start of social witness

Since the assignment sheet was given out a couple of weeks ago, I have periodically been thinking about what I was going to write about in my Social Witness essay. And throughout most of that time, up until yesterday, I had no idea what that was going to be. Then yesterday, Jenna mentioned to write about something that you had experienced within your community. So I started thinking about my community, and my age group, and I thought about what defined me, or made me feel ashamed, proud, angry, helpless, or sad. But I couldn’t think of anything. Up until yesterday when I was with one of my friends at a subway, and we saw a kid that we recognized, who bore resemblance to a face we had tried to forget about. I looked over to that get, and motioned with my head, “that kid looks like dylan”. When I said that, my friend beamed at me for a split second, and responded with a one-word utterance of “yeah” for the mere purpose of acknowledging that he had heard me. I could tell it was still a tender subject for a lot of my friends, even after almost two years.
Then I hit me. I could talk about dylan. I could talk about what had happened to him and what our response to him was, and not just us. But everyone who knew about him and his problems. I could talk about how desensitization caused a kid his life. How we literally watched a kid self-destruct without saying anything at all.

I had a friend who died a couple of years ago. He died convulsing on his bedroom floor with his eyes rolled back into his head—like a despondent dog about to get uthanized—only conscious enough to realize that time was slowing along with his failing heart as it desperately tried to flush out a its last surge of heroin. I wasn’t there the day he died—I hadn’t been for about a year—for I had made a decision, along with most of my friends, to distance myself from him, to turn a blind eye, and to accept the fact that my admonishments were useless. Unfortunately, that misconception cost a young man his life.