Mourning Journal.

I woke up this morning to a video someone had posted on Instagram of a woman in the back of a cop car being consoled by her daughter after her boyfriend had just been shot by the police. I don’t know the details of the killing but the pain in this women’s voice and the love in her daughters was an all too familiar feeling.
I lost hope when I saw this video. I felt that if people can be seen as less than humans for the color of their skin what point is there in even trying in life. It makes you feel really helpless living in the hands of a corrupt government. I know there are good cops and good government officials but there are all too many greedy and corrupt people running this country. That sentiment alone tears at my heart.

After seeing that video I knew it was time for me to pick up my journal again. I’ve really been avoiding writing over this quarantine for no reason in particular.
As I sat with my coffee and journal I looked around. The light was pouring into the windows and onto my skin, I felt its warmth. The dogs were sleeping and I felt an overwhelming sense of appreciation come over me. Even with all the greed and killing in the world, I can still see the beauty in each day. There is no way I can or will ever let anyone steal the joy from my life. I learned this in my later years of high school. I was a very angry young adult. I had hatred in my heart for the man who killed my father and I was mad that someone had broken my mother’s heart. I let this anger take the form of violence and in my insecurities, I became a very aggressive person. It wasn’t until I had a psych professor in college that I began to heal myself and start to forgive my father's killer. When you hate someone you are always letting them have power over you.

Seeing that daughter in that video cry for her mothers pain was such an insight into the love and innocence we all have as children. We are way more similar than we are different. Even when people do really fucking bad things, I try and tell myself “they are me just in a different set pair of shoes.” We all have the capability to love, hate, and even kill but to me, the killing of anyone is a cowardly act that is always centered in fear. It takes a lot more effort to be the bigger person and to forgive those that have done wrong to you but I believe that act of awareness is exactly what it means to be human.

Throughout these protests for George Floyd, I have had many opinions but something I have realized is that our opinions aren’t as concrete as we believe they are more like mud slowly dripping down a hill. Something that is true today may no longer be true tomorrow. What I do believe deep in my fucking heart is that killing is wrong. Yet our culture glorifies killers in movies, in uniforms, on the streets, and in our music. That badest man in the precinct has a lot more in common with the badest man on the street than they both know.
The true victims are the ones that have to grow up in the absence of a parent and separating little black children and little white children from their parents is a travesty.
Not only has this happened to me by the murder of my father who was a police officer but I had always wondered about the children of the man who killed my father. There were organizations and other cops that helped my family get through that time but who’s there to help a little boy who’s dad gets life in prison? No child is at fault in either situation. I hope the killing stops. I hope that the police and the protesters realize this is a human rights issue, not a political republican vs democrat issue. Do not let the government belittle black lives any longer. We cannot enter a violent civil war with our neighbors we need to enter a civil war with the politicians in power. Think about that mother's pain in that video and think about the pain of the mothers who have lost their children working in the line of duty. America is better off a melting pot where mothers make their babies dinner, not board there babies up in wooden boxes.

Please let black people have this time to mourn and to protest.