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Searching for Healing in a Sensory Deprivation Tank
When being Black and surviving in this world became too much, I sought to become nothing
I trudged into class so heavy I was practically underground. There were cracks in my resting strong face. Immediately upon dissolving into a seat I was asked what was wrong. I managed to say, “I just can’t with this Mike Brown thing. It’s too much.” It was 2014, I was in an MFA program in Los Angeles, and was as anxious and depressed as I had ever been. The unrest in Ferguson had been building for weeks. I shook my head. An image of Mike Brown’s body on the asphalt, his blood on the leaves, flashed in my mind and I begged the tears to stay internal. “Who’s Mike Brown?” my friend asked with an innocent head tilt to the right.
It was then that I rediscovered for myself that we don’t all suffer here in the same way. I had, less than an hour before this moment, been sobbing in a huddled mass on the floor of my studio apartment, unaware of how I was going to summon the emotional and spiritual energy to attend this class. Deciding to pursue an MFA was one of the most clarity-inducing experiences of my lifetime. It was a situation of extremes and demanded more of me than I thought I had, forcing me to rise to the occasion. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. Anytime a Black person is…
