Laura Jedeed (Misanthrophile)

A few minutes later they shout again, very annoyed at either the workers or me, can't tell. Either way I'm not into it so I turn around and yell something about calm the fuck down, we're all doing our best

Turns out the shouter is a big black dude doing a walk-up to the drive-thru. Race becomes important in a minute here, bear with me So he shouts "I'm just giving them shit, and anyway, hey, mind your fucking business!!"

There is a switch in my brain that flips to "fight" and cannot be unflipped until the fight is over. Always been that way So I look this dude in the eyes and say "do we have a fucking problem?!" And I'm braced and ready for a shouting match. But that's not how it goes down

He drops his gaze almost immediately. Kind of muttering angrily but even that stops as I keep staring at him. "Yeah, shut the fuck up, how about that?" I say as I turn away, savoring this unexpectedly quick victory for the two seconds it takes me to figure out what just happened

He's black. I'm white-passing. There's no way this goes well for him. And there are some ways that end up with him dead by cop, if this gets loud enough I won by default. I had all the power the whole time

And as soon as I pull away, he's going to shit on the BK workers because he's got the power there and he's got to assert himself somewhere. And the BK workers will get off their shift and probably find someone else to shit on. All the way down

And in that moment, I had a moment of something beyond despair, something final and almost soothing: a sudden and pure urge to blow my brains out, there in the BK drive-thru

Because we're all trapped in this shit, stuck in positions we didn't earn and don't deserve, and there's no way out What hope is there? My mind will always be in this prison even if we change the world. And how can we change it with the full weight of history bearing down on us?