I was 25 years old when I realized that the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, placed no value on my life.

I sat around a television with a handful of my sisters when my heart sank beneath my feet as we heard the news anchor rattle off, “George Zimmerman was found NOT GUILTY of the murder of Trayvon Martin.” We traveled to the nation’s capital to celebrate 100 years of excellence, a feat that very few service organizations have reached. But that wasn’t what I carried home from that trip. What I could not shake was the idea that any self-righteous, racist vigilante had just been granted permission to stalk, pursue and then murder people with the same skin color as mine because they feel threatened by our presence.

Yesterday, I cried all day.

At home. At work. At the gym. Earlier in the day, I watched two different bystander recordings of Alton Sterling, a black man, being pinned down like cattle and murdered at point blank range by two police officers who have sworn to uphold the law and protect its citizens. Alton Sterling’s crime? He sold CDs and resisted arrest. If you felt that you did nothing wrong, wouldn’t you want an explanation before your arrest?

After numerous phone calls with close friends and family in an attempt to restore some sort of hope, I realized that my efforts were futile. So I ran.

I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could because I couldn’t do anything else.

That is, until I logged onto Facebook and watched my sister, Diamond Reynolds, livestream the aftermath of a trigger happy police officer shooting another black man, Philando Castile, for doing exactly what the officer instructed him to do – providing identification. According to Reynolds, Castile notified the officer that he was licensed to carry a weapon, but he wanted to comply with the officer’s request. The officer’s response? He unloaded bullets into Castile without a second thought. Castile did not resist arrest. He did exactly what the naysayers have been telling blacks that we should do to avoid being murdered by the police. He was murdered anyway.

Never mind the officer’s training in routine traffic stops. Never mind the 4-year-old in the back seat, screaming “It’s okay, Mommy,” who could have also been murdered by the ill-equipped officer who fears black skin. Never mind the little girl waking up 10 years later to cold sweats from nightmares because of the latent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from watching her mother’s boyfriend get murdered by ‘the good guys.’

Never mind anyone with this skin of mine. Right?

According to a database on Guardian.com that tracks police killings in the United States, Philando Castile’s murder makes him the 136th black HUMAN killed by the police in 2016, alone. I’ve never been filled with so many emotions. I’ve never felt this amount of rage.

I fear for my life everyday.

I am a college-educated, working professional in pursuit of a master’s degree from an accredited university. I pay my taxes. I use my turn signals. I help the elderly reach the high shelves at the grocery store, and I mentor our youth. Yet, every single day when I walk out my door, I consider the fact that any random self-appointed watchman that believes I am not where I belong, or any gun-toting police officer that fears my skin color — basically ANYONE — can murder me at the drop of a dime. And I know they will feel justified in doing so simply because I’m black. Lorraine Hansberry spoke of the feeling of suffocation that blacks experience, living in a country that still reaps the benefits of our labor, our culture and our dollars, but leaves us with nothing and nowhere to turn to.

Quite frankly…I can’t breathe.

What I want to address next comes with much shame, and embarrassment. It is the first time that I have experienced this emotion, and to be honest, I don’t know how to hold it. I love my people, and everything that comes with carrying the torch of this skin – the resilience, the perseverance, the strength, all of it. But I can’t pretend that I’ve not grown envious of people who don’t look like me.

I walk down the street and watch as my counterparts smile, laugh and enjoy life without any consideration of this fear that burdens my every action. And I hate it. I want it. I want to experience being free enough to tread U.S. soil and feel as though I belong here. I want to travel without having to consider how the people will react to a Black woman ‘invading their spaces.’ I want to walk down a street and have my smiles and hellos reciprocated, and not have a person stare at the ground just to avoid eye contact with me. What makes me more enraged is not only do some not recognize their privilege, but also they condemn black people for speaking out about the injustices.

I will continue to choose love over and over again, but how am I supposed to carry on in my life, integrating into spaces that were never intended for me, working twice as hard for half as much? I watch my co-workers walk into work with “Kim Kardashian boxer braids” singing Lemonade, and walking back out into the world as free as the golden eagle that this country uses as a symbol of sovereignty. Meanwhile, my brothers and sisters continue to be executed in cold blood. At what point will the genocide of my people evoke more outrage than a gorilla?

Ain’t I human?

Why does the color of my skin scare you?

Can I live?

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Alexis Franklin

Writing since December 2015 · 2 stories contributed