

I left dejected: I KNEW regardless of whether she took my words to heart or not, she’d be fine. Which raises an interesting question:

What does it say about me, about her, about interracial casual acquaintances in general when a white person gets defensive when called out?

Ya know? Like… we weren’t very close to begin with, but how am I supposed to feel about ALL white acquaintances when they are dismissive about racial concerns within the acquaintanceship?

How can ALL Black lives matter if the black lives in your own social circle don’t?

AND WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT HOW WHITE TWITTER FRIENDS AND IRL ACQUAINTANCES VIEW ME AS A WHOLE PERSON?

Goddamn, y’all are so good at contradicting your daily actions and performative activism. Baldwin said “I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do.”

And what stung the most was being told with the perfect amount of polite Midwest condescension “if you have any concrete actions you want me to take…”

White folks have perfected telling you how little they think about you and the work you do by asking you for “concrete actions”

My takeaways from those brief convos:

1) if I’m concerned about her allyship, I need to ask her cuz it’s not her job to make black people feel safe.

2) her allyship is MY responsibility to correct, because she’s fine with her own efforts.

You can’t unring those bells.

Friday was itself a mini-breakdown, an appetizer to Sunday’s entrée.

Maddie’s polite dismissiveness did it’s job: it put me in my place. White acquaintances care about black lives, just not mine if I challenge them.

And so I purged every whites person who I don’t feel safe with

We get to Sunday, and I’m now processing @yogawench saying “this is everything you’ve been saying” and @maddiesaywhat implying “you’ve said nothing worth listening to” ON TOP OF all the bullshit I’m going thru with Grace’s parents…

…on top of the Katrina fallout…

Cuz like I said, I’ve BEEN HURTING for two weeks. On the 18th, I had to end an 11-month romantic relationship because of White Defensiveness™ and that one fucking STUNG!

So by Sunday… too many bells were ringing, and I finally… FINALLY broke.

White people… what am I, what are the black folks in your life, supposed to do with you all?

How do we unring the bell here?

I have a close friend, a casual acquaintance, and a romantic partner all telling me they actively ignore words and skin…

HOW DO YOU UNRING THAT BELL???

How do we go back to being cool with each other? When you don’t make any effort to be mindful of how you personally show up for the black people in your lives? When you support BLM but you regularly tell me with your actions that I don’t matter?

Last night I mentioned “saving the history book of my life.” What does that mean?

I’m painfully aware of how woefully white my social circle is. I talk about it ad nauseum. Every time I have to cut out a white person over race shit, I have to cut out whole swaths of my memory…

Cuz it’s not just “oh! This falling out happened,” it’s accepting that a person in my life who I thought cared about me… didn’t take my serious concerns and fears about systematic racism seriously. It means that they picked whiteness over me.

People I love don’t love me back.

People I respect don’t respect me enough to be better white people.

Our friendship was a novelty to them. The bonds I thought I genuinely made were undone by their NEED for whiteness.

And Sunday was my limit. 9 months of HARD introspection and all I got were these lousy friends

You can’t unring the bell. I can’t keep having my intelligence insulted by White Defensiveness™. I can’t trust white folks. I can’t trust MY OWN MEMORIES of the white folks in my life…

Because they will always have a line in the sand: Tym vs Whiteness. And I will always lose.

Sunday, I broke. I shattered into a million pieces as I accepted that my entire life with and around white folks was a figment of my imagination. It was their fun inclusivity LARPing.

But at the end of the day… they are real people and I am a token black.

Unring THAT bell.

Anyway, back to solving racism so I can give you all the “concrete actions” to be better white folks. In the meantime, please enjoy your privileges uninterrupted. Black lives DO matter, just not the ones in your social circle…

just not mine