The Pit

By Nicole Johnson

It is easy to ignore a pain that you dont feel. Yes, the dangers of intolerance seem so distant and historical for some Americans, but for me, the injustice is alive. If you are fortunate enough to escape the pain and too ignorant to look back, Im calling you to empathize.

Threatened because of our religion. Profiled because of our skin. Those of us who arent tolerated because of our love and demeaned because of our gender. We, who are rejected because of our heritage fall into a deep pit of unworthiness created by our oppressor. Ostracized and defamed. Told that our characteristics are problematic and our abilities are not enough.

This pain makes us feel unworthy, unloved. Unbelievable that this poison still exists. Today, it seeps through fake smiles like colorless gas in dark chambers. It kills us without a trace of a cause. Prejudice divides us like water fountain signs and intolerance bites like Jim Crow dogs. The gun shot is the modern day lynch and discrimination is the offspring of the burning bus, but bigotry, bigotry remains the same. Bigotry comes from the mouths of the same heartless sons and daughters and sends my soul into psychological turmoil.

The pain takes you by surprise at first. Slightly reconsider your worth. It could have been something you did, you said, you wore? On the second, third, fourth time you recognize the pain is not self-inflicted and the intolerance, the threats, the profiling become sickening, giving way to anger. You throw it back to stand up for your worth, but defense turns into exhaustion then depression. Ignorant eyes turn away convincing you that the pain isnt real. These eyes even have the audacity to leave you alone at the bottom of the pit they created. A deep pit where the pain begins to creep up from the floor, rising, rising until your last breath. You drown in this pain, gasping for air but swallowing wads of hate until you are rescued by one of the eyes that chooses to see.

It is then that you realize you are a victim of discrimination, prejudice, racism, intolerance and you begin to fight. That rage you see. That protest you call disrespectful, that riot you demean, that article you dismiss, those tears you ignore, that is the manifestation of pain. The agony of historical oppression and the PTSD of constant trauma. The shooting reminder that fifty years ago the dogs were unleashed, buses were burned and fountains were separate.

So dont tell me not to hurt.

You who ignore the pain that you dont feel have a responsibility to heal because you are my brother, my sister and your hands are free to pull me up. Wash me clean of these injustices and help me breathe again like I did before I ever knew the pain that I feel.