Burdened

"My recent knowledge...had awakened a vulnerability within me, triggered something deep, unspoken, that haunted me, that burdened me." - Tatiana de Rosnay

I am reading Sarah's Key by Tatiana Rosnay this week (hooray for taking the bus!). I was really moved by the above excerpt. My family and close friends joke about how I will only read books when someone is being oppressed or mistreated. It's kind of true. I have such a burden for those who have been wronged in this life but not just a sad story. I mean the tragedies of the past and present. The stories no one really wants to hear because it is uncomfortable and even painful. I remember the first time I felt the way this woman so eloquently communicated. I was 18 years old in community college. I was taking a sociology class and they showed a film on historical racism in America. The film told stories of murder and showed pictures of lynching. I remember feeling like I had seen my best friend murdered before my eyes. I was fighting back tears. All the other students were completely unaffected and I felt traumatized. I remember walking out of class that day and this white guy (very hot white guy) said to me how he hated that school because he felt like the scum of the Earth for being a white male. It wasn’t his fault and he was tired of them always trying to make him feel bad. I couldn’t even make words come out of my mouth.

I don’t think the pit in my stomach or the burden on my heart has ever lifted. I can honestly say that I could (and hope to) send the rest of my life fighting that injustice. I was literally ruined that day. I spent the rest of my college career focusing my education on African American studies and the unique African American experience. Maybe no one will ever understand the feeling in my heart: the compassion, the empathy, the rage, the passion, the heartache. But it drives me every day. It is part of me. I carry the burden of that bloody history and I carry the passion to see our system abolish all forms of inequality and injustice.