It's not your silence that kills me... (To my social media loving, status posting, like and reaction ally)

These times that we are in is killing my spirit and energy softly. I have been emotionally disrupted with the events that have happened--- #AltonSterling || #PhilandoCastile || #Dallas and the many other events that caused a hashtag, a headline or a history of terror and trauma that have happened before and simultaneously with this time.

Writing is my release, my healing. I can no longer be quite in the spaces that I influence. Action will be my redemption. My voice matters, my vote matters the most and to all of my folks asking what can they do--VOTE!



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To my social media loving, status posting, like and reaction ally, you aren't silent and I appreciate that. But you are still killing me. You kill me softly with your impersonal acknowledgement of my pain. 

As a social media enthusiast, I get what it means to post something in the spirit of being heard, of being right there in it--to show the world outside and around you that you are conscious and aware. 

What I say next isn't about condemnation because I have failed at this too, but your status update only means words in the volume of the masses, until you ask me, your friend, am I okay, how am I doing? 

I have personally failed my friends in the LGBTQ community, when Orlando happened. Because I like you just posted a status update and thought that was enough.  But following the events of this week (July 4th, 2016), THAT IS NOT ENOUGH, that is not comfort. 

Comfort comes from those we know, care about and love, acknowledging our pain and grief. Your privilege, allows you to not understand the psychological and emotional trauma that the events of this week have caused people of color and that's not your fault. 

But let me communicate to you the experience we have and why the events are not just a news story, or a political issue, but a personal one:  when we see these videos of the torture of Black bodies we grieve for OUR brother(s), OUR father(s), OUR son(s), OUR family members and OUR friends. We feel that pain because we have a level of guilt, he wasn't a person we know (sigh of relief), but he could have been (grief). 

To walk around the spaces that I have felt safe, protected and a member of a community and to feel like no one around me, except for the lone eyes of fellow members of my marginalized community, understood what was bubbling inside me was painful. It was STRANGLING. 

To go to work with this disconnected feeling and not understand it was because my core had been rocked. But to just have this expectation that it was back to work as usual was damaging. 

To have "you" approach me and talk to me like it was JUST a news story, or the next political topic, placed cuts in an already seriously scarred wound.

In the first few days  of the wake of these incidents, two people, two allys have directly reached out to me to ask me how I am doing, specifically about these recent events, and to tell me that they are praying for the pain I am going through. TWO! It didn't mean that in a conversation that a friend didn't acknowledge my suffering or pain, but it says a lot more and feels more comforting when it isn't the one suffering that initiates the need for a comforting response. 

So today I ask you, after you post that status update, or retweet, or like, or react to the post of someone else, move #beyondthehashtag. Talk to your friend and ask them if THEY are okay. We've gotten it in our heads that these likes, these retweets, reposts and reactions are a replacement for a hug, a direct kind word, IT IS NOT!  Because as my latest blog says... I AM NOT OKAY. 

To my friends and family in the LGBT Community, I am sorry that I did not understand this during Orlando, but I know better now.