For two and twenty and two hundred and a thousand days and minutes and years and seconds and millenia I’ve been thinking about my friend. I don’t care that I walked away last year, they were still my friend.
I didn’t walk away by choice. I always wanted them to come back to me. I always fucking hoped they would wake up one day and realize what the fuck and would come and find me and I could hug them and tell them I never stopped loving their beautiful face and come sit with me friend, let’s talk shit and grab a coffee and muse about our lives and the bullshit white people do. I hoped they’d show up and we’d laugh about how they finally made it, and we wouldn’t have any more secret conversations about how much racism we had to ignore and how much that stupid community crushed our souls but we stuck around because it was so hard to break out. I imagined how we’d laugh and high five each other about finally breaking free, joking that we finally escaped a cult, and low key wondering if we maybe actually did.
But they never did find me again.
A year ago, my friend was in a crisis, and in crisis, they made a choice. They chose to remain the token Black friend to a group of white people who did as white people do, and chose white supremacy over kindness. I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t blame them. They were in crisis, and they chose stability over pissing off their entire client base and everyone else. But I did tell them I needed to walk away. I needed to process. I couldn’t be a token anymore. I couldn’t take our white friends’ repeated abuses with a smile on my face anymore. I told them I loved them, and to come find me when they were ready, but that I couldn’t live a life of tokenism. I needed to be unapologetically me. I needed to stand up and say this is who I am, and I am not okay with being their “housen*****” anymore. I told my friend I couldn’t be their scapegoat. I couldn’t be the one they threw under the bus to save face. I told my friend they had bigger things on their plate right now, and to focus on those, and to come find me when they’re ready. That we would talk when they were ready to understand what I needed them to understand.
I told them I forgave them.
I don’t know if they heard me. Those were the last words I ever spoke to them, and now they’re gone, and I’m not welcome at their memorial, attended by the same white “community” that used them as a token. The same people who will never understand how my friend’s blood is on their hands, and how no matter how many times I explain it, will never, ever, ever accept the harm they cause, even in their cruel attempts at “kindness” to their tokens.
They can’t understand.
But I’ll be there, at their memorial. I’ll stand in silence, and I’ll hold my space, and so will those of us who have managed to escape the traumavores and their unending appetite for Black and Brown lives.
I love you friend. I hope you knew that. I never, ever stopped loving you.
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