Without A Doubt, My Life is Coming to an End

     For my first English assignment of senior year, our teacher asked us what we knew for sure. Initially I had no clue. So, I asked my parents and while my mother gave a comical answer, my father gave a practical one, death. So the next night I called him up and told him I was taking his idea and he questioned if writing an essay on death would be too morbid for an Expository writing class. Hmm, you be the judge..... (As a side-note, there were originally four paragraphs but I thought the second one was too wordy, and the essay worked fine without it. If your ever interested in seeing the rest, just leave a comment(:)

     Born into a world enveloped by the venomous sins times seven. We obliterate ourselves by participating in wrathful behavior, greed incorporating its way into our major veins. We become slothen as the years proceed, waiting for our bodies to demise. Prideful are the ones who relentlessly work but refuse to avail the ill willed, lust causing prolonged pained, with momentous pleasure. We become green when we look towards our neighbors with emulous eyes, and we begin to think with our stomachs, torturing our bodies, curtailing our lives. Yes, humans are innately sinful. We are our own short-comings. Alas, it is impossible to live a life without succumbing to the ill-will of the devil. Years of venality will eventually lead to our quietus. Death is the one thing in life that is for certain.

       In precedence, although written down somewhere in a classified book, are the dates of our guaranteed deaths, there may be times when we are near the thresholds of our eternity and just barely abscond with our being intact. Probably one of the most frightening, miraculous, and humbling experiences of my life, did not even happen to me. It was a chilly fall day in 2005. My sister who is four years my senior, got off of her bulky middle school bus and unlocked the portal of what could have been the last day of her thirteen year old life. Fatigue struck her tiny body as if she hadn't slept in years. So much so, that she ignored the peculiar smell encompassing our home, and dozed off almost immediately. About 15 miles down the road, our mother was on her way from a grueling day at work to finish out her day at the bank before its doors closed. At the back of her mind though, she felt as if someone was gravitating her away from the bank and towards her home. Without a rhyme or reason she turned her 1997 silver Toyota Camry around and went back to our place of dwelling. Fast-forward ninety minutes and it's my turn to walk up our jarring driveway. As I make my way off of the mustard yellow bus, I see my sister waiting for me with a flushed look on her face. She walks me towards our neighbors house and explains it all to my callow mind. Our gas tank had sprung a leak and had been releasing toxic fumes into our home. Had it not been for my mothers unconscious feelings of impending doom, my sister would have been dead within the hour. When you experience a moment like this, it forces you to take a step back and realize how we are at the brink of deaths every single day of our lives. We do not know the day, not even the year of our ultimate ending. All we know is that each and every one of our spirits will transcend from our bodies, and from there we can only hypothesize what will happen next. From this event I've learned to cherish the people I love, for it will never be the money nor the potential successes I may accumulate in life, it is the people that matter. Our expiration from this world is impending, for that I am sure. What I will do on this Earth to leave my mark, is what I am uncertain of.

       In cessation, if I had to pinpoint one thing in life that I knew for sure, It would be that I am going to die. This summer, my mother attended three funerals, one for a woman in her thirties, one in her early fifties, and a man that was nearing ninety. What this says to me is that death may come at anytime! This may be the last essay I write or I may be writing essays for the next eighty years. We as human beings are incapable of knowing what our final moments will be. In some ways it is a tormenting curse and in others a blessing. The fact that we do know that there will be a final curtain call one day, should motivate us to live our lives to the fullest. We should try to stray ourselves from the evils of earthly desires. We should live for the ones we love, and the ones who love us. For one day, there will be no tomorrow. All we will have are our yesterdays.

Feather

Take a deep breath....
Do you feel that?
You are alive, but are you living ?
You are conscious, but are you aware?
Is someone in there?
Death is a word filled with negativity, violence, and hate.
Death is cold.
Death is silent.
Death is freedom.
If you are like me, if you are like some,
You see the light, you see the promise,
The promise to an end.
An end to all fear, an end to all pain.
The finale of a journey,
A story yet to be told.
If you are like me, if you are like some,
You can't take no more, you don't want no more.
Your eyes burn with unshed tears,
Your arms sting, from the battle-wounds of your torment.
You are ready to give up.
You don't have enough.
You've given all you've got.
Bring me to the light.
Dead so long, I have been dead so long.
If you are like me, if you are like some,
You don't want to die, but
You don't want to live.
You just want to be numb,
Death is numb.
You just want the misery to go away,
Death is without misery.
You just want to be loved,
With death, what is love, love will cease to exist,
And so will I.
This feels so smooth, sliding down my throat,
Is ten enough?
No, it seduces me to twenty.
My brain turns to fuzz,
My mind is mush.
Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I am free at last. 
Five minutes down, two to go.
Life,
What was life?
I wasn't living, I was existing.
Death was already within me, it just needed a push,
A release.
In this last minute, I breathe.
I see....a future,
Now beyond reach.
I see a CEO, proud, black, and a woman.
I see a mother to two beautiful children.
I see a husband, supportive, kind, and caring.

