They Said Never Again
I don’t even know that I can write cogently. I don’t know that I can string words and thoughts together in any way that makes sense to me much less to any of you.
I am a writer and I need to write. I also am a human and I need to breath. Something that has never come easily to me. I forget to breath. I miss breaths. Sometimes I talk so much I forget to take them. Sometimes I fall into such despair I don’t bother to take them. I’m not breathing much this week.
I don’t remember a time in my sixty-three years of life where I felt what I do today.
Talking about the last two plus years seems trite.
How much more is going to be thrown at us?
It started in November of 2016. And we had to suffer through the monster in the White House. We were then hit in the face with the plague, most recent figures we’re nearing close to a million Americans – dead.
We’ve all lost friends, co-workers, family members. I don’t know of anyone within ten years of my age in either direction who has not lost a parent.
But we trundled on. Jobs lost. Lives shattered. Plans put on hold or just erased. Memorials for the dead not even addressed.
We’ve had two years of VAX tease. You got both – you can live a normal life. Well, not so fast. Booster, ready set, eat inside. Well, not so fast there is this thing called Omicron and that might get you harder and it breaks through your Moderna barrier.
Though the stock market went up. Until it didn’t.
Then of course we had the insurrection. A high moment in American history. Still not punished.
But nothing compares with what we are living through now. NOTHING. I woke up today and all I could see was that 40 mile convoy snaking through the Ukraine.
I’ve been alive for everything since 1958. I am not old enough to remember the Cuban Missile crisis. And the Viet Nam war kind of breezed by me. I was too young. It was not nearby. Kids were protected from those things. At least middle-class kids in Southern California.
I do remember having to dive under my desks in case the Russians dropped the big one. The Russians and the big one were always out there. The big one was a drop away, or so we were told.
Not sure what good a third grader’s plywood desk would have done had it been dropped, but every few months under our desks we dove, just to make sure we knew the drill.
There is something about what is happening now that defies imagination. At least mine.
I don’t know if I am so over stimulated by the built up cortisol that has been cursing through me for the last two years that the road from ok to enraged was shorter than I thought. But this has taken whatever equilibrium I’ve managed to hold onto and thrown it out the window.
I slam people on Instagram for not being serious. For showing off their holidays. Really. You’re on vacation? You can do that while this is going on? OK, if you are then shut up about it.
I don’t want to see your beach trip, your pedicure, your skis, your first-class cabin – I don’t want to see one single braggy thing. If you are just living your best life, then keep it to yourself. Please. Do the world a favor.
The Ukraine – a place I have spent little time thinking about. Now that I see the photos, I ask why didn’t we go. It’s so spellbindingly pretty.
Like many Jews I have relatives who were born there. Not distant ones either, great- grandparents.
But it took this newly instigated atrocity to ignite me, to enrage me, to sadden me as if there was a death in my immediate family. It’s horrifying beyond comprehension. But there have been a lot of horrifying things I’ve seen in my lifetime.
This is as we know, the first invasion of a European country since World War II.
I keep asking if we said “Never Again,” how are we sitting by in relative silence? It’s again. They’re doing it again.
I know the bomb. Well, let’s have some balls here. I have a more substantial desk now, we need to protect these poor people.
I know Biden wants to keep the cost of oil down. Oil the world’s malevolent ruler. The shit we do for oil. The lives we’ve lost for oil. The countries we have defended for oil. Other countries we’ve invaded for oil. The murderous behavior we turn our backs on – all for oil.
I feel sorry for what we did to the Afghanis, but let’s’ face it , they asked for part of it. And we stayed there for 20 years. And they wouldn’t even defend themselves.
There are Ukranian grandmothers armed with Molotov cocktails convinced they can hold back the “Russian Shits.”
Have we ever seen such a display of pride of country and sheer guts? I haven’t.
And we won’t even shut off the air space for the Ukrainians.
Peaceful Ukrainians, who just want to live their lives.
Our nervous systems are on such overload. I truly think this was the last straw. It was for me. My anxiety disorder is so out of order now I can’t even describe it.
And my response is what my response has always been to chaos and what I perceive to be abuse to others, I want to help. I want to go to Poland and serve meals.
I signed up for Jose Andres World Food Kitchen but the only place they will send me is Puerto Rico.
I don’t want to go to Puerto Rico now. I want to go to the front of this war and help. It’s likely madness and there is no way I can pull it off. I can’t even get there. But it’s the only thing that will make me feel like I am making a difference.
Sure, I sent money. I am sponsoring three Ukrainian families. Yet that feels like nothing.
I cannot watch this barbaric Soviet behavior.
It’s Hitler and we are letting him march into Poland.
As a Jew, as a global citizen, as an overly sensitive human and as someone who never thought I would see this their lifetime it’s truly unbearable.
And what can we do? What?
They said never again.
It’s again. It’s again. It’s again.
