What we’re not going to do is stop talking about Ahmaud Arbery.

…Or Breonna Taylor.

…Or Tyrique Hudson.

Every time a story like this comes out I get a sinking feeling in my heart. I only want to talk out my frustrations with someone I trust one good time, unleashing all the words I know would fall on deaf ears if they were expressed to someone who’s perspective differed from my own, and then I want to move on. I don’t want to see it anymore. I want to return to my false perception that the world we live in is compassionate and fair, because I want to preserve my health and sanity. It’s the only way I know how to cope with my helplessness in eradicating racism and bigotry on my own. The gruesome videos, tear-jerking images and pervasive ignorance inevitably roaming the internet are just too much to bear. The sinking feeling never gets old.

I hate the guilt that comes with exercising my privilege to end my grief much earlier than the romantic partners, parents, children, friends and other loved ones who can’t just shut off the news to tune out the pain.

So, I’m working on a better way to cope. And, this time, I’ll make it personal.

I promised that one day I’d share my story—the one that wasn’t captured on camera. The one that exists amongst the countless other stories out there that never went viral and will never have proof of how the entire situation went down. Not that proof has ever mattered much anyhow. The ones that will likely never receive the justice that they deserve.

Disclaimer: I want to shed light on my personal story for its relevance to what’s happening in the media in regards to people losing their lives from minding their business, being on the opposing end of someone calling the police from some sort of complaint or standing their ground in an unjust situation. In no way am I equating my story to the ones mentioned above. I did not lose my life from any racist citizen or police officer. But, given the circumstances, I easily could have. And that’s the point.

It was October 2015, the night of my senior homecoming game at one of the biggest, most beloved schools in the SEC. Title starting to make sense now? I braved the crazy off-campus traffic, long on-campus bus ride and full lines outside the stadium with the same friend I had gone to all other football games with since freshman year. She went for the love of the game; I went for the love of the atmosphere. And together we’d been a solid team.

I was particularly excited for halftime, during which we both had hoped to have our 7% representation accounted for in crowning a Black homecoming king of our university for the first time in years. It was bound to be a great night. Or, so we thought.

I can feel my blood boiling already. Whoosah… let me get on with the story.

As we searched the bleachers for seats, it became clear that in spite of the long waits and crowded streets we’d succeeded in arriving early enough to choose a decent spot within the student section to watch the game. There was plenty of space and we had plenty of options.

But I didn’t like the spot that my friend had scoped out. Something didn’t feel quite right and I apprehensively expressed that I had a bad feeling about it.

She looked confused and took another look around at all the remaining empty seats before waiting for further explanation. There was no logical way to explain my concerns. I tried to assert something about it being near the edge and too close to the action of others who might come in later on looking for seating, but ultimately shriveled up at the fact that I had no concrete evidence for what I was feeling.

“It’s fine.” she said.

She took her seat. I decided that trying to enjoy the game from her preferred seats was more important than struggling to explain my gut feelings. I’m sure anyone, including myself, would have reacted the same way to what seemed to be an illogical concern. Per usual, I started to doubt myself and concluded that she was probably right. It’s not like I could explain what I was feeling even if I wanted to. And besides, what was I going to do, sit someplace else and watch the entire game on my own? I reluctantly followed suit.

Before long, several other students started flooding in, group by group. The bleachers were spacious enough for people to pass by and get to the available seats further down our row without disturbing us much at all. Most of the people in the student section chose to stand in excitement to watch the game anyway, so it was no problem taking a couple of steps backwards to excuse ourselves for those who politely wanted to scooch by.

We watched as all the empty seats we’d once had at our disposal became filled with rowdy fans, all sporting red, black and white.

After a while, standing was no longer a cheerful option but an obligation as standing students filled each of the empty spaces in the rows ahead of us. The whole I-can’t-see-because-you’re-standing-and-so-now-I-have-to-stand-as-well-but-now-I’m-blocking-the-view-of-the-people-behind-me-and-they’re-also-going-to-have-to-stand cycle was starting.

With the bleachers now completely full, students trailing in late had no space left to stand and cleverly chose to utilize that excess space on the bleachers intended for bypassers as their own makeshift rows to stand and watch the game. Yeah, you read that right. Instead of trying to scooch by, now people just kind of stood right there in front of you. So instead of having a spacious place to stand in front of our seats, there was now an additional row forming within the walkway of each bleacher.

This of course was non-ideal.

If it was hard to view the game with staggered singular rows of standing students, it became increasingly difficult to catch a peak at the game between double-stacked rows of standing students. To cope with this shift, the people who had arrived earlier and were in the original rows of students chose to elevate themselves by standing on top of their seats, rather than in front of them, thus freeing up the opportunity for those who had arrived late to claim the space that they themselves were once standing in.

