The pain is too heavy. So much so that words get caught in my throat and I’m suffocating, although I am not choking. It’s the same aching pain when Trayvon Martin was killed, except this one hits way closer to home.

Slauson-aire. A legend of legends. A teacher with whom you could really relate. If you’re not from the city you can’t relate on all levels that South Central felt getting that news. I didn’t wanna believe it. When my sister said came upstairs in a huff to deliver the news, I badly wanted it to be a lie. She wanted it to be some sick ass April Fools joke… but it wasn’t. It isn’t.

Ermias Asghedom (Nipsey Hussle) was taken from us.

A nerve has been struck. Hope knocked out. He was building something for us all. Our community was going to stay our community and familiar with new flavors and wealth of knowledge and growth. He was continuously growing, learning, teaching and investing in the very area he grew up in. He wanted so much more for the hood and the people in it.

That helpless feeling kicked in. I’m states away. As if I could do anything to bring him back and erase the hurt and pain he may have felt and that we all are now feeling. I wanted to be closer. Mourn in my city, with my city. What good would that do? It won’t bring him back. On so many levels I’m heart-broken and can’t even begin to express it.

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As a black women from South central LA who spent her early days on Slauson and Western that shit hits home. Our men are always taken from us. The men who stand proud in their role as men, who build, take ownership and responsibility, who lead and follow to learn and return to us, to teach us. Nipsey was that. Although he’s forever immortalized through his music and what we all know he’s done in L.A., it hurts.

We can no longer walk into Marathon and possibly see him. Hell, it hurts thinking about even going to the store. He was taken from us, there. We were robbed. He had so much more life to live and so many more seeds to plant.

While it hurts many of us to our core, we’ve not only gotta do better, but move in the ways in which he moved. Invest in ourselves. Go after our goals. Be the change and make change happen in our own streets. His legacy must live on.