I used to think being called resilient was a compliment.
Lately, I am not so sure.
Actually, these days the word almost feels like an insult to me.
Because how much can you demand that someone endure before you stop admiring their resilience and start asking why they have to endure so much in the first place?
How much can you demand of a people before something starts to break?
I have been thinking about that a lot lately.
A young man from my community died recently.
He was 20 years old.
A student. An athlete. A young person who had dreams for his life. He came here like so many others, trying to build something.
And then immigration authorities put an electronic monitor around his ankle.
His family says he was deeply ashamed of it. He talked about feeling humiliated, about being treated like an animal. He had to walk around his college campus wearing it. His father said he begged for it to be removed.
And then he died.
His family believes he took his own life.
Twenty years old.
I keep thinking about him.
Maybe because I understand something about the shame he may have felt.
In our culture, being treated like a criminal carries weight.
Being arrested is not always something that belongs only to you. The shame can attach itself to your family name. People talk. The community knows. Your parents feel it. You feel that you have embarrassed people who sacrificed for you.
So imagine knowing you did not come here to commit a crime and having something strapped around your ankle that tells everyone who sees you otherwise.
You walk into class with it.
You go to the store with it.
You see people looking.
Maybe they know what it is. Maybe they don’t.
But you know what it represents.
I cannot tell you exactly what was happening inside that young man’s mind. None of us can. And I don’t want to reduce something as complicated as suicide to one thing.
But I can understand why humiliation matters.
I can understand why fear matters.
I can understand what it might do to someone to feel as though the future he was trying to build is disappearing.
And I keep wondering how many other people are suffering quietly.
Because something is happening to my community.
I don’t have statistics that can measure all of it.
I just know what I see.
I honestly don’t know one Haitian person who is not deeply affected in some way by what is happening right now.
Here.
Back home.
And everywhere Haitians have found themselves around the world.
Maybe you are worried about yourself.
Maybe it is your parents
Your brother.
Your sister.
A cousin.
A friend.
Someone whose immigration status has suddenly become uncertain.
Someone afraid to go to work.
Someone wondering whether to leave.
Someone you know who has already been sent back.
And then there is everything happening back home.
The killings.
The kidnappings.
People being displaced.
Neighborhoods disappearing.
Families trying to figure out where to go.
Outside, people are being told they don’t belong.
Inside, people are trying to survive.
So you worry.
You worry about the people here.
You worry about the people there.
You worry about people being sent back there.
You worry about the people scattered everywhere else.
And somehow you wake up the next morning and go to work.
You answer emails.
You take care of your children.
You pay bills.
You make dinner.
You laugh.
You go about your day.
From the outside, you probably look fine.
Maybe that is why people keep calling us resilient.
But I wonder what all of this is doing to us inside.
Because we don’t always talk about it.
And frankly, sometimes we don’t want to.
Sometimes I don’t want to explain anymore.
There is an exhaustion that comes with constantly explaining your humanity to people who have already decided what they think about you.
You explain why people left.
Someone wants to argue.
You explain what is happening back home.
Someone has already decided that the people there created all of their own problems.
You explain why someone is afraid.
Someone has an answer for that too.
At some point, it feels like a waste of breath and energy.
Because some people aren’t asking because they want to understand.
They want to argue.
They already formed their opinion.
So maybe we don’t talk to you about it.
That doesn’t mean we aren’t feeling it.
Sometimes, frankly, we just want to be with each other.
And don’t get that wrong either.
We are not sitting somewhere being sad all day.
No.
We are dancing.
We are singing.
We are organizing.
Planning.
Thinking.
Supporting each other.
Sending money.
Calling people.
Making jokes.
Cooking.
Doing what we have always done.
Living.
There is still laughter.
There is always laughter.
But sometimes you just want to be around people who understand.
I don’t have to explain to you why that video bothered me.
You already know.
I don’t have to give you the history first.
You know.
I don’t have to convince you that something is painful before I am allowed to say that it hurts.
You understand.
Sometimes without words.
And there is something comforting about that.
Sometimes you don’t want to translate your pain.
Maybe that is why lately I find myself wanting to be around my people more.
Not because I hate anyone else.
Not because I don’t want to engage with the world.
I am just tired of explaining.
And still, I worry.
I worry about what all of this is doing to us psychologically.
The fear.
The uncertainty.
The humiliation.
The feeling of being unwanted.
Watching people who look like you being put in shackles and sent away.
Watching the place you came from fall apart at the same time.
Where is the safe place?
Where do you put all of that?
We talk so much about resilience.
My people are resilient.
I have heard that my entire life.
And yes, we are.
We have survived things that should have broken us.
But lately when I hear that word, I almost get angry.
Resilient.
Again?
How many times are we supposed to prove that?
How much can you demand of someone?
At what point are we allowed to be tired?
At what point are we allowed to say this is too much?
Sometimes I think resilience has become a way for the world to look at people suffering and feel comfortable with it.
They will survive.
They always do.
They’re resilient.
But what if we are tired of surviving things?
What if we would like to just live?
Maybe we would like to just be people.
People who are allowed to be afraid.
People who are allowed to be exhausted.
People who don’t have to turn every tragedy into another testimony about how strong we are.
Because there has to be a limit.
There has to be a point where instead of asking how much more a people can survive, we start asking why they keep being asked to survive so much in the first place.
I think about that young man again.
Twenty years old.
He wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
A whole life that should have been ahead of him.
A talent.
A future.
A family who expected to watch him become something.
Gone.
And I wonder about the others.
The ones we don’t know about.
The ones still going to work.
Still going to school.
Still smiling.
Still answering, “I’m fine” but terrified inside.
The parents who aren’t sleeping.
The young people who are afraid.
The people who don’t know where they belong anymore.
The ones carrying things they haven’t told anyone.
I don’t know what all of this will do to us.
Maybe that is what scares me.
But I think we need to start checking on each other.
Really checking.
Especially the ones who seem fine.
The ones still laughing.
Still working.
Still taking care of everybody else.
Ask anyway.
And when someone tells you they are tired, maybe don’t immediately tell them how strong they are.
Maybe just let them be tired.
Maybe listen.
Because sometimes being called resilient doesn’t feel like encouragement anymore.
Sometimes it feels like being told:
You’ll survive this too.
And maybe we will.
We usually do.
But I don’t want survival to be the only thing expected of us.
I want us to live.
I want our young people to dream about their futures instead of being afraid of them.
I want our parents to sleep.
I want people to stop carrying shame that was placed on them by someone else.
I want us to be allowed to breathe without somebody standing there admiring how well we survive without air.
We are resilient.
Fine.
But we are people.
And there is only so much any human being can carry.
Even us.
Until next time,
Xoxo, JP
