Beautiful and Cruel April

I am sitting in a Costco parking lot at the moment, and the world is orange.

Seeing color is something that happens to me every time I feel an emotion; orange is happiness. For some reason right now it's orange despite me thinking about how it's the 29th of the month; I will be turning a year older on Friday, and we are currently going through a tough month.

April was beautiful in a cruel way.

This is the month that despite me being dark my whole life, I realized I was colored. I never identified that way because I never had a reason to. I thought I was just a human being, and that was enough. It wasn't until I heard for the first time in our marriage my husband sobbing and pleading for his life at a traffic stop, him being roughed up to a hospital because they thought he was feigning illness and me being talked to as a wife of a criminal, that I understood what colored people talk about when they describe discrimination.

April also taught me that theory and lived experience are two different things.

I have always argued that human beings do not have freedom because everything's predetermined. But when our freedom was literally threatened by the justice system for something that feels so unfair, that's when I realized that yes, we are indeed free… and we only notice it when we are faced with a threat of it being taken away from us. It made me appreciate the moments when I could just go out and dissolve in the landscape, for being outside for me felt like being in a huge painting, and I was the delicate brush stroke, and I and the painting were one of the same. Now the world feels like a huge jungle, and I am the prey hiding from a big predator. I now understand why people have agoraphobia, and I will never judge.

April also taught me that I could be calm and panicked at the same time.

I quickly understood that now I am an adult and the childhood daydreaming days are over, I am the parent now; I need to be present and take care of my children and family. From the moment the officer told me my husband was going to jail, responsibility and reality were slapped into me with a force I could not ignore, and the urgency to find a job despite the many rejections intensified.

April also made me see myself in a very different light.

The constant job application rejections had made me downplay my skills. In the middle of this crisis, I learned that I was a manager and my home functioned because I held it together. I learned I was a great report writer based on the numerous statements I had written in between. I learned that I would be a great resource navigator because I knew of all the resources you could think of to try and survive and how to apply for them. I learned I would be a great executive assistant because I scheduled appointments, made numerous phone calls, sent emails on behalf of my husband and me to numerous persons and offices, managed calendars, and kept everything flowing when it could have easily fallen apart.

It's also the time when, most importantly, I looked at my husband and I didn't see a man but a person. The trauma he had experienced had made him quiet. His smiles held an unspoken pain. The night he came home, I just looked at him and I told him he didn't have to be strong. I held him that night, and I breathed in the scent of him, a sweet, familiar scent, the scent of someone who is yours, and he fell asleep. While he slept, I felt sad because I knew when he woke up the next morning, the "man" persona would be on despite him being terrified, as that is what he thinks is expected of him. I, of course, would let him, because that is what love sometimes is: letting someone have the thing that helps them function.

Looking at him while he slept, I couldn't believe that two hours before the traffic stop, I had been complaining to him about how he wasn't giving me enough attention. At that moment, my complaints felt very serious but after, it felt like a distant nothing, and I was grateful that my husband was home, next to me, in my arms.

The walls of our home now feel different. Safe in a way I had not noticed before, the way you don't notice a view until you have almost lost it. You can struggle to reach the summit and take the view for granted, and then when it starts to fall away, you see it clearly for the first time.

I hold this safety with much gratitude, even as we sit here, unsure of how we are going to make everything fall into place in two days.