Thursday 29 May 2008

Hormones or PMS?

Either way, I can't stop crying.

I don't usually cry easily. But lately, lots of things have been setting me off.

Yesterday it was the Time quote of the day and photo that made me realise the devastation of the Chinese earthquakes.

Last night, it was while I was redrafting my memory prose piece for tonight's college reading, about my great grandmother, who died 6 years ago. As I was writing about my great grandfather's death (who I never knew), it just hit me; I miss her; all the things I'll never know about her; the way life seems to be moving on without her. I hope I don't break down tonight during the reading.

This morning, it was my democracy reading - Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It was the part (in particular) where he says

"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters' when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find yourself tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," you middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and out resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

x
Just a girl

4 comments:

Z said...

im sorry things have been so rough for you lately-not even rough but, blue. i have a week like that too, maybe even twice a year, randomly, where anything can just set me off. indeed, mlk's letter would do the trick (my favorite line is 'shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. luke warm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.' that will always be carved into my brain.)

hope the sun comes out tomorrow


cordie xx

-M said...

I have kind of had one of those days today. i almost cried in English class, and maths too, and it's still not clear to me why.
And also, last term i had to give a speech about MLK for Black history month, i think i cried once during that :S He was so great.

My grandma was telling me that when she went to school there were cleaned "white" toilets for the white kids and dirty toilets coloured in black paint for her and the other african american kids. So terrible.

I hope you are feeling less down, i am, but the weather at the momment is not.

Anonymous said...

That Time quote of the day is really really tragic. it's so simple but such a scarily accurate representation of what it's like for Chinese parents - what a depressing combination... :(

Anonymous said...

y'know,one of my favorite movies is Hairspray. I've seen the 2007 version, like 4 times and when Tracy tells Seaweed "I wish everyday was Negro Day" and he responds by saying "For us, it is" I have to laff because it's so funny.

But then you read something like this and you think, well, it wasn't meant to be funny. It's people like MLK and Rosa parks that made it possible for me not to have to go through something like that. Although it still happens presently in some States. That was great, JAG. Thanks for posting the letter.