By March 2012, I lost all hope. I wish I meant that as a metaphor. I wish I were exaggerating or being melodramatic. For longer than two and one half years, hope has not been a part of my life. Since then, I have experienced highs and lows, but the general trend has been a gradual decline in all areas of my life.
As you have likely figured out, I am not in the United States. I am not ready to talk about exactly where I am yet. I have been living in hostels and cheap hotels here, and a few hours ago, I had another negative experience that I believe well illustrates how damaged I am.
Hostels tend to have many foreigners, and most of the people only stay for a short time. I have been in this city for six weeks now, so I have more experience with the culture here than do most of the other guests. A couple of days ago, I met a group of four guests: two were from Denmark, one from Norway, and one from Sweden. I enjoyed talking with them at breakfast that day.
Today, I saw them again. We talked about their experiences here. They have been generally enjoying their trip, but many things had been disappointing for them. They had a generally positive attitude and they were still trying to make the best of the situation. They said good bye and left to go have some more fun.
Five minutes later, the woman from Denmark came back inside. She sat down in the lobby, pulled out her smart phone, and said to me, “We have to use the internet to order a taxi because none of the taxis on the street are stopping.”
I am extremely frugal, so I have only used a taxi here twice: both times, it was the only option. I am generally observant, however, and I have learned a lot about taxis here because there are some unusual cultural attitudes about, and regulations of, taxis, so many people talk about their taxis.
If you are reading this, it is a near certainty that you know that I have a strong compulsion to help people whenever I am able. I especially try to help people when the cost to me is low and the benefit to the other person is high (“high” related to my effort–a good return on investment, if you will). In this situation, I possessed useful knowledge that the Scandinavians did not posses.
In many cities, there are taxi “stands”, especially near hotels. Chicago, for example, has regulated no-parking zones on the some streets expressly for taxi stands. In this city where I live, taxi stands are nearly entirely private, they are uncommon, and they are poorly marked–especially if one cannot read the local language. The first trick I told the Danish woman is that the best place to get a taxi was at a metro station. I told her that the closest station was only four blocks from here and that it should be simple to get a taxi there. She thanked me and walked towards the door.
I wanted to tell her one other thing that I felt was important. In this part of town, taxis are extremely common. They are not as common as in New York City, but it is similar density. When she came back inside, the first thing she told me was, “None of the taxis are stopping for us.” All four of the Scandinavians were standing in front of a hostel in an area filled with tourists and the two guys in the group could not have done anything to make it more clear that they were foreigners: even a sign reading, “I am a tourist. Please overcharge me for a taxi ride.” would not have affected the knowledge of the taxi drivers. If the taxis were not stopping for this group, there was a specific reason.
In the summer of 2010, I was in New York City. It was the weekend, during the day, and I was walking around taking pictures. The area I was in was a mixture of restaurant supply, light industry, and industrial supply, so the streets were nearly empty because all of the businesses were closed. I was looking for interesting pictures, so I was scanning the environment, and since I think people are usually more interesting than buildings, I was especially paying attention to the few people who were around.
I noticed a woman trying to find a taxi. If you have ever tried to find a taxi in a big city when you are stuck in an empty part of town, then it will be very obvious to you when someone else is searching for a taxi: she was standing in the road at a major intersection and constantly looking in all four directions. A few taxis with passengers passed her, and then a clearly empty taxi, with its “available” light on, saw her waving, made an illegal left turn from the far right lane and drove towards her. He slowed down and aligned himself to stop next to her.
As he got closer to her, he was able to pay less attention to the road and to get a closer look at her. He did not stop. From where I was standing, I clearly saw him lean over the passenger seat and look directly at her. It was hot and his windows were up and the air conditioning was on, so he did not speak to her. He saw her–a woman, alone, dressed unremarkably, in the early afternoon, in a part of town with few people, and with very few potential fares for the taxi–yet as soon as he was able to clearly see her, he immediately drove away.
The woman was black. She did not seem surprised. She did not seem upset. I felt that she expected the driver to drive away. I was so stunned that I was frozen in place. I am not naive: I know racism is still a very serious problem. One reason I know it is a serious problem is because when I was a prosecutor (which was before this incident), I had to deal with racist police officers, racist probation officers, and even a racist public defender (even worse, he was the only public defender). Furthermore, I have heard people talk about how it is harder for black people to get a taxi in New York City and Chicago. Nevertheless, this event was so blatant and so hateful that I was stunned. It was an unforgivable action.
I desperately wanted to do something but I could not immediately think of anything. As I stood there–stunned, thinking about what happene, and trying to imagine a way to help–another empty taxi approached from the other direction. She waved to him, he slowed down, he saw her, and he also drove away. It was now perfectly clear that racism was the only explanation for why the taxis refused to pick-up the woman.
When all of these things happened I was standing 25 meters away, which was probably good for everyone involved because when I saw the second taxi mistreat the woman, I ran towards the taxi. Of course, I only ran a few meters before the taxi was far away. My reaction was emotional, not rational, so I do not know what I would have done had I caught him. The injustice and hate and bigotry was disgusting. Almost immediately, a third cab arrived but he did stop for her.
In the city where I now live, this culture has very strong, but often subtle, racism. If I give specific examples, it will be obvious where I am, so maybe I will save those stories for another time. I wanted to tell the Danish woman about the racism because, like the woman in New York City, she was black.
