“It’s not that I am choosing to pretend it’s not happening,” I told my Someone.  There’s more war.  People are dead.  Headlines are flashing.  I am aware that I live in the privilege of opening my front door without being gunned down.  I am aware of my general state of fearlessness.  Don’t look away, my friends are saying.  This is really happening.

The problem with this, is that I know that it is.  The problem is, my brain is on a constant circuit that somebody somewhere is unjustly folding in front of someone more malicious, more powerful, less good than themselves.

These days, it seems close to my turn.

I’m not hiding out pretending it’s not happening.  I am working to recover all of this waste of human life.  I am trying to do a good job.  To hope.  To write.  To help.  And the more stories I hear, the more I want to give up– the more I believe that it all doesn’t matter.  Go to help, and I will die.  Go about my life, and I am not trying.  Make something beautiful for the people around me, and still there are people dying.  I am lost inside words like Russia and genocide and terrorism and death count.

“Death is a hungry monster,” I say to my Someone.

“Yes,” he says, “but we all get eaten.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “but where is the belly?  I am just trying to find out where we all end up in the belly.”