None of this is fair
Why would you take the time to read this, and what would make you think about it, and even feel it? Because it is true and profound? Most likely!
All the love, respect, and shared feelings we send to one another remain crucified at the borders; suspended between sky and land, never reaching the shore where children desperately try to steal a moment of joy.
The only things that reach us each day are more death and cold misery. I know I’m not alone, yet I feel unbearably alone. I know, I know, but what does anyone truly know?
It is bitterly cold; a cold that deepens the pain and exposes every vulnerability.
I am stripped of humanity; unable to free myself enough to imagine warmth or human connection. Imprisoned in a vast, isolated, cold cell, far from the living. I feel nothing but cold and exhaustion. I love you, but I cannot come close to feeling your love or the warmth of your humanity. It is devastating that they managed to place us on a level somehow lower that what the world calls “human".
I am here, on the edge ofa cliff, distracted by genocide; unable to connect with anything that tries to reach me. Disconnected from the world. Disconnected from everything except my agony and pain. My pain is my people's pain. And I despise the day that might make me forget them.
Two years ago, our enemy called us "human animals," while humans worldwide recognized us as equals. Yet here we are, still surviving relentless inhumanity. It makes no sense for humans to lose, except for their failure to unite against a common enemy.
For hundreds of days, I have heard young men in the streets wishing to be killed instantly by a nuclear bomb; because the alternative is slower, crueler suffering.
We feel everything too deeply, but in ways no one should ever endure. Here, the cold devours babies alive. It pushes everyone closer to a freezing death.And there is no shame in admitting the truth: We are living proof that humanity is not equal; because there are angels, and there are devils.
My heart is frozen, and my blood is sick of me, and wishes to be spilled on the ground and dry. My mind is heavy with lost battles and trauma. My body both kills me and keeps me alive. My coffee is no longer more bitter than my existence; my life has become sorer than anything imaginable. How canI feel human, when I live at the mercy of the inhuman?
None of this is fair.
And it is an unbearable injustice that after a hundred years, I am still forced to write the same story.
"In these past months, when I prayed in that messy, stumbling way of mine, I asked to take any blow meant for you. And yet even that feels too easy. Not enough. So for you, I would offer everything I've ever been, everything I am now, everything I might become."
".., I would give every moment I've lived and every moment still waiting for me; every Song I've sung, every hope I've ever held, every heartbeat of these years.
I would give the sunsets over the sea, the quiet evenings and the ones filled with music, the taste of milk and cookies for breakfast at my grandmother's.
The jingle of keys when I came home late at night, and the soft sound of my father rising from the couch, waiting up for me, just as I turned the lock."
"I would give my first days of school, the Scent of autumn rain in my grandmother's garden, the endless summer afternoons spent studying under the grapevine shade, stealing grapes now and then - the taste of those grapes. I would give the day I met the gaze of my first love and smiled, his fingers threading through my hair the first evening he kissed me, the golden laughters in the sun with friends circling around us”.
"I would give the nights spent playing videogames, the ones sneaking into the male school to play pool, the long talks in the car while rain drummed on the windows, the smile of every person I've loved, the long silences and the even longer conversations. I would give whatever and whoever stitched my life together, whatever and whoever shattered it again and again. I would give any Christmas Eve, any birthday of mine, the roar of crowds in the Square with my fist raised high."
"..Days of sunlight, rain, snow; cotton caressing my skin in summer; soggy socks after sudden storms; hot chocolate warming my frozen hands.
I would give the nights when I collapsed with sleep, the ones when fear lay beside me breathing in the dark, keeping me awake, the first night I slept alone, the first night I didn't sleep alone, the nights of tears, the nights burning like fire”.
"I would give the cold mornings at the squatted clinic where I volunteered, when they tried to evict us; the afternoon shifts with patients bringing us home-cooked food; the laughter of my comrades when we had to become bricklayers/electricians/plumbers for a day because something had broken again. I would give the nights spent watching the stars from the balcony. I could forget all of this. I could forget everything to come. I could become someone anonymous, grey, emptied of every memory. If only, in return, you could finally be happy." - Chiara E Tonda
