Of A Broken Heart

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Dr. Martin Luther King

*the following contains a true story from which the names have been omitted out of respect to all involved.


good morning everyone.


it is good to be back writing blog posts again. i apologize for not writing sooner. It is the opinion of this writer that it would not be advisable to write unless there was something to be said, and up until i write this post, it felt like i wasn't saying anything new let alone of value.

but now i think i am. i wish it could be under better circumstances, but nonetheless i have something new to say. as you could probably tell by the title, this post strikes an arguably more serious tone than the earlier ones. because it is serious. and even though it won't go away, the idealist in me hopes someday it will.

breakups are a part of life, just as much as the getting together. it hurts. there's no getting around the pain, just figuring out a way through it. folks, this getting through part is where you find me. any other time this period would not be as long, but it is the circumstances of this breakup that still have me reeling.

it was february 8th. i was hanging out with a friend of mine after class who was meeting up with a group of his friends. being the social butterfly i had become, i said sure, let's hang. we sat down at a big round table and his friends welcomed me with open arms. but there was this one girl that grabbed my attention not long after the initial meeting. and she refused to relinquish control. i would describe her for you, but that would be out of line here and honestly, i don't have the day it would require to explain all the wonder she is let alone the wonder i saw that day. but she had me. and the thing about it was that i wasn't looking for anyone at that particular moment and neither was she. but that made it beautiful. we texted each other so much in the week that followed that i'm fairly certain i talked to he more than i did my mother.

a week after meeting i felt like i had known her for years. her best friend(who insists they are the same person and i would have to agree)was quick to ask if i liked her. with no hesitation, i said yes. i was then asked if i would date her, and again i answered yes with no delay. after her class, she sat down next to me. she then proceeded to hold my hand. it was then i knew what i was feeling all that week had been reciprocated. at dinner, the question arose if we were official. without and doubt or trepidation, she looked at me and said yes.

i had a girlfriend.

huzzah!!!

ok......so i don't know anyone who actually makes that noise in jubilation, but it seems to work here, though.

for the three weeks that followed, i was the happiest bloke that you ever did see. her name rang in my ears all day without ceasing. if anything ever bothered me, i knew my love was a text message away. and she knew that she could lean on me if anything went wrong in her world. she would worry about me when i walked home from work at night. we kept our relationship low-key, so that no one would make a big deal about it. we didn't put it on facebook on purpose for it seems fairly ridiculous that two people need the Zuckerberg Touch to make a relationship magically more official. and if you are of the opinion that you do need it, then.... you might be an idiot. quit playing farmville and go experience real nature. it'll change your life.

things were going beautifully. i had mentioned that i was seeing someone to my mom. she seemed okay with it. this was a great shock to me because i never had that conversation with her before. but id tell my mom because this girl was the first one i felt worthy of meeting my mother. i knew she was right, i knew it in every last fiber of my being. she was on her way to tell her parents too.

now...this is the part where things go downhill. grab the Kleenex ladies, here's your Mufasa Moment.

she told her mom and her dad that she was seeing me. this was okay...right up until they figured out i was black. this drastically changed the stuation, so much so that her mother soon after said, "don't come home pregnant."

ignorant to say? absolutely. but i've heard my share of ignorant things in my 22 years and i'm sure i'll be hearing more, i thought. might as well get used to it. but it gets so much better.

a few days later, she comes to me upset. she says her mom has been hinting at the fact that her dating me, a black man, was not the most desirable choice. in her mother's words, i would "ruin her reputation" and eventually her life. i was slowly becoming a victim of the very stereotype i had spent most of my life trying to defy. but my love never left my side. but things really got bad a few days later.

exactly three weeks tothe day we got together, i knew something was wrong. when i went to meet her, she wasn't herself. the time she would spend cuddling with me was now being used to play cards. eventually, she could no longer hide what she had to say. as the words rolled jaggedly off of her tongue, it was like a Matrix slow-motion gunshot wound to the chest. as a matter of fact, i would have preferred the gunshot. probably would have hurt less.

she told me her mother had given her an ultimatum. stop dating the black kid, or lose your car and your home.

it was like someone stabbing you 10 times and then again just to the left of those places just to make sure you bled out.

people these days seem to think that racism is like your dead grandfather's priceless wooden antique clock that got tragically destroyed in a house fire. not enough of it survived to maintain any redeeming qualities, so all you have to show for it is the pain of loss from all the pieces of it that remain. the truth is that racism, as much as we'd like to think so, didn't die with bellbottoms. instead it has become the Power Rangers of sociopolitical relations in this country. nobody talks about it nor does anyone really want it there, but there's always somebody keeping it alive.

words don't fail me often, but when it comes to describing how much this hurt, the examples above don't even come close. she had her house, her car, and me on the line. i just had her. so in other words, she lost me, and i lost everything.

i waited a week to write this mostly because there have been maybe two days in the last seven where thinking about it wasn't been suitable impetus to run into a bathroom and cry my eyes out. i had been told that i cannot be happy because of the color of my skin. i ad been told that out of all of the flaws of mine that are well within my control, i was denied because of the one thing i had no control over. my hands were tied, and my love was taken from me. the most i could do was watch her leave. so now i fake smile hoping that at some point i will be okay with any of this. but i maintain the sneaking suspicion that i won't.

if there is a moral to be found, it is this. love who you want to love. if you're a white female prep student from connecticut and you fall for a half-polynesian, half-kenyan boy from nebraska(far-fetched, i know, just go with me me here), then do it. it may not be logical in the eyes of some, but love and logic are two very different schools of thought. the heart and the mind are rarely ever in agreement. so if you have the chance(and really open minded parents), love someone. even if they don't look like you. Choose to love someone even if they aren't totally white, or totally black. because i'm sure that an ancestry.com visit will show you that you aren't either.

that is all for now. i hope to be less of a downer next post than i am now.

leave comments if you would like.

god bless, and love each other.