A Break
A Return to Reality
I needed a break. In some aspects, we all do. Reality is ugly, angry, terrifying, and all-together unpleasant. Returning to it after the break I needed only puts all of that ugliness into sharper perspective. This is not the world I want to see, the world I want to experience. June is a month of celebration: dads, grads, pride, flags, rain-forests – even onions! But, sadly, that isn’t what I see.
What I’m expressing here is raw and open, like a wound that won’t close. How did we get to this point?
A Pandemic
We began the year with a brush fire in Australia that quickly burned through the entire globe as one awful event after another. The pandemic we are seeing is not just one of microorganisms, but one of humanity as a whole. It is a pandemic of ugliness towards our Earth and each other. We have seen death-tolls rise, not only from a virus but from anger, hate, and war.
We have been told all our lives that the pandemic that will wipe out humanity would show itself in the form of shuffling undead with decaying faces. We would hide in our homes or flee to safer pastures while the most stalwart braved the throngs of horrors waiting to destroy us all.
Hollywood wasn’t too far off the mark from what I’ve seen. No, there are no undead, but I see just as much horror, just as many hideous faces reaching out to bring down what little is left of the good, the pure, and the innocent. I’ve come to realize in my return to this horrible reality that we are the pandemic.
Social Media
The plague in which we exist spreads mostly from social media outlets. It is the hub of the universe. What we read and see is what we now take as gospel. When I took my break, I unplugged. I rarely, if ever, looked at my Facebook (mostly for news) and left the others entirely alone. The news I saw only enforced my need to look away, to pretend – even if just for a small minute – that none of it existed. It isn’t a platform to share thoughts and pictures anymore, but a platform to scream and yell, to air grievances that are both legitimate and imagined.
I see Pride. I see BlackLivesMatter. I see slanderous things against the police, and more stupidity from the one person who should be leading in this time of struggle and heartache. I see pictures of new mothers afraid for their children, of people starting new lives, or saying goodbye to old ones with heaviness on their faces. I see friends worrying for each other while, at the same time, many show their true colors and turn on those they claimed to support.
Yet, while I hid, I saw none of it. My heart was not weighed down by these things. But ignorance is not bliss.
Pride
The word ‘pride’ has become rather inflammatory recently. It is not just LGBTQ+ Pride, but Pride for the color of your skin, for the choices made to be the individual you want to be, or Pride in those who fight and stand proud in their own skin no matter what that may be.
I have purposely not mentioned anything relating to the incident with George Floyd. That horror will forever be branded on my memory.
I am a person of color though I do not look it. Two of my four children show their nationality in their appearance. I carry much the same fear as other mothers carry. I don’t want to see the day they are mistreated because of their appearance.
Yet, at the same time, I stand with the police that do their jobs day in and day out, to protect the innocent of the cities in which they live and work. My uncle retired from the sheriff’s department in CA, and my cousin still stands with them. I have dear friends who are police officers, all good and honest people that would lay their lives down for anyone.
The intent of Pride month is overshadowed by so much hate while also adding to it. I am bisexual. I am the oddball. I generally opt to remain mostly silent. Why? For the very same reasons the news channels now have endless fodder on which to report.
Peace
The world doesn’t need more anger. It doesn’t need anymore shouting or destruction; no more death at the hands of each other or the ones that should be defending us.
No more.
It needs to end.
We all have our thoughts. Our hearts are heavy. Everything we say is twisted into something else and lobbed back at us like a cannonball.
Stop.
Breathe.
Look at your fellow man and be glad they have the ability to form opinions even if they are different from your own.
Accept.
I’m not asking for love. That is reaching too far. I’m asking for acceptance.
We can’t achieve change if we do not first accept our differences, accept our flaws and faults, accept that we are 100% imperfect beings. Things will never be equal. Things will never be perfect.
So, breathe. Or there won’t be anything left for the future.
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