Mar 2
My heart bleeds
I’m sure I feel like many people about this war, it is horrific, pointless and distressing. I look at the images of children dying and again wonder why? I feel strange going about my daily life, my children blissfully unaware of the evils the world holds. I read the politics and history, glean as much knowledge as I dare, wondering if we’re suddenly teetering on the abyss of nuclear war or whether that too is more mighty posturing.
I am those mothers, any mother across the world, trying to keep the children safe and fed, clothed and clean. Grinding through the daily chores and necessities. What good are my tears for their shattered lives? They do not heal, they do not create hope, they just are the pain in my heart for more lives lost. I cry as I have cried so many times, for so many people. The bombs keep falling.
Not long ago, I unpacked a box of mine from storage. Inside was my diary from when I was around 15 or 16, the same age as my stepdaughter now. The diary holds the newspaper clippings chronicling the near coup at the Kremlin in August 1991. History, and now not, the ghosts of the past creating new ghosts for the future.
I feel sick and aimless. The work that I was trying to get going feels wrong to pursue now. I can hear my Mum saying that we can only keep going with what is in front of us, yet it’s so, so hard. Our planet is such a beautiful wonder, and humanity is so full of good, creativity and innovation. I’ve never understood war, or racism, or hatred. I’ve been wronged, very wronged, and I know those feelings of anger. But to hate someone or a group of people so much that it consumes you and becomes a cause, this cannot be right.
It feels simplistic, naive maybe, to believe that people are inherently good, yet I do. I know there are shits around, although I believe this is largely caused by poverty, fear and despair. Capitalism in the global north has promoted individualism over community. We’ve lost so much by consuming everything. I read more tragedy and my viewpoint seems ever more faraway.
Behind the current safety of my laptop screen I hold hope and something unexplainable in equal measure. The unexplainable sense is a sort of mix of fear, shame, an inexplicable sense of oddness and doom. War has raged somewhere for my entire life, there has been no single day without trauma despite a charming and heroic attempt to try.
How I long for the human race to rise and fulfill its potential. One where we can talk to each other and agree to disagree, we see beyond borders, skin colour and contrived names for pieces of this Earth, where we create with and for each other. Imagine, what could we achieve then?
