Naivete, or just plain old Rage?

I’m siting in the dark facing a train yard. There’s a cat on my lap named for a Norse goddess, who makes a sound that would sound like gratefulness and contentment in any language.

Behind the screen I’m clicking my words onto, stands a rack, upon which are what can only objectively be described as two implements of death. A long one and a short one. I glance at them as i contemplate. The cat seems oblivious to them, and what they mean. 

Lately i’ve been coming to some realizations. Realizations that stem from a deep-seated discontent that has only been growing since I graduated. I take this as a good sign. It reminds me i still possess empathy, and an ability to break from the complacency that inevitably sets in. This helps me focus the rage.

In my frequent attempts at clairvoyance with respect to my own future, I inevitably turn my eye inwards, to my past. The truth stares back at me. I’ve been lucky. Incredibly lucky. Unfathomably lucky. I have parents that love and support me, who respect me enough in enabling me to choose my own destiny.

I have friends. More than I admit to myself when i’m trapped in one of my self-deprecating cycles. I live in relative luxury. I lay my head down in the evening with a full stomach and the absolute assurance that i will not wake to the staccato of splintering doorjambs and gunfire. I tune into the news of events far away, i realize, mentally regarding the things i hear as some kind of drama. A story. A fucking radio play i can tune into or tune out of at will.

Here’s where i’m going with this. 

The UN is considering MAYBE looking into the possibility of a binding resolution of some sort concerning Syria. They smudge rubber over their language at all times, lest they offend monsters. While they do this, people die. They die in fear and pain. 

In Afghanistan, there is a prison. For women. These women are jailed, beaten, abused, and perhaps murdered for the crime of disobedience. That, or simply being a victim. A woman is sentenced to hell for refusing to marry her rapist. Battery acid is thrown in a girl’s face for learning to read. And this isn’t even the Taliban. 

Kim Jong Il is still alive. Sipping on Hennessy on a sofa somewhere. 

Maybe today is special, maybe today is the day i happen to hear of these things back to back to BACK while i munch on a cheesesteak sandwich, rewarding myself for getting payed today. 

I stop, and wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. As i hear of the details of the prison, of the “customs” that enforce young, terrified women, or just girls, forced by their religion and their circumstances to commit themselves for life to a man who has irreparably scarred her, and countless others. I see monsters walking about in the daylight as i listen. My stomach further turns as i realize that these monsters stand justified in the eyes of their god. They are the righteous. They are the just. 

I feel so small as i regard the remains of the sandwich. I don’t feel like finishing it anymore. 

My mind’s eye entertains thoughts of blood and glory as i pedal home. Music pounds in my ears as i imagine what i could do to such men, and have no problem sleeping afterwards. My knuckles turn white and i shift gears and i wish beyond wishing that i had a ring. Or skin of steel. Or a fusion heart. or maybe just some fucking guts. I place myself as the hero of a story, righting such wrongs with a confident squeeze of a trigger or a grip. Or a knife. 

And yet again, I’m stopped by the fear, the cynicism, the…reality of it all.

“You’re being childish”, says my own voice.

Am I?

Or am I just all too sane? 

6 months ago  /  Notes