The choice to know.

I listen to a Phoebe Bridgers song called Georgia on a regular basis and feel the same gut punch every time she gets to a single line:

If I fiiiiiiiiiiiix you, will you haaaaaate me?

I feel the beginning of tears even as I type up the lyrics now. Such is the way my life works these days. I feel deeply, and when a poem or a song or just something someone says resonates with my soul, moisture fills my eyes and I smile.

The smile is to celebrate the emergence of emotions so close to the surface. For many years, emotions were an unnamed, unloved thing that made me sick, sad and miserable. I avoided them. And then when I let them out, the chaos of feeling overwhelmed to the point of misery.

Why can’t I go back? I would ask myself after reading a story about children in Chicago regularly going without food. “I would like to unknow these things.” I would mutter to myself, putting my phone away for weeks or months at a time. I was stunted emotionally. I lived twenty-four or so years without anyone telling me to let myself feel for others.

When I was young, moments of clarity would break through and the tears would flow. That same instinct to weep for the children in Chicago would make me weep in isolation as a teen. The few times that I couldn’t escape to my quiet to mourn for the injustices, a teacher or another woman in my life would reprimand me for being so unreasonable.

“If you start crying about these things,” the advice went, “you will never stop crying about them.”

Callousness as a way with dealing with the unfairness of the world is a particular privilege for white, middle class people like the people I grew up with and the women who were counseling me. When those tears came, the injustice was not on our doorstep so why was I crying about an idea? We also didn’t have the money or power to change anything individually, so why would I waste my energy on an unchangeable reality? A learned helplessness and a decision to not let ourselves feel was a guard against a madness we perceived at the end of the road marked with knowing.

Then I became disabled. And the bubble popped. The feelings I had been taught to stuff were constantly at the surface because I was just too tired to fight them off. I had no money of my own to change my circumstances. I mourned for the path I had been climbing — the path with blinders and the option to not know. Life had wrenched the choice away from me. I knew now. I could never go back.

My sickness lasted years. Keeping me from work and from the normal cadence of a life for a young, white looking woman (I’m half Cuban, which is technically Latinx but that’s a subject for another essay). Being sick destroyed the sense of safety I had in the world. My whole life I had been presented with the idea that things were pretty much okay with a few unfortunate exceptions to that rule. I realized very quickly that the safety was a lie predicated on conformity and a commitment to “normal.”

I connected with other disabled people, and realized they were being beat up by a world that didn’t want them, too. I gained weight from my illness and began to move through the world as a fat woman. Fatphobia emerged as an organizing factor in all of those years in that safe, white unknowing bubble. I connected with other fat women who had been denied medical care because of their weight. I realized I am queer. I began to hurt for the queer people in my life who were being punished for who they are.

All the while I had a family who loved and supported me. My husband kept me fed and clothed and took care of me. He didn’t care that the identities I had for myself were shifting. He had seen the center of my being all along and was just along for the ride of me finding that person and learning how to love her. I understood how lucky I was to have someone on my side; to not be alone in the fight to survive.

The organizing principles of my life shifted dramatically. I didn’t realize how totally I had been indoctrinated into a sense of white apathy until I came into community with people who had never had the option of not knowing. I felt shame for having lived so much of my life wishing for ignorance every time I saw even a piece of the unjust puzzle. Then, I realized my shame wasn’t doing anything for anyone, and I moved past that to genuine connection.

Connection, truly seeing other people as fully realized humans who are hurt by life in every way we are, is a painful choice. We are taught as white people that somehow Black and Brown and queer and disabled people are strong enough to bear the burden of their lives.

“That’s just how it is,” replaces any consideration of pain or responsibility. God, or whoever it is that runs this place, has not sought to bestow his favor on them. We are really helpless after all. Justice will come in the next life.

