Another White Lady Talking About Kobe

But not really about “Kobe” per se.

Trauma, re-traumatization, the way we love participating in the bread and circus of public delight, grief, comment, scandal. Is it ok to miss him because you used to watch Lakers games with your dad and it made you feel like one day you could ask him what mortgage insurance was and if you and your partner honestly needed it or not, so Kobe was in some ways a grease to the wheel of the hard questions being family forces us to ask? Yes, you can be grateful for that life, that purpose, that role that an otherwise total stranger in the NBA played in your very real life.

Is it also ok to feel fire flash in your eyes seeing the face of a rapist lauded like an American hero because of an opulent helicopter crash while you are still overweight, still healing, still spending all that you have on therapy, candles, and the perpetual art of getting your shit together for a job you hate that makes you feel kind of numb but you were assaulted in college and he kept his scholarship while you descended to the depths of vocational wandering paired with trauma-bonding and peppered heavily with existential angst and not enough (never enough) mental health resources? Yes, you can be pissed at God and the world and that goddamn purple and yellow jersey that will just. Never. Go. Away.