It was a total mad house. The whole thing was one big train of inconsideration. Everyone was looking out for themselves, and there wasn’t much anyone could do to cope with the fact that our school had clearly oversold the game. But my friend and I were determined to remain positive, tune out the chaos and enjoy the game as best we could.

My friend didn’t seem to mind standing, but before things had gotten crowded I had enjoyed the luxury of being able to shift between standing and sitting. After the long journey it had taken to get to there, I didn’t care to sacrifice my comfort at the game for the small chance of piecing together choppy images of the action between the legs and heads of students in the rows ahead of us. Besides, by staying seated I had a sliver of hope in protecting the walking area on our own row.  At least for now, we were still safe from becoming a double-stacked row, but my friend skipped a step in deciding to stand on top of her seat anyhow. I couldn’t blame her for shifting into the only position available to view the game, but I didn’t want to join in on creating a wide-open space for latecomers to make themselves comfy on our row. So, eventually I had given up hope of viewing the game at all and chose to remain seated.

But alas, a last-minute group came in and set up shop directly in front of me. Rude. Unless I wanted to stare at their backsides for the next several hours of the game, I had no choice but to get up and join my friend in standing on top our seats.

We were amongst a crowd of students blocking the row behind us, but it was understood that this exact same thing was happening everywhere throughout the student section. Ever since we first arrived we’d watched each inconsiderate move be countered by another necessary, but inconsiderate move. And at this point we were all packed like sardines. I had high suspicion that no one was truly enjoying the game. Sure, I was pretty annoyed with the people who’d chosen to waltz onto our row as if they were passing by only to set up shop and permanently stand directly in front of our seats, but I couldn’t take it out on them when they had no place else to go and it was the ultimately school’s fault for being greedy enough ignore the possibility of something like this happening when they selfishly chose to oversell the football game.

But the people behind us didn’t exhibit my same level of grace.

The vivid visual description in the last several paragraphs was an important set up to even begin to explain what happens next. Will do my best to remain calm.

As we stood staring into the heads of those ahead of us, I kept feeling someone brush up behind me. The culprit was part of a group of girls who had come in late and made their own makeshift row in the isle way of the bleachers behind us. I already don’t like crowds, but I especially don’t like when people inconsiderately push against me in a crowd. I gave benefit of the doubt in maintaining belief that much of this was out of everyone’s control and tried really hard to ignore it. I figured the constant contact between someone else’s limbs and my back would eventually go away once everyone in the new group got settled into their positions.

But this continued to go on for a smooth 20 minutes. Minimum.

People don’t usually shove you…and then keep shoving you…and then shove you again. That’s not how accidental contact works. Benefit of doubt was over. It became clear that what she was doing was intentional. Once I caught onto what was happening, my friend did an amazing job at keeping me calm and coaxing me into ignoring the girl’s antics. My friend clearly had practice in smiling through tough times, but I’m not usually one to back down from speaking my peace on anything. So, after about 15 more minutes of trying to ignore the constant pushing, I turned around and firmly but politely said,

“Hey could you, like, not shove? We’re pretty squished up here too. Thanks.”

Through my forced smile I was looking into the eyes of a slender White girl dressed in red and black. I could see the fear in her eyes when I initially turned around. And it was pretty hard to tune out her cowering group of friends in my peripheral vision.

“Oh! Sorry.” She said, playing it off as though she genuinely cared that she had been causing me discomfort for the past 35 minutes.

I turned back around thinking that the worst of it was over. IMMEDIATELY she and her friends started laughing. Within 2 seconds she was back to hitting my back.

I could over hear she and her friends spurring curse words in our direction as if we weren’t just inches away within earshot. If felt like I was back in grade school being taunted by a bully. After about 5 more minutes of her intentional antics, I whipped my neck back around and shot a glare in her direction. My fists were clasped at my side, but I had no intention of using them. I was merely trying to hold in the frustration that I had at this point been suppressing for almost a whole quarter of the game. I had never resonated with that Arthur meme more in my life.

Then I felt an arm hook around my neck.

After spending what felt like an hour ignoring someone else’s body consistently knock against my back, my initial instinct was to spring into action. I had had enough. My fist tightened and my arms tensed up, but I quickly realized that what I had felt was only my friend’s arm swooping in around my neck to turn me back around to face the game. She kept her arm around me for a few moments longer and shifted us side to side beating her pompom into the air as if to send a signal to the girls behind us that we weren’t going to let them ruin our good time. My friend was a godsend for her efforts and I appreciated her so much in that moment. Her natural ability to deal with frustration by tuning it out rather than facing it head on is likely what kept me from going to jail that day. But I’m getting ahead of myself in the story here. I tried to laugh it off and hoped that since politely asking the girl to stop hadn’t worked, letting her know that I was onto her with my death glare would be enough.

