Or at least I feel like that.
You know this moment when you suddenly realise the pain of someone else's? Or of the group of people? When you start to feel the fraction of what they go through? You not only know that it's "relatively speaking wrong to rape" because Bible/law/parents say so but you DO understand now that the suffering the gang-raped Indian girl will either cause her to die in few days after or to struggle for the rest of her life with shame, a label and PTSD. The psychological harm was so big, that she will never have a normal life.
Or how about the children from central Africa kidnapped by LRA? Sometimes I get this impression (I so WISH I was wrong here) that most of the people just read you about them and think "Such a bad people" but then immediately forget and proceed to watch random cat memes and funny YT videos. But imagine yourself kidnapped by the militant group that after killing your parents in front of you, is now forcing you to kill people and to do exact the same thing because of which you now suffer. And they are using the power of coerce to make you actually do it. You want to stop but you won't. There is no way out. You will kill and kidnap and you will be beaten and tortured if you won't do it. If you escape, people from the outside will kill you anyway for being one of LRA and you know that you do not deserve anything better than that. Or imagine that your child was kidnapped by LRA, you will never seen your beloved one ever again but you can be sure that if he is not dead now, he will suffer and cause the suffering to others. Damn, I don't know how it is to be a mother but this makes me grieving.
Or imagine that you are in a village somewhere in Afghanistan and one day the army comes and kills off everyone and destroys everything. No, don't just say "killing is wrong". Think about your family. Your mother, father, brothers, sisters. Imagine yourselves having a good time, maybe eating a dinner. Suddenly someone slams the door and you can see exactly how one of the four is first pointing the gun at your father before pushing the trigger and then, before you even make it to scream "NOOOOOOOOO" there is a big red hole in his forehead. And then they do the same with each of you. And now remember that what you just felt reading this is only a small FRACTION of what the real characters of this story are feeling. The fear and pain and helplessness are incomparable.
Or imagine...
I can go on and on but if you've never had this moment of realisation, my writing will never tell you anything and if you have had, you don't need me to continue.
My first moment of realisation was a couple of years ago. But no one seemed to care, no one seemed to feel the same so I was sure that what I feel is just a part of the childhood and will simply pass away as I will mature.
It never did. At the age of 20 (almost 21 now) I feel as strong about the suffering of others' as I felt then, even stronger. When I think about that injustice and pain and loneliness and fear and hopelessness... I'm almost in the suicidal mood. And even when I don't think about it (as is the most of the time, obviously) sometimes I have those flashbacks that are leaving me feeling so sad and mourning after those who are in those situations.
I never invite the flashbacks but I don't block them either. Somehow it feels right to have them. Or rather it feels terrible to have no compassion seeing all of these. What the monster would I have to be to stay calm, knowing. Or, somehow, it seems to be a gift from God, a fraction of his perspective and in the same time a fraction of the human perspective of those who go through all of this s%&#.
And then, when you've realised that pain, you have also realised that what happened to all of those people was not a hurricane. People did it. Those who are capable of love and empathy and loneliness took their guns and decided to harm another person. But then you also know, that if they are so screwed up in their minds to do something like that, they have their own baggage of pain on their backs. Someone has harmed them too. You see this avalanche of pain and weeping and fear and somehow now you understand that the biblical flood and execution of Sodom was not only a punishment - it was a merciful euthanasia too. And the same as me now, God of the Bible (if you don't believe in his existence, the same apply to him as a fictional character) couldn't stand watching all of this suffering and decided to end it.
I wished I could do the same or that the Apocalypse started tomorrow to end all of this pain. Oh, God, I pray...
But, you know, there is hope. While I only started writing this, one of my old friends (who two years ago claimed that vegetarianism is stupid and that he doesn't care what he eats as long as it's tasty) has sent me a link to a YT video promoting vegetarianism. Something is changing for good. Also InvisibleChildren is making a constant progress year after year (
invisiblechildren.com/night/ ). Or at least it looks like that. Or you have more and more people who offer not even 10% of their incomes but 50% to the charities and if you want to do the same here may be a good place to start:
www.givewell.org/ .
But the suffering will always be somewhere there, if it's not because of war in the Middle East it's because of the bullies in our own society. And I will always have my flashbacks but it's ok as long, as there is no red button that could switch off all the pain and injustice in the world.
I had one of my flashbacks today. I don't even know if I should call them this way, since they do not relate to what happened in my past but rather to what's happening now to other people. And they are not really flashback because I am still capable of doing everything as usual. And the sad thing is that there is no way I can fix the situation, I'm not a superhero, I cannot save the world. I have made a few attempts to share my pain with others (not literally) and as I couldn't put it into simple words I decided to write about it a more complex thing (some of them are here:
astazja.deviantart.com/art/Mec… astazja.deviantart.com/art/Naz… astazja.deviantart.com/art/Cos… all in Polish) but I don't think I was understood. I don't think I understood why am I writing about pain. I was focused on myself when I was writing even though the feeling was triggered by sadness of the people I have only heard about.
I wished I could show my feelings and all this helplessness but there is no way, other than the actual killing myself as a proper expression of mourning. But that would help no one. And also I don't really want to die.
I wish I could express myself.