Imagine

Hate is defined as “Feeling intense or passionate dislike for someone; feelings of anger or disgust; to detest, abhor, loathe; strong aversion or intense dislike; implies an emotional aversion often coupled with malice (intention or desire to do evil, ill will).”

I have felt hate before…hate directed toward me. As a gay woman I have been exposed to passionate dislike, strong aversion, loathing, disgust, desire to do evil. I have walked down the street and had someone scream in my face “Goddamn dyke” as they passed me. I have been called every gay slur imaginable. I have ridden a bus with a man who had “kill a fag” written on his jeans. I have had my life threatened, been told I will burn in hell, and had my tire slashed with a razor blade. I was kicked out of a church because I’m gay…I’m pretty sure they had a strong aversion to me as well.

I have been chased by a car full of college aged men…not boys, men…they went after me because I had a rainbow sticker on my car. They called me all kinds of names and followed me long enough that I drove to the nearest police station. They were after me and I felt pursued by them as a game or almost a sport. “Pursue and kill for sport”; “search determinedly for someone”…you know what that is? Being hunted…that’s exactly how I felt…I was being hunted. It’s not the only time I have felt that way.

When the massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando happened 4 years ago I felt hunted. Someone went into a gay nightclub, specifically a gay nightclub, and killed gay people. 49 people were killed and 58 were injured. It was “Latin Night” so many of the victims were Hispanic. A “hate crime” is one “typically involving violence, motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other grounds.” Seems like this fits the definition perfectly. The people in that club were hunted and killed.

After that mass shooting, I felt vulnerable like I never have before. I was afraid of everything. When would the next shooting be? The next time of singling out and executing gay people for no other reason than they are gay? I believed that there were people in my community just waiting for an opportunity to gun me down because I am married to a woman…nothing else…just because I love a woman. I felt hunted. I felt my fear of death around every corner.

I do not pretend to know what people of color have been through in this country. Certainly they have been hunted…gunned down in church, killed by police officers, shot in the back running away from conflict, lynched, killed while sleeping in their own bed…and there’s more…so much more…I know the list is long, the list is brutal, and the list is painful…that isn’t a strong enough word…the list is devastating. My own experience of feeling hunted, pales in comparison and yet I was traumatized, and changed, by those events.

Traumatic events we witness or experience firsthand, can lead us to a place of imagining…if we allow it. John Lennon was led to write the song “Imagine” in response to the traumas of the Vietnam war. When we imagine, we consider other people…other situations that were similar to ours, or worse. Imagining brings the seeds of empathy and compassion to the light of day. Empathy allows us to understand, as much as we can, what someone else has experienced. Remember the saying, “walk a mile in my shoes?” That’s empathy. Compassion allows our hearts to break because of the suffering of another. It moves us to do something. We are moved to action when we see a hurricane hit New Orleans, a mass shooting in a school, or a hungry person on the corner. Empathy and compassion make us human…gives us the ability to care deeply, to cry for another, or to imagine ourselves in someone else’s circumstances.

I have not experienced tragedy like people of color have in this country…not even close. I have experienced traumas and tragedies of my own. Those events have shaped me and have led me to where I am today…brokenhearted and unsure what to do next. I have been imagining…imagining coping with so much loss…imagining a new way of being in this country…imagining all people really being equal…regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their gender identity, regardless of who they love, regardless of their religious beliefs or non-beliefs, regardless of their economic status, or their mental or physical abilities. Can you see it? Can you just imagine?

So here’s the thing…how big are our imaginations? How big is our capacity to feel for someone else? To set aside our own ideas and beliefs and simply walk in another’s shoes? So much is going on in our world right now…a pandemic, police brutality, the murder of innocent black men, unemployment skyrocketing, hundreds of thousands of Americans dead from coronavirus, voter suppression already impacting the coming election, and so much grief…I can feel it everywhere. There are so many shoes to try on and walk for awhile…so many opportunities to be moved, to act, to be changed.

This is a turning point for the United States…a tipping point. A tipping point where we can allow compassion and empathy to guide us…guide us to be moved, to change, to cry, to break…these are the things that will help us re-imagine our country. Just imagine.