[1.21.17]
I don’t feel good enough. I saw others fail, so I didn’t want to try. Why go through the heartbreak of rejection when it’s hard enough to see someone else’s pain. Empathy is a strong enough feeling. No need to walk through the same doors of rejection myself. But I can’t do it anymore. Sit from a far and see the wounded egos retreat to the park bench.
Do you have local experience - the words they asked my dad? It was there way of keeping people like him out. How could a brown man who had just moved have local experience? I wonder what he did on those days at the park? Did he feel bad? Did he feel shame? Sadness has a funny way of becoming comedy in retrospect.
But what did those moments feel like? Did the years of shame and rejection - abandonment resurface? I want to know because I want to share in your pain. But I want more to feel brave to walk through the door knowing that words back to me might be a different version of “do you have local experience?”
when i think about the pain you went through, my rejections seem like a walk in the park. but then again, i wasn’t rejected, i didn’t even try. i don’t have regret over the past - except maybe that i didn’t try and so i don’t know what might have been.
even now, i stay closeted in my ideological radicalism. i think thoughts that might make a difference in someones life. but i’m trapped by the stigma of what if. What if you saw this idea on Facebook? Would you still be proud? Would you still be proud when I stop playing by the rules. What if I step outside the lines?
I promise I’m doing it because I want to try. I want to try to walk through the door and put myself out there just like you did - even if it means there will be days on that park bench. But then I’ll be with you. I’ll understand you and maybe you’ll understand me. And maybe we’ll see that the struggle is a generational curse ready to be discarded.
So guess what shame, I have a question for you? What’s your local experience?
You don’t have any huh. Well I’m sorry we don’t have any openings at this time.
It’s time for you to sit on the park bench.
You’ve left so many out to dry for too long.
I don’t want you anymore.
It’s time to go.
I hope you can appreciate what the cold bench beneath you feels like.