I'm reading through this.
And fueled by excessive coffee, I am still awake.
Did you ever imagine yourself in your history books, replacing the big players?
I remember eighth grade history well. I suppose that's what happens when you have Roxane Rollins for a teacher. I still remember the first twelve presidents and most of the Gettysburg Address. I even vaguely remember learning about the Civil War.
I have long wondered whether I could have been like any of the big players in abolition. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln . . . Or even William Wilberforce et al in England. (didn't learn about him until later). Would I have been like any of them? Could I have been one to stand against slavery, even if I was borne into a home full of slaves, and taught that a little extra melanin is a lot less human?
Sometimes it looks like I could have my answer. After all, I live with the knowledge that millions are enslaved today.
Except I was borne into a people proud of our "liberty and justice for all", a people so "civilised" who could barely fathom that just a century and a half ago our progenitors held slaves (well, other than the fact I come from Japanese and Jewish immigrants, and my family hasn't even been in the US that long). I don't know what it is to be taught humans should be owned and to rebel against that.
So I find myself curled up in bed, just trying to succumb to sleep, but it evades me. My face is wet with tears, and I shake, my body wracked with silent, lonely sobs.
I am tired of being comfortable. I am tired of luxury. I do not want complacency. I do not want this damned American Dream.
I wish I had been borne into a life that didn't know hot showers and hot food. Soft beds, Air conditioning. I wish I wasn't addicted to my luxury.
How can I fight this? I'm so addicted that I'm afraid of anything outside of that. I don't want to live in a world that in uncomfortable fighting for freedom. Fighting to give love to the unloved.
I don't feel I can be trusted with it. Why was it that I was borne into this life, and they were borne into that one?
Life--so full of questions. And deficient in fairness.
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