I have spent most of today trying to make sense of something that simply does not make sense, and maybe that is part of what is bothering me so much. My mind keeps going back to this morning, replaying a couple of minutes in a Starbucks parking lot as if somewhere in the replay I am going to find the moment I missed, the interaction I forgot, or something I did that would explain why a complete stranger decided I deserved to be treated the way he treated me.

I stopped at Starbucks on my way to work this morning. I had already ordered my coffee for in-store pickup, and because the parking lot was full, I pulled into the handicapped spot directly in front of the door. I was running in, grabbing a coffee that was already waiting for me, and getting back on the road. Before I got out of the car, I looked around because I always pay attention to my surroundings. A young Black guy who worked there was coming back from taking out the trash, and there was another person outside who I barely registered at the time. Looking back now, he’s more of a shadowy figure in my memory, and I believe that was the man.

What I know for sure is that there was no interaction between us. None. We didn’t speak. We didn’t exchange words or looks that I remember. There was no argument, no confrontation, no disagreement about where I parked, nothing at the door, nothing. I went inside, grabbed my coffee, put the sleeve on it, grabbed a straw, and walked back outside. I couldn’t have been inside for more than two minutes.

By the time I came out, the man had already walked past my car and was headed toward his vehicle on the other side of the parking lot. When I got to my car, there was a huge wad of spit on my window, still dripping down the glass. There was no mistaking what it was or convincing myself that maybe somebody had spilled something. Someone had spit on my window, it had just happened, and the only person outside had just walked past my car.

I looked at him and asked, “Dude, did you really just fucking spit on my window?”

He looked at me and laughed.

That laugh has stayed with me all day.

I don’t remember feeling afraid of him. I was pissed. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that this man had really spit on my car and then stood there laughing when I confronted him about it. Yet almost simultaneously, two very clear instructions came into my mind: Get in your car, and make sure he leaves before you do. I didn’t debate those instructions or question why I was having them. I got into my car, waited for him to leave, watched him turn right, and then I turned left. As I drove away, I kept watching to make sure he didn’t turn around and follow me.

It wasn’t until later that those instructions started bothering me almost as much as what he had done. I wasn’t scared, so why did something inside me immediately know that the safest thing to do was get behind a locked door, let him leave first, go in the opposite direction, and make sure he wasn’t following me? I think the answer is that fear and awareness are not necessarily the same thing. I didn’t have to be afraid of that man to understand that I didn’t know him, didn’t know why he had targeted me, didn’t know whether he was armed, didn’t know whether he wanted an escalation, and didn’t know whether spitting on my window was the beginning or the end of whatever hostility he had toward me.

And after all of that, I still had to go to work.

I think that detail matters because hindsight gives us all kinds of time that we don’t have while something is actually happening. Later, there are questions about surveillance footage, license plates, police reports, and all the things I could have done. In that parking lot, my mind wasn’t telling me to gather evidence. My instincts were telling me to get out of harm’s way, and the other reality was that I was on my way to work. I had a thirty-minute drive ahead of me and responsibilities waiting for me when I got there. I had no idea at that point that I wouldn’t be able to make it through my workday. I knew I needed to get safely away from that man and get to work, so that’s what I did.

For most of that thirty-minute drive, I replayed what had happened and kept coming back to the same question: What did I do? That question has hurt me more than I know how to explain because I kept searching for some missing interaction. My brain wanted there to be a reason. Did I look at him wrong? Had I done something without realizing it? Was there something at the door that I hadn’t noticed? Had I offended him somehow? Every time I went back through those couple of minutes, I came to the same answer. There was nothing. This man and I had absolutely no interaction before I walked outside and confronted him about spitting on my car.

So if I didn’t do anything to him, why did he believe he had the right to do that to me? Make it make sense. I have been trying to do exactly that all day, and I can’t.

I am 47 years old, and I have been a Black woman for every single one of those years. Racism, discrimination, and racial injustice are not new concepts in my life, nor is this the first time I have experienced them. I have watched someone’s enthusiasm about my qualifications change when the person who looked so good on paper walked into the room and he discovered she was a young Black woman. I have spent years navigating workplaces where I have had to wonder whether my directness, my confidence, my knowledge, my quietness, or simply being myself was being received differently because I am a Black woman. I know what it feels like to walk away from an experience questioning how much of what just happened was actually about me and how much was about the color of my skin.

But this was different. There was no résumé between us. There was no workplace. There was no conversation to dissect afterward, no tone of voice for him to misinterpret, no confidence to label intimidating, no personality to decide was too much or not enough. There was no decision made behind a closed door that left me wondering whether race had played a part in it. This man and I had not interacted at all.

