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Words, lies, truth, trust... 

 

A shuffling of cards finds the King to be a Jester, and the struggle has become the drug. 

 

An epidemic of self-seethes into the very fabric of the bed we all must sleep in, and we are distracted while we wallow in the desperate want to be first. 

 

A competition... To be the most broken, to be the most needy, and to be the most deserving. 

 

A competition to be the ones that have been ignored the loudest for the longest... 

 

A competition to hold first place in the human race to the very top of the hurt pile.

 

The palace plots as the common man bleeds himself into a bubble. Deciding his fight is the only just fight to be fought and forgetting he is one of many.

 

Black, white, brown, red, yellow belly greed, and green. Green is the color that wins, every, single, time. 

 

I get tired of being told my life story is less important than someone else’ I get angry when I am overlooked, talked about in jokes at dinner tables, and made to be a fool in the eyes of legislation. And I get tired of being told by people of color... “You wouldn’t understand.”

 

I get tired of having to prove that my experience in life has been shitty enough to be respected. I get sick of being rated to find out just how high on the human poverty scale my experience really goes. 

 

I have to prove torment in order to be qualified to want? 

 

We are all books people judge by its cover, and I’m sick of being told my book is “lucky” and “privileged” 

 

And I’m tired of taking the blame for a behavior and belief system that crosses all cultures.

 

I am a book without a jacket.

 

I understand that people can’t ever stand where I have stood. I don’t expect them to. I understand that sometimes I have to be the only one speaking out, because, what if someone is listening? 

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So....

 

No, I don’t know, and will never understand what it’s like to be you. But is it really about me understanding your struggle? Or is it about us understanding each other? 

 

Shouldn’t it be us trying to find a way to understand struggle, as a unit measure for life experiences in mankind as a whole? 

 

Because if your argument is and will always remain, “You don’t understand” Then I’m a rat in a cage, spinning, without any chance of finding a road to solution. 

 

You win...

 

I will never understand what it’s like to be Black....

 

Or Korean, or Muslim, or 7ft tall...

 

I will never understand what it’s like to live in a country of war, take a bullet for a stranger or walk into a gas chamber to die. I will never understand what it’s like to be a man, transgender, a refugee, or a coal miner. 

 

I will also never understand what it is to be a cow, a dog, a polar bear or a mountain. 

 

And what does all of this mean, exactly? 

 

Should I remove myself from caring about these parts of the world because I have not experienced life as this “thing”.  

 

Yes, I said “thing” as in, everything...

 

Should I be seen as unqualified to have an opinion about anything I have not been, seen, done, or felt? 

 

Should I not care how my own behavior impacts the world around me? Or should I continue to remove myself from all of my surroundings and expect my surroundings to understand me... 

 

Or can I see beyond my own experience to try to understand that it’s all the same “thing”

 

I think we are missing a very important point... If we continue to give our attention and understanding to only those we deem appropriate or understand on a personal level, it becomes a failed system. 

 

It’s how we sit here, with this president, in this mess... 

 

And It’s how racism is breeding new racists... 

 

The word racism, when used, is the new word for white. We need to stop blanketing white people with racism, because racists come in all colors, shapes and sizes. 

 

I am judged by the color of my skin, every, single day.

 

Lucky Me = Money, a home, a family that loves me, college educated, and I’m a pretty woman, so, I’ve never had to work.

 

All horseshit!

 

Broke, renting, no family, high school dropout, worked since I was 13yrs old.

 

I am the “white trash” side of your lucky privilege stories...

 

I understand pain, the want of death, the feeling of utter and complete desperation, terror, violence, hunger, homelessness, rape...

 

I understand what it is to feel targeted, to know injustice, to work so, so hard, and never seem to win. I know what it is to want a way out; a way in, and a way to make it all just go away. 

 

I understand what it is to struggle. And that’s all anyone need know, because by knowing, you know, you want no body to feel it.

 

Struggle...

 

How it effects us as a race, as a species, and as a group of people who must at some time or another start really talking about equality as a real social concept, not a neighborhood by neighborhood delegation. 

 

Pain is a part of living. It is how we learn to recognize what not to do...

 

We grow within the doing in life, and the fall is what teaches us how better to stand up tall.

 

I’m confused when life became something that comes without heartache...without injustice...without sacrifice...

 

I respect the human struggle, I respect that I have only my skin to reside in, and I am not the only library of human information. Your feeling victorious in your suffering and wearing your oppression as a ranking above mine only feeds the beast that found it’s dinner here.

 

Is this a competition you have signed me up for having convinced yourself the winner before the race is run?

 

This is not about struggle anymore it’s about you wanting your story to be the best of all the westerns.