At the time, life meant nothing.
If you are not like me, if you are not like some,
If you would have waited,
You would have seen, that pain is temporary,
Those melancholy feelings will die, Giving you the chance to live.
If you are like me, if you are like some,
Will you wonder who will find you,
In those final moments of life?
A mother, a brother, a sister, or a friend?
As my eyes come to a close, I hear, her screaming a name,
A name, I think, once belonged to me.
I can't tell if I'm drifting up,
Or if I'm drifting down,
But I am definitely drifting.

For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf,
Don't.
Death is inevitable, death will come,
But life,
Life is but a moment,
In the spectrum, we call time.

Practice...

People are using Google alot now adays, looking for answers.
But what people don't realize is that google only gives us temporary answers.
If you're looking for everlasting answers, use what people have been using for centuries, The Bible.
All answers are found through God.
He gave us this tool and we keep it at our night stands, to make us feel safe and secure.
Sometimes we'll even glance at it longingly, with the knowledge that we should read it, but something is preventing you from doing so, so you'll come up with the excuse of fatigue and say maybe you'll do it tomorrow.
But one day there will be no tomorrow. So tonight, please don't just glance, read.
And, don't just read, understand.

This is ME

Black, gold, and green. My beautiful nationality. I came from chains. Tightly bound at my hands and feet. I came from bloody backs, and raised wounds. I came from fighters and warriors. I was born into oppression, hatred, and racism. As soon as I came out of the womb, my role in society was pre-determined. I would be known as nigger to those who don't who I am. I would be known as less than to those who don't know who I am. I would be known as a threat to those who don't know who I am. I would be known as a harlot to those who don't know who I am. I would be known as a thief for those who don't know who I am. All of these pre- conceived notions on who I am, makes me wonder,  what I am supposed to be? Who are you, to tell me who I am. Before I breathed my first breath, I had a history attached to me. As I grow, the past stays with me, but it doesn't define who I am. It's a reminder of why it's necessary for me to be the best in my field. To accomplish things my ancestors would not have been able to conceive. They were tortured, beaten, raped, for us to stop the cycle of letting our oppressers, oppress. I am a new generation. I will achieve more, I will do more, I am more. The ones who came before me granted me that opportunity. I will not, can not disappoint. I am an innovator, you will not forget my name. My mind is full of potential, that needs to be released.  My ideas are new, they are an original. I am an original. When God made me, the winds sang my name in a harmonic melody, and the earth smiled with beautiful bliss. I am his creation, I am from Him. I am a soul, in a spiritual plane we call life. I am a roamer, roaming this plane for a partner to ride with. I wander aimlessly, lonely, scared, and empty. I romanticize the day where I'll be in a fellowship with him and Him.  I am the living, I am the dead. I feel life but I near death. With each breath I take, I am closer to my last. Death is no fear of mine, for we know that one day it's going to happen to everybody. The fear I have is life. What was I meant to be. Who was I meant to be? Am I not black enough or am I too black? Will I maintain wealth or will my finances turn on me. Life is a mystery. Death is set in stone. I am the thinker, the thinking, the thought. I think of what is and what could be. I am the thinking because my mind is  engaged in random chatter. I am the thought because I one day aspire to be in you and others mind. I yearn to become unforgettable in the most literal sense of the word. For I am not Bevin and Sandra Salmon's daughter, I am Zara Salmon, a woman who will be soon hard to forget.

Other than.....

Bang! Another black man dead in the street. Another cop, walking around proud, knowing that he is protected through the law. Why is it that our lives are worth nothing in America? Why is it that as a seventeen year old adolescent I am already in fear of what my un-conceived son will have to face being a black man in America? Why is it that we face racial profiling, self-hate and unaware incompetent racists? The existence of racism in America is beyond factual. The people who say otherwise have obviously never experienced the mental exhaustion of being something other in America.