It wasn’t.

The taunting and name calling continued. Now they weren’t just pushing my friend and I with their elbows and arms, they had grabbed their pompoms and started knocking my friend and I in the head. Even after being called names by this rowdy group of White women, we still gave benefit of the doubt in assuming that they weren’t mean enough to intentionally started bashing us in the head with pompoms. It just didn’t make sense. We adjusted ourselves and ducked out of the way to let them know that they were hitting us in the process of their cheering.  But, unsurprisingly, after they realized that we were being impacted by their pom-swinging, they started doing it even more.

I brushed one pompom away from my ear a few times and it seemed to at least help decrease the frequency of hits. But of course it kept happening anyway. As my frustration grew stronger and I contemplated turning around for a third time, until I looked to my side and saw a different pompom flying through the air. With one swift move, my friend had taken the pompom out of the girl’s hand nearest her and thrown it into the crowd ahead of us. The girl closest to her side had been knocking her in the head persistently, and my friend clearly had also had enough.

The girl who had designated me as her personal shoving bag chose to respond by picking up the speed in her antics until one hit was a little bit harder than the others. I IMMEDIATELY grabbed her wrist, turned around and faced her head on.

“Ashley!” my friend called out.

The name-calling and physical contact had eaten away at me for long enough. This girl was out of control, and she knew exactly what she was doing in provoking me to this point. I had no words. My hand was still around her wrist, holding her arm high in the air, clenching just as tight as it was when I had poured all of my frustration in to its empty palm earlier in the game.

“I don’t want to fight you!” She said.

Who said anything about fighting?

“Do you want to fight? DO YOU WANT TO FIGHT?” I said with all of my frustration with the never-ending situation pouring into my voice.

“She’s not worth it.” my friend said at my side, coaxing me to turn back around.

“Who said anything about fighting? I’m not trying to fight you, but you keep knocking me in the head and I asked you nicely to stop. And, I can clearly hear you calling my friend and I names. No one is trying to fight you.”

“I don’t want to fight you!” She said vigorously shaking her head in fear, ignoring everything I had just said.

Of course to everyone else around us I looked like the aggressor. And of course no one who had seen the entire thing play out from the beginning stopped to say anything. All that mattered is that I had been pushed to the point of holding this White girl’s wrist high in the air like it was the American flag. I had given her a reason to turn things around and play victim. Which is exactly what that term “playing vicitim” should be used for, by the way, not actual victims speaking up about real problems. I digress.

People don’t care when you’re provoked, all they see is the response.

I held her arm up in the air for just a few more seconds. My grip was so tight it was at the point of shaking. But I realized that my friend was right, she wasn’t worth it. Violence is never worth it. I have proper home training. Unlike this childish group of women.

“Now, don’t hit me again.” I said releasing her arm, sending it flying down like it was a mic at a Superbowl halftime show. I turned back around to finish “watching” the game.

I overheard one of her friends say something about how she should call security. I laughed in my head. Security? Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, right. It’s because I don’t have the privilege of living in a country where I can expect that my side will be taken in any scenario between myself and White woman (or man, for that matter). I don’t have the privilege of feeling protected. My first instinct was to speak up for myself like I’ve always had to, not call someone else in to protect me.

I knew that our tears didn’t carry the same strength.

She and her friends exited the stadium and I breathed a sigh of relief of being able to have my personal space back again. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know what was coming.

Before long, she came back and stood in the bleacher entryway tunnel, accompanied by a police officer, dripping Oscar-winning tears. She stretched out her arm and directed her finger towards my friend and I. With a stadium packed with students, it was silly of me to hope that the she wouldn’t be able to find us again in the crowd.

It didn’t take much effort to single out two brown faces in a crowd that was red, black and White all over.

The police officer motioned for us to exit the bleachers.

The game, at least for us, was over. So much for the homecoming half-time show.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave the game.” the officer said.

The girl and her friends were free to go before I even had the chance to open my mouth. I could see her wiping away fake tears and laughing with her friends as they walked away in the distance towards a new seating section.

What in the actual f—

“Why are we being asked to leave the game? You know that she and her friends were taunting us right?” I desperately tried to explain my side of the story as he walked us in the direction of the elevators.

“She says you made her bleed and that you wanted to fight.”

What? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!

