OLD HABITS DIE SCREAMING

It is 5.12am as I lie awake, thinking of Gaza and the horrific images I’ve seen and consumed of the genocide. I think of an ex-coworker from lululemon in Singapore, whom I was never super close to but whose words have usually pushed me onward. He said, “it’s not always going to be an easy time, so remember to be strong during the tough seasons.” In the past almost three years, I’ve definitely gone through bouts of homesickness and loneliness, severe anxiety whilst completing a seemingly insurmountable load of assignments near semestral deadlines, intense heartbreak during the ends of romantic relationships, but I cared, and I came out perhaps stronger on the other sides of all of those things. I became more independent, better at writing essays, a potentially more equipped partner for the next person I’d date. Now, I really don’t know what my next step is. Tens of thousands are dying, have died while I churn out another assignment that means nothing to me. Things are so meaningless it is the first time in my life I am taking antidepressants daily, as part of my supposedly regular routine. There is no worth in completing my education if it means I have left my humanity behind. I feel the same things as we all watch the horrors persist and our brains are further desensitized. Someone asks me if I think Taylor Swift is getting married this time. I do not care. I see seventy people have just died. Someone sends me a meme of a kitten. I love it and I laugh and I click the heart. I do not care. I have just seen a beheaded infant. My employers are asking me to do the things I’m paid to do, as if this report is worth more than the people that are dying. I do not care. I do not care. I do not care. My partner Garrett feels the pain of the world and wants to lessen it, he feels overwhelmed and crippled at how much pain there is. His default is sadness, while I default to anger and radicality. I want to bubble wrap all the people I care for while I go out and confront the madness. How dare you try to convince my loved ones, my sister and my partner and my best friend and all the people I care about, that there is something wrong with them for not wanting to work, for not wanting to go on, when there are people like Netanyahu giving orders for his army to do unspeakable inhumane things, and when those people in the army are going through real sickness and mass delusions and psychosis believing that they are in the right. I lie awake seething. While there are no true leaders on the side of the genocide, the revolution will be flooded with real leadership. We all just need to let ourselves be radicalized.