Cycle of hate

An experience that has stayed in my mind throughout this trip would be when we were standing in the reflection circle after having walked across the Edmund Pettus. I would say that it was one of the most challenging experiences on this trip for me so far. Around me I saw the people that I have had the privilege to meet and have grown to love. I saw the pebbles that made standing a challenge and the beautiful watercolors of the sunset sky. I saw the bus, the trees, and the pebbles, all of which contributed to creating the safe space for us to express our most profound emotions. Around me, I heard cars swooshing by the road and voices expressing thoughts and ideas coming straight from everyone’s hearts, everyone’s but mine. While everyone had the courage to open up and expand on their emotions, I felt like a coward. I was incapable of speaking from my heart mere from the fact that I was just too scared; I said nothing, I was incapable of uttering ANYTHING AT ALL because I am a coward.

At the very beginning of the reflection circle, we were asked how we felt/feel based on the experiences that we’ve had throughout this trip; everyone in the group came up with valid emotions this that people could relate to, and all I said was that I didn’t know what to feel. There was just so much that I have processed I’ve the past 24 hours that it has made it difficult for me to even categorize my emotions in the first place.

Thinking about it now, I think that I have experience a mix of what everyone has been feeling. Throughout this trip, I have felt torn, where I don’t know how to feel. The reason being is that there is now way in which I can define my emotions, I feel as if I felt too many feelings for me to just box it in any category. Regardless, some of the emotions I have felt included: feeling empty, betrayed, angered, powerless, and inspired, just to name a few.

I felt empty knowing how people are willing to commit these acts of terror on people and do it without caring. It’s sobering to know that this country has done these acts for so many years without even questioning it in the first place and continues to do so in a more secretive way. With that said, I also feel betrayed, how our country has permitted this, even when we proudly say that everyone is created equally. Where was this sentiment then and where is it now?!?!?! From this, I also feel angered, by knowing that people have the audacity to go up to others and tell them that they aren’t human, telling them that they are inferior, to the point that many of these people took this information as factual. It angers me to know that there were people who looked at people of colored and still had the hatred inside of them to want to kill them for no reason at all. THIS ISN’T NATURAL, humans are made to love which means that this sort of crap, is taught onto our children, where hating is a norm. If left untreated, this cycle of hate will continue to evolve and will continue to affect us in the future In a more insidious way than it is now. It angers me to know that even today, our schools teach students that the world is okay now, that everyone is equal and happy with each other, but that just isn’t the case! We now live in an era of the new Jim Crow, where people of color are still being discriminated against and are put into a new form of slavery, a new form of systemic genocide, a quieter one but still one that is present in today’s society. I feel powerless, where my fear of being able to express my emotions got the best of me. It frustrates me to know that I could have talked about my emotions and how I’ve felt so far but I decided to let those opportunities slip. I was scared to admit that I couldn’t categorize my conflicting emotions because I felt so many. In the end, I also feel inspired. This trip has inspired me by showing me the courage that these people had by fighting the government and the ruling majority for their  fundamental rights. It inspires me to know that these people are just like any one of us: they came from all walks of life but shared the same motivation to accomplish what they deserved, to be seen as equals in everyone’s eyes. It makes me feel inspired to know that any one of us can make a change in the world, all that we need to make a change is to be motivated and inspired enough to want to make the world a positive place for everyone to live in.

In the end, I hope that this blog post can make up for my lack of words in the reflection circle but I feel as if this experience has also managed to make me believe in myself and my ability to express my emotions in the group.

Tomas