Being black in Oregon

I Still Love Oregon — Even After Oregon Tried Not to Love Me Back

I love Oregon. The rain that makes the air smell like dirt and pine. The way Mt. Hood looks fake on clear mornings. The summer blackberries that stain your fingers purple. I love it the way you love a parent who didn’t protect you: complicated, unearned, but mine.

I also learned in 2023 what it means to be Black in Oregon.

The police took my glasses. I can’t see without my glasses. Everything beyond three feet is watercolor. They knew that. They took them anyway before the handcuffs. That’s how it started. Blurry, then worse.

I ended up in the hospital. I wasn’t safe, and I asked to be. Reaching for a call button in a psych ward got written up as “attempted strangulation.” I didn’t touch anyone. I reached. Words matter in police reports. “Reaching” becomes “lunging.” “Scared” becomes “aggressive.” I got a harassment charge. In a hospital. For wanting safety.

Breakfast the next morning. A white girl I’d eaten dinner with the night before — the one who called me “sis” — grabbed my hair. Fisted it. Yanked me off the bench. The room watched. I stood up. I walked away. Because I’m not violent. Because I knew if I swung back, I’d be the headline, not her. She’d be “troubled.” I’d be “dangerous.” So I left my hair in her hands and my dignity in my chest and walked.

Then jail. Then back to the hospital. Then a room. Lights off. Door closed. A staff member tossed a restraint jacket at me like it was a blanket. It wasn’t. Another nurse handed me a book full of the n-word and said, “I get the Black race.” I stared at her. I was stable on my meds. I’d been stable for three months. I was present. I understood every second. That was the difference between 2023 and my 30s. In my 30s I lost time. In 2023 I remembered all of it. And I was furious.

I was homeless. On the brink of losing what little I had left. But I was lucid. I could name what was happening: This is racism. This is ableism. This is what it looks like when a Black woman in crisis is treated as a threat instead of a patient.

Still, I love Oregon.

I love it because I came back to Salem and didn’t shatter. I bounced back. I became stable and stayed stable. I got a job. I start my Ph.D. next month. I can walk past the hospital now and not flinch. I can file paperwork to expunge the charges that never should have been charges. I can sit in court with my glasses on and see the judge clearly.

Loving Oregon doesn’t mean pretending 2023 didn’t happen. It means refusing to give Oregon the power to define me. The state showed me its teeth. I showed it my spine.

I’m Black in Oregon. I was homeless in Oregon. I was criminalized in Oregon. And I’m still here, in Oregon, building a life Oregon said I couldn’t have. That’s not forgiveness. That’s reclamation.

The trees are still green. The rain still cleans things. And I’m still standing.

So yeah. I love Oregon. Not because it was good to me. But because I’m learning to be good to myself, right here, where it happened.