How to fight the sadness and fear that only comes afterwards??
Here's the insiduous, sinister thing about terrorism: It works even if it doesn't personally shatter you by darkening the world just a little bit, unsettling you before you have a chance to steel yourself. And when you feel like that, beautiful things do not lift you, they just wound. Smiles pinch. A beautiful day, a beautiful store, your mother buying duppattas, a little boy running around (God, I so want a child. God, I am so NOT having one - how do you protect and raise it in a world such as this?!). All these sights and sounds strip away that silly defiant veneer of rage and you feel naked and sad and utterly exposed. The world was shaken just a little bit and your insides rocked as well.
**********
While it was all going on, I was defiantly happy. I felt that they could not would not should not take away our lives and joy and capacity to trust and love and jump and scream and be silly, be creative, take risks, love fearlessly, travel fearlessly, learn about the world, love the world, fly.
I still feel this way.
But today, standing with my mother in the store, I was dismantled completely for a minute and thought I'd burst into tears. For no reason. Just.
You see, a necklace did it.
I was standing next to the counter and a stream of glass beads captured the grey blue light of a pre-rain sky. And they clinked gently against each other in the breeze of an opening door and they swayed when I touched them and their light changed; grey, blue, grey, blue, grey, grey, blue, blue, blue, green, blue.
And I forgot to fuel my smile, I was distracted.
And when they stopped swaying, I got a glimpse of my insides before the steel smile came back up. I saw broken glass and grenades and shrapnel and splinter wounds and stress fractures and gunshots and torn curtains and ripped hearts and uneaten meals and days and days and days of some people just seeing grey grey grey blue blue blue.
Still. They're not getting one tear out of me. Yet. Until another necklace or another friend or another bomb dismantles me.
Here's the insiduous, sinister thing about terrorism: It works even if it doesn't personally shatter you by darkening the world just a little bit, unsettling you before you have a chance to steel yourself. And when you feel like that, beautiful things do not lift you, they just wound. Smiles pinch. A beautiful day, a beautiful store, your mother buying duppattas, a little boy running around (God, I so want a child. God, I am so NOT having one - how do you protect and raise it in a world such as this?!). All these sights and sounds strip away that silly defiant veneer of rage and you feel naked and sad and utterly exposed. The world was shaken just a little bit and your insides rocked as well.
**********
While it was all going on, I was defiantly happy. I felt that they could not would not should not take away our lives and joy and capacity to trust and love and jump and scream and be silly, be creative, take risks, love fearlessly, travel fearlessly, learn about the world, love the world, fly.
I still feel this way.
But today, standing with my mother in the store, I was dismantled completely for a minute and thought I'd burst into tears. For no reason. Just.
You see, a necklace did it.
I was standing next to the counter and a stream of glass beads captured the grey blue light of a pre-rain sky. And they clinked gently against each other in the breeze of an opening door and they swayed when I touched them and their light changed; grey, blue, grey, blue, grey, grey, blue, blue, blue, green, blue.
And I forgot to fuel my smile, I was distracted.
And when they stopped swaying, I got a glimpse of my insides before the steel smile came back up. I saw broken glass and grenades and shrapnel and splinter wounds and stress fractures and gunshots and torn curtains and ripped hearts and uneaten meals and days and days and days of some people just seeing grey grey grey blue blue blue.
Still. They're not getting one tear out of me. Yet. Until another necklace or another friend or another bomb dismantles me.
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