Today, I experienced racism in a way I had never experienced it before. It was overt. It was degrading. It was personal. And when I confronted the man responsible for it, he laughed at me.

I don’t need to soften that or find a more comfortable way to say it. I don’t need to turn it into an “unpleasant encounter” with a stranger because that would make it easier for somebody else to digest. A white man who had no interaction with me deliberately spit on my vehicle, and when I confronted him about it, he looked at me and laughed.

He knew nothing about me. He didn’t know my name, my personality, my education, my career, my family, my heart, or anything else that makes me who I am. He didn’t know whether I was kind or mean, whether I had money or didn’t, whether I was somebody’s wife, mother, grandmother, sister, or friend. He knew absolutely nothing about the woman whose car he walked past, but he could see that I was a woman, he could see that I was Black, and he could see that I was alone.

And apparently, being Black was enough.

Make that make sense.

I wish I could say that once I got to work, I put it behind me and went on with my day, but that isn’t what happened. I walked into work still in shock and tried to do what I was supposed to do. I tried to concentrate. I tried to work. Instead, I found myself moving between anger, rage, sadness, disgust, and something I still haven’t figured out how to name. My eyes kept filling with these hot tears, and I honestly couldn’t tell which emotion they belonged to.

What happened this morning stirred something in me that I wasn’t prepared for because while racial discrimination isn’t new to me, this experience of it was. I have watched racism happen. I have experienced the ways racial bias can hide behind perceptions, decisions, opportunities, expectations, and judgments about who we are and how we carry ourselves. I’ve understood what it means to live in a world where being Black can affect how someone sees you before they ever truly know you.

But today there was nothing subtle to analyze afterward. Today it landed on my car window, still dripping when I walked outside.

And maybe the part I am struggling with most is realizing what my own mind knew before I had time to consciously process any of it. Get in the car. Let him leave first. Watch which direction he goes. Go the other way. Make sure he isn’t following you. Somewhere inside me was the knowledge that being angry and being right did not mean I was safe, and that I had no idea how far this stranger’s hostility toward me was willing to go.

There is something deeply unsettling about realizing that while I was still trying to understand why someone had spit on my car, another part of me was already calculating how to make sure I got away from him safely. He got to do something degrading, laugh, get into his vehicle, and drive away. I had to think about what might happen if the encounter escalated. I had to consider whether he might follow me. I had to make sure we went in opposite directions before I could even begin processing what had just happened.

Then I had to drive thirty minutes to work and try to be normal.

I couldn’t.

Eventually, I went home because I couldn’t concentrate and couldn’t stop being emotionally overwhelmed by what had happened. Hours later, I am still trying to understand why this has affected me as deeply as it has. I think part of it is the degradation. Part of it is his laughter. Part of it is experiencing racism in a form that was so open and personal that there was nowhere for my mind to put it except exactly where it belonged. And part of it is knowing that there may never be an answer to the question my mind has been asking since I drove away from that parking lot.

What did I do to deserve that?

Nothing.

I know that, and somehow that answer doesn’t make me feel better. In some ways, it makes it hurt more because there is no action I can examine, no misunderstanding I can correct, and no moment I can point to and say, “That’s where this went wrong.” I was simply there. I was a Black woman standing in a Starbucks parking lot, and another human being decided that I was someone he could degrade and laugh at afterward.

And again, I find myself trying to make something senseless make sense. Maybe that’s why my mind keeps replaying it. If I can find the missing moment, maybe I can find the explanation. If I can find the explanation, maybe I can understand it. But there is no missing moment. There is no interaction I forgot. There is nothing I can identify that suddenly makes his behavior logical.

I don’t have a lesson to pull from that today. I don’t have a neat conclusion about overcoming racism, turning pain into purpose, protecting the next person, or refusing to let hatred win. Maybe another day I will have something profound to say about it. Today isn’t that day.

Today I am angry. I am hurt. I am disgusted. I am still shocked, and sometimes my eyes still fill with tears before I even know which emotion brought them there. I am still replaying those couple of minutes, still hearing that laugh, and still trying to understand why my mind immediately knew that my safety mattered more than standing there demanding an answer from a man who had already shown me that my dignity meant nothing to him.

I’ve known what it feels like to question whether the color of my skin affected the way someone treated me. What I had never known before today was what it felt like to have racism come at me this openly, from a complete stranger who knew absolutely nothing else about me.

He didn’t have to know anything else.

He saw a Black woman.

And apparently, that was enough.

That is what happened to me today. That is what it stirred in me. And as much as my mind keeps searching those two minutes for an explanation, I still cannot make something senseless make sense.

Right now, I am not okay.