it's unreasonable to be upset about a tire.

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forgive us.

Dear ones, 

If you get a flat tire in a moment of acute violence in a part of the world that is far away but whose devastation you are implicated in— because your tax dollars fuel weapons and states and propaganda, because your tax dollars fuel genocide—it’s unreasonable to be upset about a tire. 

But I was upset about the tire, like toddler-meltdown-level of upset—(which is not at all surprising because some of the hardest things for me are driving and money and a deep, traumatized urge to be taken care of)—and I was driving on metal on the highway, smelling smoke, and also smelling gas because also my gas tank has been leaking, and I thought I might get hit by a speeding car as I slowed down to 50, then 45, and I am terrified of car accidents because obviously. And also my phone was dying because it’s so old that it doesn’t hold a charge anymore, and no one was there to help me, no partner no daddy and then, yes, eventually my mom helped (she is a true helper, always always helping), but in the meantime, I just wept and sobbed and felt so dysregulatedly sorry for myself. And it took hours, but finally I made it back home, and I went for a run and I did some gentle yoga and I cried some more, partly because it was a harrowing experience and partly because I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel bad at all. And then I just cried for dead moms and dads and babies and kiddos and for all the teenagers who have thrown rocks instead of bombs; and I cried for that fact that throwing rocks doesn’t work, hasn’t worked. I cried and cried and cried, and when P finally got home and held me and talked me out of the belief that I was about to go broke, I cried some more. 

There’s an Ilya Kaminsky poem that got shared a lot when Russia invaded Ukraine; it’s called “We Lived Happily During the War” and it starts with this: 

“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not 

Enough.” 

and it ends with this: 

“in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.” 

And I think about the poem every time I am awed by the color of the autumn leaves, every time I feel happy, I think ‘how dare I’, but maybe even more, every time I feel sad, I think how dare I?

The truth is, this psychic toll that anyone reading this must feel, this actual insane task to do normal life while a genocide is not just happening but being live-posted, is not, like, a thing that makes sense, and everything is going to feel bad in the midst of it. Feeling happy, feeling sad, feeling scared, feeling hope or despair, everything is blanketed by the energetic toll of massive grief. Massive as in mass, as in like the invisible emotion becomes a solid thing, and it’s a boulder now, a weight. Of course we are feeling heavy with it.

S wonders to me, in a voice note, if the bike accident that they still feel haunting their limbs might be relevant to thinking through oppression, how it lives in the body. I respond yes, yes of course, I think we have to not roll our eyes at the idea of trauma-informed resistance to mass violence. I think of Paulo Friere, frequently, but especially now when I consider the embodied generational harms in the soma of everyone involved: 

And: 

I am frustrated and sad about my car and absolutely thrilled about the leaves and truly gutted by the footage of this pain, somehow all at once. We lived happily, and depressed, and confused about how to navigate any of it during the war. Forgive us.

Do what you can. Read up, find groups, find a role that fits your skill set.  

I love you. 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading + Podcasts.