There is a thin veil of normalcy that covers the omnipresent realm of lunacy.
Normalcy is the everyday: I wake up, go to school, then to practice for an extracurricular, and go home to eat dinner and do homework. It’s mundane, but it’s constant, and little flickers of unexpected moments often punctuate this routine.
However, more often than not, I was accustomed to the spontaneous moments of the day being positive. A test grade that made me happy, or a laughter fit with a friend. This is what makes the translucent layer of my reality complete, cementing the memories of my adolescence.
Now, I never feel like this.
A glance at the news throws me into utter despair. I’m reminded that the world is so much bigger than my life, and I wonder if anything is significant when compared to genocide and occupation. I do what I can to help, making small donations and calling local politicians, but nothing feels like enough. I live here in privilege, spared from fear, but I still fear a developing immunity to events that should not be normal.
What if I were a 17-year-old girl in Gaza, lying broken on the ground, sobbing for a life and a family I once knew? What if I were a Minnesotan, living in fear of ruthless and destructive men who have no empathy? Every possibility feels incredibly distant. Only so much horror can be conveyed through a video until it’s standing right in front of your face.
I also know devastation, especially to this country, is nothing new. I know that stories of African-American and Indigenous murders are concealed by the media in a brutal ruse to convince White Americans that the United States has always been idyllic. In reality, we are built and born from blood. Only now does it feel unprecedented.
I am sick of it. The world will never be perfect because humans are angry and messy and terrible, but also full of love and compassion and beauty. When will we learn from our mistakes? When will we learn to face facts, to set aside bias and differences, to see that whoever we are, regardless of a criminal record, no one deserves to be murdered?
Lunacy and normalcy are now transposed—two photos taken on a single frame of film. There’s a version of myself from a year or two ago, wrapped up in a silver gleam, shimmering with the ghost of the unknown, and then there’s me in my current state, shivering without my blanket of magic and innocence. In this moment, I think I’m stuck somewhere in the middle—not wishing to go back, but wishing I knew how to move forward with what I know.
Nothing feels right.
For now, I will progress tentatively but with spirit all the same, spreading the word of history and present, hoping for a brighter tomorrow.
