When I was in Headington college, finishing up on January and February of Dubiety, I didn’t feel any pressure. This was my first time writing something that wouldn’t be graded. There wouldn’t be a professor to slash away at everything that didn’t match what they were looking for. This wasn’t going to be submitted and thrown back to me on canvas. This was about me, and my experiences thus far of how the year had been from my eyes. I didn’t hesitate the post it out to social media when I did when the month began. To me, posting it felt like I was finally letting the world see me from my own perspective.
I had deep conversations about how I felt in the beginning of 2020 with my close circle of people and family, but this was different. I wanted to bring substance to my website again. I had originally posted it out, with enough time to write the other months, and post them on the same days that I would spend watching my favorite basketball team play.
However, within just a few weeks, I realized that the NABJ conference that was supposed to happen in person in July, was now happening virtually in August. The conference was supposed to be in D.C. I thought back to all the meetings I had with the other execs, about how much fun we’d have flying to Washington and networking with different companies. The most grateful feeling would've been finally bringing OU’s chapter of NABJ to the conference.
Even after the racial incidents, I thought that the conference would bring us together and be the pay-off for all of us. When I opened my laptop, and saw all the different boxes of people, rows of different sessions and sign-in times…it didn’t feel the same. I knew consciously that there was nothing that I could do about it, but I felt that pit of failure again. Our treasurer Christian had already graduated and was back home now. I hadn’t seen my secretary since school ended, so as soon as we all caught up again, I wanted us all to instead be on a plane going there in person.
While the conference was going on, I was working with Millennium and getting my schedule ready to get back into the office on campus for admissions and recruitment. This event that we had the money, the support, and the team for, was now just virtual. I wanted to continue writing Dubiety and had even had the layout of what the social media posts would look like and how each month would have its own summary beforehand.
The conference was four days, and I had only been able to attend two sessions of the many that were offered that I felt were for me, such as selling your novel and getting more into the writing and publishing business. Once I saw that I didn’t have enough hours in the day to see them all, I just turned away from it and focused on getting ready for getting back into the office. With coming back to work, also meant going back to school. Instead of the four jobs I had over the summer, now it was down to two. The social media role and the orientation guide were only temporary.
When I entered the office on campus for the first time again, having to wear the mask for the entirety of my shift, made everything felt desolate. The feeling of wanting to shake hands, reconnect and even ask how others had been didn’t reach me anymore. I was focused on getting into a rhythm of school again.
When classes started, and I began to buy my books to read throughout the semester for my final course in college, I felt my eyes slumped lower and my optimism sink deep within me again. I knew I would be staring at a screen all the time. I was still signing acceptance letters, folding boxes, and taking phone calls, but everything felt much more isolated and spaced off. I would listen to music more often during my shifts to not let the silence of the office detain me.
The hardest part of my job wasn’t wearing the mask for hours, or disinfecting everything and fearing for my safety anytime I heard a cough or sneeze. It was watching others crumble before me knowing I couldn’t do anything about it. I would go through a shift receiving calls, trying to explain to parents about how the university was adjusting to campus life again. I would spend call after call either looking up a student’s information to see if they were going to get accepted or not, or how they would proceed forward. In person appointments were rarities, but when the day came that a parent and their child did come to the office, it was rarely for anything good.
A parent walked in, looked me in the eye, and asked me where they could go to pull their student out of OU. In the moment I was shocked, but then I saw the students face as they turned away and look dejected, almost as if they had given everything they could, I understood. Financially, nothing changed when applying and enrolling in school. Just because there was a global pandemic, and the full experience of being an OU student was diminished, that didn’t mean you would be paying anything less than what you were paying before. As I leaned back in my seat and told her where her and her child could go to do so, I felt terrible. I was on the tail end of my college career, while I saw so many people just starting theirs.
This ominous feeling of survivor’s guilt would slap me in the face again, whenever I saw snapchat stories or posts from my friends as the semester went on, of them explaining how difficult it was to be a full-time student now. I was only taking one course, which I didn’t show my face in at all because I disconnected myself emotionally every time. At the same time, I understood some of my peers frustrations and problems they were having just being a student now in general. How could we just go back to school? How could we just try and focus on a future of education while at the same time we were thinking of our health and safety every single day when it came to the virus?
