The urge to retreat into the safety of my whiteness is so strong.

Recognizing this, seeing this, feeling the desire for safety

Desire

Not need

No retreat to safety WHEN THE DANGER IS NOT FOR ME makes no sense

Or if it does, what kind of sense is it?

I feel like a lemming leaping into the sea.

But they don’t actually do that.

So what is it that I feel?

Yeah, it’s not fear. It is running with the pack. They’re all going this way and suddenly my feet are, too. Once, when I was very small as a human, I went to a place where they were crowds and crowds of people. The 1980 Olympics to be specific. My small self was crushed and squeezed and carried along into a bus, by that crowd. My feet not touching the ground. I didn’t know how to fight back —up in rush, without thinking, without knowing. It had never happened before.

No one had thought to teach me that stepping into a crowd of humans would be the same as stepping into a rushing stream or river. A very big no-no for a young lady. Or should be. Without that information, and already being a child of trauma, I got carried along (go along to get along).

The lesson that day has stuck with me forever. I never get caught up in crowds now. I always know a way out before I enter any space with humans. We have to be aware of our surroundings. Maybe not hypervigilant like traumatized us. But maybe we’re all a little traumatized now. Hyper vigilance might do us a bit of good if we balance it with time away, with time and nature, with time and people we connect with.

Pay attention, white people, we are getting caught up and carried along again!