In commencement, living in the United States of America, if you are black especially if you are a man of color, you will most likely experience racial profiling in your life. The case we know all too well is a story of seventeen year old Trayvon Martin. This is just an average day for some minority men in America. They are followed around in shopping centers, offices, and upper-class neighborhoods. In America the fear of the unknown is at the point that our men are at the brink of death every time they step outside. The portrayal of black men in the media has become increasingly negative since the insurgece of the hip hop community came onto the scene. Do not misunderstand, hip- hop is a beautiful craft, poetry at best. This all the outsiders see us as though. They do not see the doctors, politicians, outside of Obama, lawyers, activists, all of the prominent black men that form  our society. So, because of popular belief, those same politicians, professors, and doctors will get racially profiled, stopped and patted down when all they're doing is driving home from a long shift. We are profiled as animals; specifically, gorillas. The Vogue photoshoot prove this. Photo editors used the King Kong movie poster as a model. Even if we take away the obvious relation to King Kong, we still get an angry faced black man, armed with a smiling white woman. Also take notice of the clothes, this portrait portrays to the customers of Vogue magazine that a good majority of black men play basketball and it is innate for us to have all this anger within us. This proves that racism still exist even if its sneakiest forms.  

Continuing on, in America black people are having an issue with self hate.  We are letting the seed that the media plants in our head get to us. We are losing our identities, in the process neglecting the fact that our main goal is trying to unite our race. All over social media there has been a wave of, #teamlightskin/ #teamdarkskin/ #teambrownskin. What happened to the Angela Davis afros, the black and proud chants heard so often through the 1960s and 1970s? We are dividing our race and whilst we do that caucasians are laughing and we are giving them a reason to laugh! We will never conquer the race issue if we continue to split our race into subraces. Since the early twentieth century there have been advertisements that have been broadcasting that having dark skin in society automatically means you're less than. This issue began many years prior. We as Africans, are naturally very dark skinned. It was through intermixing of the races that the variety in our complexions came about. Unfortunately, our ancestors were more likely than not, raped and impregnated by white men. So as Africans magically became lighter and lighter, it was the fair complexioned slaves that were chosen to work in the house. The dark skinned ones were subjected to the field. This may be where the irrational notion that light skin is better came from. Not only did they get to work in the cool walls of the mansion, but they were more accepted by the whites. In 2013, people still have the mentality that one skin tone is inferior to the other. It is sad that 400+ years later, we still have this idea putting a division in our race. Racism does not only exist from the outer forces, but from the forces within as well.

Furthermore, in Jenny Yamato's writing, she had mentioned a form of racism she called unaware racism. Adding to the idea of that, these unaware races may also be ill-informed or do not care to be informed.  From my own personal collection of going to a predominantly white school, I have been called nigger too many times to count. In my speech, I refrain from using the word nigger, in public settings. My argument to that is that if you don't hear me say nigger, then what would give you the inclination that it is okay to use it around me? Unsurprisingly, that has not worked. I would say the things that hurt the most are the words that come from my peers, that up until high school they treated me like a regular person, and not just a black person. "It's okay to be a black man in society because lots of girls like black guys, but it's not okay to be a black girl", that was coming from a 'friend'. My favorite was, "Why don't you just wear weave all the time, you're real hair is ugly", also from a 'friend'. Should I get mad and unleash the stereotypical angry black woman, or should I try to educate the ill-informed? I've tried the ladder, and have been told I'm overreacting. So instead, I keep it inside and break down every few months. It is unfortunate that I let these unaware peoples words get to me, but as illiterate as they are I do let them inside. My school is nothing compared to what little Ruby Bridges must have felt. Norman Rockwell crafted her struggle so perfectly in his painting. The unaware/ ill-informed part of the painting was the part we couldn't see. The person who threw the tomato was not aware or did not care that black children have just as much as right to learn as their white counterparts. They were numb to the fact that they were mentally scarring a six year old child for what could possibly be the rest of her life. Racism is based off of fear. They fear that if we give blacks the same education as whites, we may prosper and become something other than sharecroppers and house maids. Many still have this fear of the unknown. Racism is still an issue that is still relevant and of vast importance.

In conclusion, racism is still here. It is evident through the racial profiling, the self-hate we continue to harbor, and unaware/ ill- informed racist. As a member of the black race, I suggest we join together and beat this infection, find a cure for this disease. We must mend a world where our grandchildren do not have to worry about being shot based off of what they're wearing and the color underneath their clothes. We must start with us though. We must eliminate the holes in our own race. So one day, we can once and for all rid ourselves of the negative connotations of being black in America.