“No. That’s not what happened. Her arm wasn’t bleeding until she left the stadium. I don’t know how that happened, that could have been self-inflicted to help her story for all I know. I never mentioned anything about fighting. She assumed that I wanted to fight her when I grabbed her arm to keep her from repeatedly knocking the side of my head. In fact, I said that I wasn’t trying to fight. I’ve never fought anyone in my life. This is my senior homecoming game. My last one, and I just came to enjoy it. She and her friends had been bothering us and calling us names for nearly an hour.”

“Yeahhh. I know,”  he said looking back at the group of girls that he’d just set free to taunt another section “but I’m still going to have to ask you to leave.”

He explained that because had I touched her, he still had to ask my friend and I to leave the game. Something told me that although he didn’t know what truly happened and had only heard her embellished version of the story, he believed what I was telling him. He knew the truth, but chose to protect her anyway.

I realized that this was a battle that I wasn’t going to win.

“Okay.” I said, accepting defeat.

My friend didn’t speak much for the rest of the night. She was hard to read and I couldn’t tell if her anger was directed towards the injustice in the situation, or towards me for making the final move that got us kicked out.

While in the elevator, the police officer looked over at our solemn faces. Hashtags had been all over the news about a police brutality case. We were only a week or so out from the most recent one that had made headlines. It was unspoken but clear that the officer had seen them too. The headlines were inescapable. In a moment of seemingly wresting with his own guilt in contributing to the biased police culture that leads to those kinds of stories happening in the first place, he opened his mouth and as genuinely as he possibly could said,

“Thank you… um, for complying.”

What was I supposed to do, refuse? Demand justice and become the next hashtag? Had I not surrendered to being punished for something I didn’t initially cause, would that have been grounds for you to attack me? Are you just glad you don’t have to be the next officer making headlines?

I didn’t know what he meant by his statement, but I knew that if I didn’t have a chance against those girls, I certainly didn’t have a chance against a police officer. I kept my thoughts to myself, forced a smile through my inferior Black girl tears and said,

“Oh, no problem.”

My mind thought back to the time when I stood crying in the courtyard of the building which housed my part-time job as a chemistry tutor, sobbing on the phone to my dad about how a redneck guy (y’all he had a red handkerchief around his neck, spare me) at an off-campus restaurant refused to speak to me because I was Black. I could not be served there. Helpless and infuriated, I was only minutes away from having to put on a brave face for the White students that I had to go in and teach, free of bias and unresolved emotions.

My mind then raced to the time I had stood outside in the rain waiting to enter the stadium for a different football game where a drunken White girl had been flinging herself into my group of friends before being confronted on it. She apologized and complemented me on my lipstick, only to be seen in the distance with her friend, moments later, flipping up her lips and pointing back to mock the fullness of my own.

I could talk about the time when an incoming DJ purposely turned off the hip-hop/pop music his White co-worker had been playing in exchange for country music at at bar downtown and then mouthed “Good riddance N*****RS!” as he flipped off groups of black people leaving to explore neighboring bars. Or, we could talk about how I woke up the day after Obama’s 2012 reelection to a racist drawing of our newly elected president as a monkey on a Whiteboard just a few doors down from my dorm room. Or, I guess we can rap about the time my White male classmate refused to work with me when we were partnered together on an assignment. I could paint the picture of his face when I ended up scoring a 100 on the assignment that I was forced to complete on my own and the professor turned around and asked if he needed my help in re-doing his failed assignment. I could also talk about the time I had to sit down with my White roommate and explain why I didn’t appreciate her persistent use of the N-word in our home.

But instead… I’ll finish the story.

We had a very long walk back that night. I didn’t unleash the full breadth of my emotions until my friend and I were safely outside the stadium and free to go. To no avail, I pleaded my case to a different officer outside the stadium. Still in tears, I told him that I was a good person; a good student. Through my shaken voice I told him that I would be beginning my interview trail for medical school the following Monday. Had I wrongfully been arrested, I wouldn’t currently be attending the school that I was days away from interviewing for. He seemed to also feel bad about what had happened, but not bad enough to run to our rescue like his colleague swiftly did for the girls inside. They both knew the truth, but it didn’t matter.

Our concerns didn’t matter.

Justice didn’t matter.

And, I can’t help but to wonder if I did demand justice in there…if I had stood my ground and called out the inequality in the situation…if I had been manhandled or murdered on-site for demanding fairness, would the reporters who covered my story find a way to justify why my life did not matter?

This is my story, but several others have faced much worse. This post is dedicated to all victims of hate crimes, to all the families still fighting for justice and for the countless stories out there that will forever go untold. I keel with you, in solidarity.