I thought I could escape that feeling when I wasn’t working on the campus, but it followed me whenever I gave tours for Millennium when trying to lease people. When I would give tours to freshmen and their parents, I felt bad asking them “how’s school been so far?” This was because I knew they would always mention how COVID changed their expectations, and how it almost put them in a damper mood when thinking about it. Some of their answers were enlightening, and thought things would get better. Most gave me a look of knowing that things weren’t what they seemed, and that they wanted that full OU experience when deciding to come here. That would burn in me sometimes when I would sit at the desk after the tours, staying silent and having to burrow those feelings in my head most days.
The Black Lives Matter movement was growing exponentially every day, and as the NBA implemented its bubble-play and brought awareness to the issue with its players, the court, and the product, it seemed like more and more uncomfortable conversations were going to be had about race, and just because the playoffs were unfolding, didn’t mean that social justice wasn’t still a topic of discussion.
Watching my favorite team play in the playoffs and having nights where I could turn off my device and brain from the constant thumping of class and financial strains was needed. Don't forget about the nagging constant fear of the virus, watching basketball alone in my room, or sometimes in the living room with my closest of friends was needed too. Another reason why I was grateful the NBA still held its play, while focusing on social justice, was that Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics became a louder voice of change within the NBA. The way he would speak, bring attention to issues, and still perform well, while also not being the biggest celebrity in the sport like a Lebron James, made things feel more real.
After every game, his press conferences would include him taking time to speak on issues, and other players took moments to highlight how they were even feeling while in the bubble. Some of them felt like they were trapped, and couldn’t do much to make a change. However, they were making a change every day by speaking their minds and reminding us all that they are human, just like us.
The biggest change came, when Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by police in Kenosha , Wisconsin. He was hospitalized and thankfully survived, but the anger and resentment intensified afterward. The players themselves had enough, halting playoff games to bring attention to what mattered more, which was social justice.
What a push and pull effect that was happening. A bubble designed to ensure that play would continue properly, however, there was no bubble for racism. There was no way to contain it or suppress it anyway. The uncomfortable conversations needed to be had.
This is when I ultimately stopped focusing on writing Dubiety. My therapy was still ongoing, as I would find myself somewhat silent during some sessions. I was in need of an understanding of how the whole world could see these atrocities going on, and yet, all I saw after Jacob Blakes shooting, was more people trying to justify it. More and more people tried to find push-back, and almost trying to do what’s been done so many times before involving race, simply not wanting to have the conversation at all. More protests ensued in Kenosha especially. Then another act of terror happened shortly afterwards.
Just days after Jacob Blake was shot and the world witnessed more of what the black community was fighting against, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse drove from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha Wisconsin with his AK-47 to wreak havoc on protesters. As he gunned down one man and took off, other protesters tried to detain him, looking like something of a horror film, he was almost stripped of his gun, until he fired and shot two others cold blooded in the street. The video of him doing this was disturbing because he was a white 17-year-old kid with a gun, playing around with it like he was in a videogame. Some things you see, and not only do you wish you could un-see them, but you lose a sense of yourself trying to understand the mindset of why someone would do what they did while watching it.
Shortly after his attack, he found himself being escorted by heavily armored police who were there in response to the peaceful Kenosha protests. Men in armed vehicles would toss water bottles to other anti-protesters who also had weapons of their own along the way. Seeing police helping armed white men with whose intentions were to harm peaceful protesters in response of the Jacob Blake shooting…just typing it makes my brain melt. Anger was an understatement. It felt like all the marching, all the protests, the name changes, the statue removals and the powerful speeches and messages we’d see on our screens still wasn't enough, because of how freely and privileged people like Kyle Rittenhouse were to do what they did. The scariest thing was that this was just the kind of stuff that was caught on tape.
When is enough? Do we just get killed every day? Are we being antagonized more because of the rights and equality we’re fighting for? Why are there people who hate Black Lives Matter? Why is there so much hate? This is too much.
My mind once again was overwhelmed, overflooded, and often times felt as if it were overheating with these and many other thoughts. I sought after GOD to help with these issues I had with what I saw and felt. Combine this with weekly therapy, and this was a stable enough foundation. I told myself “you’re getting by in school, and surviving as a black man every day.”
I reached out to Anthony, not to talk about anything that went through my head, but to find any escape from my own mind that I could. As we sat on his balcony and partook in our usual shenanigans, recounting how life had been and what was next for us, it was a grand moment to feel relaxed again. That was, until his roommate paused our stories with tragic news. “I don’t mean to kill the mood, but Chadwick Boseman just died.”
