I'm Fighting to Breathe Right Now

I'm fighting to breathe after watching a man fight to breathe. I am racked by what I saw on an eight minute video that kneed a handcuffed George Floyd to the ground.

Mr. George Floyd

Someone heed Mr. Floyd's voice that I hear begging for air. Let him up!

Oh World, some days I can barely look at you anymore. 

He asked and he begged until his lungs held breath no more. When a man's life was suffocated from him, my lungs gasped in panic.

We've moved an entire nation to fight a virus that's taking our breath away, and yet not one man can move the knee brutally pinned to this man's neck? 

You four policemen were wrong. Voices begged and cajoled and yet your insistence without resistance revealed arrogance.  I'm part of a law enforcement family who refutes your kind of treatment. You were not taught that. And now collectively, we are defeated and ashamed that you represent us all. Your mission to serve and protect includes serving and protecting those you arrest, even from yourselves. Could not even one of four interfere to sit that man up to breathe, to live?   

You forged a fraud in the most basic human sense: you didn't fight to serve or protect decency and respect for humanity, but rather stubbornly wielded arrogance to take a life. 

I want to yell at the world right now to just leave me alone and let me hide away. Yet, I know that I just need a minute to catch my breath and find my words. Deep inhale and exhale.

Let's not hide behind masks of indifference but be moved as individuals and a nation to beg for the breath each of us deserves, no matter our color or creed. It's our breath that speaks words that will stand against this type of virus of injustice.