Nicole on Anti-Asian Discrimination

I have never directly experienced discrimination for being Asian, but I know people that have. Of course, we all hear about those stories, but the gravity of the situation never hit me, until a month ago. A month ago, I heard about how a friend of a friend was involved in a hit and run, and how the victim later died from his injuries. What exactly did this person do to deserve to be so callously murdered?

Walk his dog.

He wasn't even on the road.

It was like a slap in the face, a sudden realization that this was real, it's happening to people, and it's happening to everyone. I think no one realizes how serious these kinds of things are until it happens to you personally. Now, everytime I walk on the sidewalk, I keep a close eye on every car passing next to me, because I worry that maybe I'll be next, or maybe my brother will be, or maybe my friend will be. If I had done this a year ago, honestly, if I had done this even two months ago, I would've thought I was being irrational and worried about nothing, but I’m not anymore. I now have a perfectly valid reason to believe that a car will randomly swerve off the road and hit me on the sidewalk, because it happened to him, so it could happen to me. And that is not okay.