Brialee Turner

I shout from the water:
“We can compare,
We are allowed to experience pain.
Don’t tell me that you’re threatened
Because I finally can vote (after decades of waiting and being told “no”),
That I can afford to pay for my medicine,
That I can receive care for my body.
Don’t tell me that you’re suppressed because
I can choose to have a family
Or get married to someone I love,
Or sometimes use the bathroom where I feel safe.
Don’t tell me that I’m taking up ‘too much’ space,
When my neighbors are forced to leave their homes,
And people tell my best friend that it’s her fault a man touched her body without her permission and took what wasn’t his.
Don’t force me to be silent,
When I am always misunderstood and can’t speak without a fear of violence,
Or when my classmate has had to fight to be where they are because of the color of their skin,
And someone who I love lives in fear that they won’t come home after school because their classmate shoots a gun.”

I AM allowed to compare.
Because the suffering that comes from being human is different than oppression.

You may tell me that the pain that we experience is the
same.
And while I believe that we are all human,
designed with the capacity to experience,
to feel,
and to know,
I ask you this, “Is the pain of suffering the same for you as it is for
the ones who are told that they cannot love who they love,
for those who carry the weight of their disabilities,
for those who did not pick the color of their skin but you pick how they are treated,
for those whose gender is a discussion rather than an honored illustration of who they are,
for those who inherited the trauma of their families and the abuse and their sharp tears,
and for those who speak over and over and over again but are never heard?”

I will say,
this pain is not the same.
And who is to say that these chronically disregarded vessels have not
carved out within themselves
a greater reservoir to hold the pain?
So while it may appear that they feel the same as you,
inside is a cavern of the centuries of
oppression and silencing
that their mother unknowingly began to create
while in their womb
because before you were conceived in her,
fear was conceived first.

And you may say,
“I have the solution,
I know how you can solve your pain”.

Well I tell you,
human beings are not math equations,
and you cannot calculate
the amount of resources that would
be necessary for someone drowning in
this pain to make it to the shore.
Because you are too busy worrying that
if you provide them with the aid they so
desperately seek, no one will be there
to rescue or save if you happen to
fall in.

But look around, who is there that would push you in?

(And if we have the strength,
we may learn how to swim,
or find something to keep afloat.
But we can’t control the elements or
the fact that you ignore our screams
to help).

The truth is,
these drowning souls would never push you in,
however I cannot say the same for you.
For in your haste to ensure that
you never feel the depths of this pain,
you and your fathers,
and your grandfathers,
pushed/shoved/threw
them into the water.

For if someone is no longer breathing, how can they be a threat?

You would beg for mercy if what has been done to us were done to you.

You would then understand the true pain of invalidation,
discrimination,
and hatred.

And yet, we do not wish that upon you.
For we know how icy these waters are,
and if we have experienced this pain,
why would be knowingly allow you to fall
into the waves?

For if someone is no longer breathing, a life is lost.
And that is too great a price to sum, the worth is too much.
These ripples and our lives
have great worth,
and we don’t need to be on the dry land
of privilege to know it.