Harm in Community Care

The White Woman Edition

I’m still here.
I had eye surgery.
My little family is back together.

I needed time away to figure out if I wanted to continue this life deal.

It’s painful when people attempt to convince me that I should stay.

You don’t know the pain I’m in every damn day, please don’t add to it.

I had a heartbreak recently. It nearly ended me.

I made a friend on LinkedIn.

She was a generously resourced white woman. I am a Black woman who lives below the poverty line.

The power dynamic was uneven from the start.

We had casual conversations online and she was extremely financially supportive of my writing. She told me that she’d read every piece I’d shared online numerous times.

She knew my heartbreaks, my pain points, my unmet emotional needs.

She knew me.

One particularly lonely night, I posted how desperate I was for human connection.

I wrote:

I want someone to hold me.

I want someone to make me soup.

I want someone to sit on the sofa and read with.

I want someone to let me cry without trying to fix it.

I want someone to listen to my hurt without saying a word.

She DM’d almost instantly and said she could book a flight for the next day.

There was hesitation on both sides but after a brief phone call, we agreed to meet. She flew out the next day.

It was a healing visit for me. She made soup, we listened to James Taylor, she gifted me a book (I gave her one too), I cried in her arms and then, she packed up to fly home. If our interaction had ended there, I’d have been grateful to her for the rest of my life.

Before she left, she offered to fly out the next weekend. She flew out nearly every weekend after that for months. I never asked - she always initiated.

When I scheduled cataract eye surgery she offered to stay for the week. It took my breath away to have person who:

- Made me feel loved
- Enjoyed my company
- Reminded me of my light
- Validated the parts of me that felt unworthy
- Actually spent time and money to be with me

Our connection wasn’t sexual, but it was intimate. It’s disheartening how uncomfortable our society is with intimacy in friendships…

Anyway, one day out of the blue she said “I know Mexico is the goal, but what if we get you out of Ohio until then? I know how miserable you are here. There’s a cute apartment near me in Virginia. I’ll put it in my name and pay for it. I have an extra car you can borrow. I want you to rest, write and plan for Mexico. That’s it. What do you say?”

I was speechless.

My first thought was “but wait, can we leave now tho'?” I was over the moon that I’d be near my friend.

However, the traumatized part of me that’s been dropped by others fifty-eleventy million times screamed in my ear “hold on babe, that’s a lotta power for one person to have over your existence. You piss her off and then what? You won’t even have your car to live in.”

But since we’d built a foundation of clear and honest communication, we decided to have a conversation.

When I asked about her fears she said “my only fear is that I’ll hurt you.”

Well alrighty that. With that, I give her my social security number for the apartment application and drove down for a visit.

It didn’t feel real. That’s probably because it wasn’t.

A few days later she texted me, she didn’t even call.

“My sister (a lawyer) used your SS# to run a background check and a mark came up. She wouldn’t give details, but due to my security clearance, it’s not safe for us to talk right now. I can’t risk my livelihood. I need to figure out how we can safely stay connected.”

I texted back to ask if we were ok.

Her response: yes (with a smiley face)

I haven’t heard from her since.

I was two days aways from giving up my apartment and my car - my mental health would have been trashed if either of those had happened.

I’ve done my share of shady shit in life but, I didn’t deserve this.

I am not a risk.

I had a trusted person in my circle run their own check and, it was clean.

I was discarded as if I was trash.

While it was helpful, I for real didn’t care about her money. It was her presence and they way she loved me that was transformative.

What stings the most is that she absolutely aware of the specific type of harm that had destroyed my spirit in the past. And yet, that was exactly what she proceeded to do. There are days when I question if that was her plan from the start. Either way, that was nasty work.

My heart continues to ache.

I honestly don’t believe she intended to hurt me. Or, that’s what I tell myself. I prefer to believe she genuinely wanted to help but became overwhelmed at the massive emotional and financial commitment she had made and was unable to handle the weight of saying she couldn’t (or didn’t want to) move forward.

Who can say, I’ll never know.

When it comes to supporting others, you can have the best intentions and still cause irreparable harm. Impact over intent, always.

There are times when the kindest action you can take is to leave a person alone.

Be decent humans out there.