When I got home from work last night, I was overcome with a foreign amount of energy. It could have something to do with the fact that I arrived to a piece of mail from the city and was convinced I’d been given a ticket for running a red light or something. Turns out it was just a courtesy reminder to update my city parking sticker. Way better than a ticket.
So I did all of these chores around my apartment that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. My momentum prompted me to check out my planner for the first time since the beginning of August. Suddenly I realized we’re more than halfway through September, and I have plans every weekend for the next two months. Wasn’t I just complaining about being bored and alone? By the way, thank you to everyone who reached out to me after that post and offered advice on how to better ebb and flow with life! I can’t tell you how wonderfully overwhelming support feels to me– thank you.
On a more somber note, it’s been over a week since I’ve published anything to the blog. Rather uncharacteristically, I have been working on a post in advance. I’d planned to perfect and share it last week, but the content is pretty heavy and it’s not one that I can afford to trip over. What I’ve realized today is that I need to present the story, and corresponding thoughts, to you gradually– just as I experienced them.
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Two weeks ago, a girl from my high school posted an article about someone she’d attended college with. She went to a tiny Christian college, like myself, and in the world of tiny religious colleges, we’ve heard of most of each other. With this initial article, I learned that her schoolmate had passed away and she shared that he led great worship services. At my own tiny college, I was good friends with a few people who were in the band which led our worship stuff. As such, my empathy strings had been tugged. I felt the feelings and then continued on with my day.
By the next time I scrolled through my Facebook feed, she had posted another article. The title of this article was far less vague.
Next to a picture of a lovely black man was this headline, “Former Harding Student Killed by Off-Duty Police Officer.” Before I clicked on the article, I knew I was going to read that the officer was white.
If you’ve not been following along with his story, Botham was shot and killed in his own apartment by an off-duty policewoman who entered his apartment thinking it was her own. Following the crime scene investigation for his murder, police discovered marijuana in his apartment and are proceeding to drug test his body for no other reason but to smear the character of a highly regarded black man. I cannot begin to understand why in the world this serves any relevance in determining his character or why his character should be challenged following his death. But here we are.
Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve written about issues of racial injustice. If you’ve recently joined this blog party, I make a point to learn, advocate for, and speak about racism. It’s a precarious stance for a privileged white girl to take, but I have actively been trying to learn and be an ally to people of color for the past seven years. This world needs to be safer for my niece and nephew, 
and I’d be neglectful if I continued to accept my privilege obliviously. This is a cause for which I have much passion; and honestly, living in Chicago has not done much to better my opinion of the police who seem to be perpetrating most of these injustices.
The thing of it is, I’ve recently been offered a fresh perspective unlike any I’ve been confronted with before.
We’ve got some things to talk about, friends.
-M
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