Things I Fear.

Wow how interesting: this challenge comes just one day after a post on Confession. I confessed to afraid. Generally, a Confession is an admission of some ugly thing that one has done. I don’t have any of those stories to tell. I do, however, have this one:

There was a reason why I felt like I should confess to being afraid but even more importantly there's a reason why I don't mind writing about my fears.

I am afraid

I fear many things and circumstance and it's because of what I've seen. The things I've seen up-close-and-personal in my life have frightened me beyond expression. These things have always been there and I've never seen any relief from these things.

“What Things,” you ask?

I was afraid as a child.

I was always afraid of being hit. [Yes, we got whippings.] I have always been afraid of physical violence. I'm even more afraid of physical violence today because I don't have any protection. As a child, I had parents. Later, I had only my mother. After becoming an adult, I suppose I did have the police but...

I have always been afraid of the police.

Why was I afraid of the police?

I was afraid of the police because they could kill me just as easily as they can help me. Not only that, I have always heard stories about the police doing horrible things to people to women particularly black women.

I live in this world in black skin, in a female body, alone. I don't have a spouse. I don't have male children; I don't have any children.

I don't live in a protected environment or a gated community.

I live my life and I move and I come and go and I'm always thinking about this. It is a really terrible way to live.

This is the dual consciousness that W.E.B. DuBois talked about.

I know that I am American but I also know that I am black.

To me, that means the whole world could easily make war against me and no one would stop it; no one could help me. That's a horrible fact to live with.

What follows is a very hard story to tell, but I will tell it anyway. It likely won’t read well but I seem to have some difficulty making it flow any better and I wanted it posted tonight!

No Caption Necessary...

And then last year, 2015, the 3rd of July the day before independence day the Klan had a rally in South Carolina to protest removing the flag and I start to think about what it would be like if the clan had a rally right here in town where I live. What would it be like if I looked out the window later on tonight and I thought the Klan marching up the street from the church at the top of the hill? I had an absolute full-blown panic attack I couldn't even think the only thing I could think was what if what if they decided to come in at a courthouse as they move through the neighborhood. And then what if you wanted that one person came to the front door started breaking and other person came to the back door or through the window it wouldn't take very much for anybody to get into the house where I live and I was thinking about that and I had an absolute panic attack because I don't have anyone to protect myself.

I have no way to protect myself.

Even if I had a way to protect myself, I would have to live with the fact that I killed somebody or hurt somebody. I would also live with a very good possibility that I'd be punished I am NOT inmate material.

So I paced back in forth in the house. I could feel my body changing. I started to feel a different energy surge through my body that I've never felt before.

I tried to lie down but that didn't work.

I then had an overwhelming desire to eat something sweet. I had nothing sweet to eat in the house [sweeter than Honey] and I didn't have any thoughts of leaving the house to get something. So I repeated to myself, ‘you have to calm down’.

Finally I said to myself. ‘Sandra they can only kill you one time,’ then I started to relax.

But that didn't do anything about the Fears that I continued to live with.

This was my clearest and truest experience of how emotions affect appetite. I was overwhelmed with the desire for something sweet!

I eventually calmed myself.

And then it made me so angry to think about how it happened, to know that every 6 months [sometimes less] the white people--through the white police--in a different part of the country take their turn in just incidentally killing black people.

But just the very idea that a white boy could be welcomed into an African-American church and then turn right around and kill the very people who welcomed to him and then the authorities declare that he was insane. Really!?

That's the only reason he would do it? Then he gets off.

Well when the police officer in full charge of his faculties, things does it he's not declared insane. He just simply gets sent home with a warning not to do it again. Before long, he's back at working. His children don't have to live without their father; his siblings without their brother; his parents without their child.

I also live with the fear of oppression. I live with a fear of poverty. I live with the fear of all illness. I don't have a really have a few of old age--that's one of the things that a lot of people talk about. I don't fear old age and infirmity.

If this post had a CTA, it would be to not perpetrate fear upon people because you have some authority over them; do not deny that you use fear to control others who are different from you. Stop making excuses when you know your people have committed heinous acts of terror and hate and meanness against others. Don’t pretend to be something you are not! Because, if you take a few moments and think honestly, you’ll probably find you are as afraid as I am. So please, don’t bother suggesting ways that I can cope. I’m in the 64^th year of doing just that. But...

Someone should want something better!

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SandraTeresa Davenport | The Health Reverend

LiveWellToday/DrinkTeaAlways!

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