Hello, boys and girls.
Well, I was doing pretty good there for a while, but the news just keeps getting worse and worse, and so do I. I feel like my heart is just a dead lump of meat in my chest, my mind keeps trying to run from the thoughts and images, but there’s nowhere to go – and the hardcore realist in me* knows that you shouldn’t even TRY to hide from these things.
I keep trying to tell myself that there are still beautiful things in the world – and there are, and that things will change – and they will, but the hope of their really being anything left worth changing and being beautiful for seems slimmer every day.
My girlfriends and I recently played a game where you have to “therapize” your friends. One of my “therapy” questions involved everyone in the group trying to assess, on a scale of 1-10, how ‘hopeful’ I am. I had to write down my answer and then they had to all discuss their opinions among themselves, decide on an answer, and then see if it matched mine. The highest they were able to give me was a ‘4’ (they wavered between ‘2’ and ‘4’ for a while). When they asked what my answer was and I said a ‘10’, they were all surprised, but then when I explained that if it were anything LESS than a ‘10’, I’d be dead by now.
Well, Mr. Bush and his gory campaign are causing my outlook to dim considerably. It seems now that investigations into the current administrations’ 9/11 dealings have uncovered one of our most intensely feared suspicions – that our national leader, the Father of our country – and his cabinet knew about the attacks before they happened and did nothing to stop them**. And here we are now in the midst of something that can never be taken back, that can only escalate into the kind of grisly world-wound that will inevitably destroy us all. Our country is torn apart, divided between the “conservative” folks who are supporting this insanity, and by the “liberal” folks who are feeling the way that I am. People say to me again and again that “War is necessary.” and though I will NEVER agree with that, not in this enlightened age, I can see how, in the past, we did have to fight for our freedom and the freedom of others. I do not believe that this is the case now, and many Americans feel this way. There is no excusing the senseless, thoughtless brutality and greed of this current administration
- WE are supposed to be the GOOD guys. I believe that there are a lot of soldiers over there trying their best to help the wounded and weary of those torn countries, some who really believe that this is the reason they were sent there, and hopefully are fulfilling their purpose. How terrible is it that their attempts at good works can be overshadowed by this latest round of horrors, that we have given the evil and greedy people of their country one more “excuse” to commit more horrors in the name of greed and power – just like our own greedy and evil leaders.

And when will it ever end? Who will make the first move toward peace. Neither of us.
That’s just not the way that leaders like ours do things. We will keep torturing and beheading and retaliating and striking until everyone is dead.
People are saying that this could go on indefinitely. That means that all our new babies could grow up in a world where this is in the news every day, or even worse, in a world where it is in the streets here, like it is over there.
How does one find hope in the face of that?

I know some of you will have some angry things to say to me over this, and that’s bad, but those of you who will write with sweet words of hope for a brighter tomorrow, well, those are the replies that I really dread, because at least when I get angry replies, I can say “You are deluded! Not me! This is destroying the world, and you are still trying to defend these bad people!” But when the kind and hopeful words come my way, my conscience won’t allow me to say the truth – what I believe to be the truth – to you, because someone needs to have hope, and some of you – most of you – have very good reasons to keep hoping. Like children.
Those children – your children (even those of you that I don’t know personally) are fast becoming my only reason for hanging on. Not out of hope for their future (I’m afraid that’s going to have to be your job, parents), but because I know that if this keeps up, they are going to need me.
Blue skies and warm water and good food and loving hands are wonderful, and are still available, at this point. But every day it gets harder for me to enjoy them knowing what’s happening to our soldiers and their people, to our country and our rights. I honestly hope that none of the rest of you feel this way. One of the things that I’ve discovered about fibromyalgics is that we are hypersensitive sensorially as well as emotionally. Hopefully, all of you are just tougher than I am. Part of me thinks that people (in general) shouldn’t be able to block any of this out, because maybe that’s part of the reason why it’s been allowed to go so far, and to continue; but part of me is glad that people (my specific people, beloved folks, mums and dads of all of our babies) are able to tune it out – to some degree – and carry on in the midst of all this horror.

I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping.
-s

*yes, believe it or not, Mike, there is one.
**and everyone said that we were just being paranoid. hm.