Frozen… simply frozen. I was alone finding out about Kobe, so tears flooded my eyes quickly. In this moment, I felt dry and empty inside from the protests. All the hatred I saw and then felt within me, now substituted for confusion and utter sadness. Hearing that the Black Panther was no longer with us, just left me in a state of mourn. This year felt as if it were getting worse. I usually could look forward to the next day for something good to happen... not anymore.
He passed away of cancer, which always rang through my head of memories of how my own father passed. An almost inevitable battle with a disease that everyday I wished we had the cure to. Things like cancer are pure evil. I looked off into the street from the balcony and held it together, recounting every role I saw him in. James Brown, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall...and T’Challa.
More news came out that he was battling it for years, even before his iconic roles within the Marvel Cinematic Universe graced us with our first iconic black superhero. It embodied the same line I held true to me; it was about how you finished. He gave it everything he had for his fans and his family with the time he had left on the earth.
So many bad things, negative news and terrible revelations happening…and the year was only eight months in. I fell asleep that night going into a numb state of mind. I gave up on wanting to understand anything. I let a lot of my stress and emotion burrow itself inside of me and tuck itself away.
When I hung out with Anthony that night, before the news was broken to us, I was also reminded that we were going to have our Welcome Black OU mixer on the campus soon. It was an event that was supposed to show off all of the black organizations OU had and gathered people around to give them insight on the culture. It also happened to be probably the first gathering of black students at OU for the school year.
The morning of the mixer though, I was woken up by a video call from my sister. It was early in the morning too, quite strange considering that she usually sleeps in, and if we do video call, we always schedule it beforehand. After I rubbed my eyes and accepted the call, I heard her crying, and saw her in complete shock and sadness. My heart dropped dramatically deep into the pits of my stomach thinking the absolute worst news I could ever get from her. I thought our mother had passed. It wasn’t that though, instead, Shalisa had told me that her and Freddie’s (my brother-in-law) apartment complex had caught on fire the night previous.
She recounted the horrible experience of how they were woken up by firefighters and evacuated out of the complex with nothing but their dog Wesley, and whatever things they could grab in that small sliver of time. Waking up and getting tumultuous news, after just receiving bad news, on top of terrible news all around…fed my numbness. As I stayed on the call and tried to listen to her, help her out and figure out what she needed to do next, I forgot what I even had planned for the day. By the time I got off the call and had to get up and get ready myself, I didn’t feel anything through me. I felt as if the world didn’t even exist anymore.
I put myself on autopilot and let the deepest side of me that could muster up the appearance that everything was perfectly fine takeover. By the time I got everything ready for the NABJ presentation table for the Black mixer, my autopilot was at full capacity. I pushed away all the images and feelings I had before. It was unhealthy, as I wanted to be back home with my family and take care of my sister instead. I couldn’t just call off holding down my time of running the NABJ table so late before the event started. My head wouldn't piece together a way to make everything work and also not feel bad altogether no matter what I chose to do. I just let the autopilot continue. I sat at the table and watched as student after student arrived to learn more about the organization. This was my first time seeing so many familiar faces, faces I saw in the same room I gave the speech in about Gaylord Strong, faces that I saw on Juneteenth, faces that made me feel for a moment more so that my time was coming to an end at OU.
I pondered even serving as the President one more semester. I quickly threw away that thought when I saw my other executives arrive at the table.
By the time that the Vice President and Public relations chair showed up, I felt like the team was back together though. We all just enjoyed the moment we had. I knew this was the very last thing I’d do even feeling like the President. This was my last leadership position, the last time I looked at them and thought about the organization at all.
That day, we got the greatest number of signatures we had ever gotten for interest in NABJ. More people knew of us now than ever. Maybe it was because of the racial incidents, maybe it was because of each executive’s other friend groups and other organizations they were apart of by association. Nevertheless, this chapter was finally closing for me. By the time I walked away from the table, my auto-pilot quickly shifted into gear my overbearing numbness as I thought about taking things one day at a time.
I felt so many emotions, all the time. Once again, I was at an event with so many people, so I wanted to feel safe. The following day I got a COVID test, and thankfully it came back negative. As I entered another month, I didn’t have any expectations. I was numb and on autopilot, until something would come around to snap my emotions back into place.
Comments