She had said that none of the taxis were stopping for her group. I was not outside with them, but based on my experience here and based on how busy the streets are right now, I am confident that at least ten empty taxis passed them. If none of them stopped, there must be a reason.
If you are reading this, then it is highly likely that you know that I am passionately hate racism and other bigotry. You probably also know that I regularly tell people that to fight bigotry, we must regularly speak out against it. (See . . . if enough people speak out, then things will change.
Before we can speak out against bigotry, however, we must be conscious of the problem.
I briefly mentioned that the racism here is often subtle. I have spoken with many people here about their perceptions of racism. I have been shocked by the number of people who say, “We do not have a problem with racism.” In every case, I have been able to describe specific examples of systemic racism in their culture. In every case, the person was shocked that they had been blind to the racism for their entire life. The subtly of the racism does not make it better than overt racism; it probably makes it more difficult to fix.
This is where the story illustrates how profoundly some parts of my character have changed.
I still very much want to help people: that has not changed. I mentioned that after I told her about taxis at the metro station, I wanted to tell her a second fact. I wanted to make her aware of the hidden racism that pervades this culture. I believe that painful knowledge is better than painful confusion: more specifically, I believe that most people would rather know that the taxi drivers were not stopping because the drivers she saw were racist rather than simply be confused about what was happening. Knowing that many of them are racists will help make it easier for her to get a cab in the future. At a taxi stand, for example, if a taxi refuses service to you, the taxi losses his place in line, so it is extremely rare that racism will prevent a person from getting a taxi. I wanted to arm her with this knowledge so that she could have more control over her life.
I told her, “I realize you have probably had to deal with this before, but [this city] is very racist and that may have caused you problems.” Her body language changed. Her microexpressions changed to anger, and her anger was clearly directed at me. Her macroexpressions did not change: she was actively trying not to express anger with me. I have too much experience reading people and their microexpressions, however, so I easily detected her anger.
I said, “I’m sorry. I thought you would want to know.”
Her emotions changed to contempt, and she said, “Thank you, but it was unnecessary to tell me.” She walked out before I could say or do anything else.
Emotionally, I felt as if someone had dropped a bus on me. My intent was to help her by giving her information that would give her the chance to avoid the pain of bigotry. Instead, I hurt her. In the past, I know I would have felt bad about accidentally hurting her, but my feelings would not have been so overwhelming. Today, I immediately had thoughts like, “I wish I were dead,” and “I am nearly incapable of doing things that do not hurt people.” I had some brief thoughts about suicide. (So brief that I cannot remember details.)
The strongest thoughts, however, were that I wished I could stop caring about people and that I could stop trying to help people. My life would be easier if I could stop. But I believe that my life would be empty if I stopped. These thoughts are not new. I have had this internal battle many times over the last couple of years. It is painful, and confusing, and wretched.
For most of my life, other people described me as confident (or they did not like me, arrogant). I tried to understand that description and what it was that people saw in me that made them use that word. I spent hundreds of hours trying to understand. I looked at the etymology of the word, for example, but that just made me more confused. The English word “confidence” is ultimately derived from: the Latin prefix com-, which means “with, together” (think of the Spanish food “chile con queso”); and from the Latin word fidere. Depending on the context, fidere is translated into English as a few different words. To understand the original meaning, consider what all of the following words (word phrases) have in common: to trust, belief in, faith in, to be honest, to promise, to be loyal. In English, “fidelity” is an excellent example of a derivative of the Latin word fidere. Since confident and arrogant were used as synonyms to describe me, I could not understand why people described me as “with loyalty”, using the etymology of the word. How was I acting “with loyalty” when I traveled to Europe alone, for example? I was confused.
[Trivia: “Fido” used to be a common name for dogs in the United States (and possibly elsewhere) because the name also comes from fidere and it means “loyal.”]
As things got worse over the last few years, I had less time to devote to ruminating about topics such as why people described me as confident. I stopped thinking about it. As my mental health, and my life, has declined, however, I have learned much about why people used to say I was confident.
My confidence is almost entirely gone. Some of my anxiety (as a disorder), for example, arises from my nearly-universal self-doubt, especially about my decisions and my actions. I see now that confidence does not mean “with loyalty” but that it instead means something closer to “with belief in one’s abilities” or “with faith in one’s knowledge”. I now understand why people used to say I was confident: I used to have a good understanding of the limits of my abilities and a clarity about my degree of certainty in each area of my knowledge.
In the last five years, however, so many events have been counter to my understanding of the world. A couple of months ago, my dad sent me some emails. He is very aware of my situation, including my finances. My dad is wealthy, and he is married to a wealthy woman. He refuses to help me, but he continually insists that he “will never stop loving” me. I cannot comprehend his actions. That is just one example of dozens, or maybe hundreds, of events that have destroyed my faith in my knowledge.
When I warned the woman about the racism here, I honestly believed I was doing a good thing. When she was clearly hurt, I felt horrible. I feel that I no longer understand how to be nice to people. (I should mention that I am confident that I offended her. She came back to the hostel a few hours later. I was talking to some of her friends. She walked towards them, saw me, stopped, backed up, and signaled for one of them to go talk to her. She then waited outside the hostel for 20 minutes so that she did not have to be in the same room with me.) I hate that I offended someone, but what is even more destructive is that I no longer trust my ability to treat people well, even though I want to treat people well.
Said differently, I have lost my confidence. I am a shadow of my former self.
