What will it take?
I can't get the sound of crying out of my ears- my own.
I can't get the shards of sanity to re-knit, my own and my country's.
I can't.
What will it take?
It's too soon to talk, too soon to decide, the edges of our reason are too sharp, too volatile.
It's too late to talk, too late to act, too hideously horrifyingly fucking late.
Why? The word, three little letters explode from my brain and pummel my consciousness over and over and over again.
Why not? A tiny cold and fatigued answer echoes in my head.
Why not?
Babies die every day, every where, every place deaths just as awful (as if the death of babies is ever not...awful).
We are a violent society, a sick society, we're acting out in very unnatural ways to a very unnatural life that we've embraced en masse, welcoming the cancer of our twisted visions of progress and rejoicing in the smothering of our spirits.
FIX IT! every fiber in my motherly being screams.
Fix it. Make it stop. Let me stop thinking about mothers who will never hold their children again, not just here and now but all those before and all who will come after. Let me stop thinking.
Let me never forget. The moments I stop thinking about it are followed by tidal waves of nauseous reminders, survivors' guilt, shame.
How? Another tiny word oozes like blood down my brow, gets in my eyes, burns and burns.
How did it happen? How did 'they' let it happen? Every person involved from the moment of that young man's birth-
How did our society fail him? How did we WE WE not see, not recognize how sick we are and how we contaminate everything and everyone with the sickness of us.
How did we fail his mother? How?
How?
How do we make sure it never happens again? Any where to any one. Ever.
Cold as ice the answer comes, hard as steel and sharp as glass...we can't.
Life is not pre-ordained or orderly. It's a messy, terrible, wonderful brilliant crap shoot. We are all tiny fragile specks whirling together alone on a microscopic rock plummeting through space.
So we can't.
But we CAN look at every aspect of this thing we call 'civilization' and figure out why the hell it's everything EXCEPT civil.
How the hell did we get here? What were we thinking? Why did we lose our humanity so eagerly, lemmings over a cliff we fall and fall.
It's a daunting and grueling proposition, and will mean everyone everywhere will have to be willing to listen more than talk, to give more than take, to offer much and demand nothing but...life.
Not "life as *I* want it" but "life with liberty and justice for ALL".
It involves so much more than placing a lethal yoke on all the teachers in the country, in the world, the same tools of death used to kill babies in an insane gesture of false safety.
More than collecting all the guns and destroying them- we are sick and the illness itself needs to be cured or we're just masking the symptoms.
More than re-evaluating everything from our unofficial but very real caste system, our stifling and violent religious dogmas, our brain-numbing technology, our family-destroying schedules in our quest to be 'successful people'.
More than the foods we eat and the air we breathe, the medicines we take to make us better when we're not ill, we're just human but our society no longer values that in a person.
We must, as an entire planet, STOP.
We must call in 'human' and not participate anymore in the madness.
Since Friday morning I've had chest pains. I go to bed early and rise late and rise exhausted and every muscle stiff and sore from not relaxing them even in fitful slumber.
I'm afraid.
I'm afraid that we can't do it.
I'm afraid of what would happen if we did do it.
Think of the societal breakdown, the people who would resist- cling to their old ways and ideals and beliefs, clutching their fiery totems ever closer as the flames engulfed them.
But we're already there- our culture gangrenous and rotting around us and we either do something NOW or die.
There are people (many people) who will say I'm overreacting. I'm upset. I'm over-wrought. This has been a trying few days, but...
What?
Exactly what will it take before We the People of the Planet Earth demand our humanity back?
Exactly how many children lying dead all over the world will it take?
We're soaked in their blood. All of us, soaked in their blood. And it burns.
More strength. Less force.
The time to be human is now.
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