I feel sad. I feel sad because while I was jogging this evening, I ran past the corpse of a possum. Maybe it was the chemicals from exercise flooding my body but it triggered a flash of the corpse of my cat Hamish, who died two years ago, when I decided to put him down. This in turn triggered flashes of my other cat Harriet, when my mum and I put her down six months before Hamish, and then a vivid image of my mother, as she choked for air and her body failed, lying in a hospital bed, while I sat beside her knowing that I was watching death come. In two weeks it will have been two years since I watched her die, and it still hurts in a way that I can’t talk about because it feels too profound to put into words. As I write my throat burns, my eyes haze, and my breath shakes. And the only way I know that this is part of the process is because people who have been where I am now tell me so. What struck me was that this is life; that as we live, we must die. That is the only certainty. I lost my three closest friends because their lives ended as their bodies failed. No one was to blame. It was simply their time. But I also feel sad because I’m scared. I’m scared because all over the world, we are killing each other. I’m sad and scared right now because the pain I hold is being inflicted upon others for reasons I can’t possibly understand. Because even though life brings us pain, simply because we die, we are bringing each other pain because we are monsters. I hear about a war over holy land in which my peers simply point fingers and place blame instead of grieving the madness. I hear about a Nigerian militia who are killing innocent people and kidnapping girls, and I hear no one with any power trying to fix it. I hear about a plane shot down carrying people who have nothing to do with the war that killed them. I hear about our leaders choosing politics and money over the health of our planet. I am sad and scared because I don’t know what to do. I want the madness to end. My heart is so full of pain right now, and the only thing I know to do is to share an impotent rant on an internet forum. Life is full of so much pain and our selfishness and childishness make it so much worse. All I can think is that we’re pissing in our backyard and kicking up the grass in the name of pride and power, and one day we’ll walk outside and wonder why everything stinks and all the flowers are dead.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 10:24:52 +0000