To think of others’ pain as fundamentally different than ours is the cruelest choice of all. It is a path taken only because it easier. Choosing to engage with the emotions of others is so hard because as white people we are not taught to make space for other people’s pain. There is not room for abundant joy or absolute sorrow in a culture desperate to cling to the illusion that everything is basically okay.

If we hear a mom whose son was murdered as he played in a park with a toy gun, the white instinct is to somehow make sense of the senseless. Our excuses for the behavior are legion. Because to admit that there is no excuse, that we should move heaven and earth to prevent something like that from happening again, is to admit that things are not okay. To think of that son as my son, to mourn with that mother is to bring up visceral pain, grief and a sorrow I was never taught to bare or to share with others.

And yet, to do anything else is a fundamental unkindness. To choose the comfort of our illusions over the pain of reality is to decide to remain separate from that mom. Our participation is required in the reimagining of a world where these things can’t happen. If we choose to remain in the safe, stable bubble of unknowing, we choose to remain separate from the people in our community who will never make it into our bubble. There will always be a layer of truth between us. That apathy is how injustice thrives.

I think from a young age I always knew I was being lied to — sometimes from a place of kindness and sometimes from a place of impatience. I think the tears that would come, and the depression that stalked me, and my status as a trouble maker or difficult or dramatic were all the first stirrings of a heart desperate to be free of the illusions of fairness and justice.

To live with eyes wide open is to live in a world where pain is a constant. We have created a unfair, unjust world in so many ways. That is a truth we cannot escape once we see. How then are we supposed to live a normal life after this? The truth is, it is a difficult transition.

To choose to step out of the white illusion is to accept that there will be new feelings of sorrow and hurt that feel overwhelming and impossible to deal with. We were not given the tools or the space to hold those emotions as children or young adults. We engage now in a process of teaching ourselves how to grow around truth and to make space for those big feelings.

Setting emotions free and learning how to live with them is a journey of years, not months or days. Giving names to the feelings other than “This hurts” requires guidance and acceptance. It requires being silent and listening to those who have spent their whole lives steeped in uncomfortable truths.

Feeling flattened by the emotional toll of it all is normal. Needing rest is normal. Many of us chose our ignorance, but most of us were fed by a white supremacist system that purposefully blinded us to reality. Realigning reality is a messy, imperfect process that will make you feel too small to handle it.

But you’ll grow. You’ll expand to make room for all of the chaotic feelings. Your life will find a new normal, a new balance where you can have space for truth and for yourself. There will be people who are sympathetic to your plight and others who will ridicule you for not knowing. I recommend not complaining about the process to those who’ve spent their whole life outside of the bubble. They don’t know what you’re going through because they’ve always known. Show them the kindness now of not needing them to make room for your chaotic awakening.

As time passes and you choose not to go back to the bubble, you’ll start to see people more fully than you ever have. Sure, there will be more tears because of this. You will mourn and you will be angry and you will find yourself wishing you could get rid of some of your feelings.

But you’ll also find a joy that can only come from knowing the truth and being able to see good anyways. Happiness rooted in an honest view of the world is unassailable in a lot of ways. It’s steadier and unlikely to be torn apart by truth. Action will be impossible because you’ll understand your part in the tapestry of all of these human connections. Helping and listening will become easier as you practice. The contentment possible on the other side of living in truth is full, peaceful and quiet.

Maybe you’re in a place where ignorance is your only bliss. Or in the phase of chaos where it feels like nothing will ever be okay again. I have survived, and I believe you will, too. On the other side of that chasm of grief and shattering of your made-up world, you’ll find people alive with purpose and with a deep commitment to each other and to the world we share.

Some day you’ll be in the car and some lyric will bring a tear to your eye. Or you’ll hear a story on the radio and be taken off guard by how fully you can feel the pain of the victim. You’ll feel those deep stirrings and know they are real and a reflection of your connection to humanity. A smile will creep onto your face, radiating warmth spreading through your veins as you realize you have room within you for all of these feelings and more. You’ve grown.