A Year Later: A Dancer’s Perspective on Grief: Part 4

Reflections from a year after the NYE attack.

This is the third attempt I’ve made to write part 4 (and may not make a huge amount of sense without previous context, so the first posts from a year ago are linked at the end of this one). I doubt, again, whether or not these words are useful to anyone but myself and hope they will not be misinterpreted. Nothing will ever be enough to heal the damage done by the violence of that night, but I hope the last year has brought you through the many cycles of redeath and birth to a place where reflections (and not just flashbacks) are possible. Grief is forever messy and non-linear. Even in recent months I’ve spoken with those who still triggered by sights and sounds reminiscent of what they also experienced then. There is no shame in this, and my heart continue to beat outside my chest with every remembrance shared in confidence. The knowledge, that we still are the lucky ones, is heavy.

Unfortunately but realistically, we do not live in a peaceful time or place. Our city has been under siege as of late by inexcusable ignorance, prejudice and senseless violence. No one is worth more or less due to the color of their skin. It is a mistake to believe someone’s value and right to safety and happiness is determined by the language they speak or the culture they are a part of or the geographical location where they were born (or any other factor which can be attributed to chance). We are all dealt a random hand of cards at birth, and how we play them and the character we develop says more than luck of the draw. Our phenotypical and genotypical differences make us beautiful not more or less worthy of being human, and to think otherwise is delusional and deeply problematic.

There are many others much more capable and better informed than I am to speak on all of this, but I feel to be silent is to be complicit. While I do not think anything I say on the internet will change anyone’s minds, I would like to offer reassurance to anyone reading who feels powerless. I promise you, nothing could be further from the truth. In the same way as we came together after the violence of NYE, we come together now. Even the smallest actions and singular moments compound, and over time the differences you can make are exponentially skewed. Someone once said ‘look for the helpers’. Stepping up when seeing injustice can make the difference between someone disappearing forever and a record their existence. There is no courage without fear. Do it scared. Feel your hands shake with adrenaline. It won’t last forever.

I promise you, you are not alone. It takes one person, one moment, to stand up to bullies, and that is exactly what our city (and so many others) faces now. Bullies, gone unchecked, are responsible for the hate and violence both on that night a year ago and on the nights in recent weeks and months. Their weapons remain the same: terror and hate. But the real secret of it all... the bullies are more scared than the rest of us.

Happy, fulfilled, secure humans do not go out and hunt, attack, and disappear other humans. People with warped minds and unimaginable fear and pain do that; their unhealed wounds become their weaponized presence in the paths of all they cross. The same pattern of behavior is seen in abusers. If they were to acknowledge their personal responsibilities for their actions rather than blaming the world and everyone else in it, the burden of all the damage they have done in their lives would come crashing down. It far easier for abusers and bullies to blame someone else rather than accept moral responsibility for their choices and identity. There’s not enough sage (or therapists) in the world for this shit.

Understanding that hurt people hurt people doesn’t excuse their actions, in the same way understanding a terrorist’s or bully’s or abuser’s justifications doesn’t excuse the harm they cause. No story explains away the targeting of innocent humans beings anywhere in this world.

There are things I cannot write while my mother is still alive, because I do not want to break her heart more than I already have. She knows a fraction of a fraction of the violence I’ve witnessed or experienced, and I would try to protect her from the rest. I do not think it would be safe for her here, but she has never visited. I do think our silences are more preferable to the turmoil from when I still lived in her house. I know she is proud of me, in her way. I also know who and how I am challenged her to the core while I was growing up. Despite our differences, I carry her blood and my grandmother’s, and that of every woman who came before and fought to survive. I am grateful for everything they sacrificed so I could have the privilege of living this life, nontraditional as it is.

Writing and reflecting over the last year, I find new ways of being grateful for the place I grew up in. The deadlands, the airless dead dream sarcophagus of a childhood home where any deviations from ‘social norms’ were dangerous. It was not always lightless— there were glimmers early, and I know there was a kind of love. But I also know if I had stayed any longer, I would not have made it. I would have died before I died. And now, here, my soul nearly lifts out of my body, not only from near life endings, but vibrating with sheer delight at the aliveness of the sickle sliver moon city I call home. Even when painful, agonizingly so, it is never a static, dead-aired, stuck-lung, but a concordance with the very oxygen itself, laden damp with the swamp, moldy as it is. I think perhaps chrysalises might feel like tombs sometimes.

But even the sunken places have a song, a low thrumming macrocosm of microorganisms waiting to recycle death into life again. In the silence comes a keening. I find gratitude to have been born in another place because it puts in such perspective the last 12+ years of living in New Orleans. Like so many of its inhabitants, this city has eaten me alive and spat me back out countless times. The horrific night a year ago was only one more round in the cycle. We know how to begin again. And again. As many times as it takes. Life here is always beginning and always ending. Why are some are given more beginnings than endings? Why are some only given endings? I don’t have answers.

I do think, and this city gives us every opportunity to do so, that learning how to love so many different humans is a gift. Nothing about New Orleans would be what it is without the innumerable differences and eccentrics of those who live here. Our oddities and curiosities are part of the culture that so many travel to come celebrate and witness and engage with. People don’t love New Orleans because its people are standard cookie cutter issued; we are not interchangeable with any other population in the world. Choosing to open again and again, not despite the pain but because of it, is such a worthwhile endeavor. While Mardi Gras Day is the real New Years Day for many of us, tonight and tomorrow are still sacred in the ways of honoring the cycle of living. I hope you all stay safe. I hope if and when the grief comes, you find ways to honor it without being entirely consumed. I hope you can make space for the experiences of others around you, who may be a little more anxious or irritated than usual. I hope you are able to remember every single moment is a gift of experience, and that we do not find ourselves, we make ourselves.

Most of all, I hope you know, I love you and I’m so glad you’re still here. Even if we’ve never met. Even if every choice we’ve made in our respective lives differs. It was and is a privilege to be here with you, in our city, both today and a year ago. Be well, stay safe, I wish you all the joy in the world.

Part 1 can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewOrleans/comments/1hs83ht/the_grieving_process_from_a_dancers_perspective/

Part 2 can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewOrleans/comments/1htoppf/part_2_the_grieving_process_from_a_dancers/

Part 3 can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewOrleans/comments/1i4l9mu/part_3_the_grieving_process_from_a_dancers/