the news shows bodies and we change the channel

estefaaano_writes 

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not because we don't care. because we care too much and caring without power is unbearable. because we can see the rubble, the smoke, the children covered in dust, the mothers wailing, the fathers carrying what's left, and we can feel the horror of it, the injustice, the wrongness, and still we cannot stop it.

the news shows bodies and we are supposed to choose sides.

as if war is a sports game. as if suffering has a team. as if we can root for one group of dead children over another. as if the geopolitics matter more than the fact that people are dying, that homes are being destroyed, that entire generations are being erased while we debate who started it, who's right, who deserves our sympathy.

the news shows bodies and calls it collateral damage.

calls it necessary. calls it strategy. gives it a decent language to make it sound less like murder. precision strikes. targeted operations. acceptable losses. as if there is an acceptable number of dead civilians. as if some deaths matter less because of where they were born, what language they speak, what God they pray to.

the news shows bodies and tells us this is how it's always been.

that war is human nature. that violence is inevitable. that peace is naive. that the strong survive and the weak perish and this is just the way of the world. and we are supposed to accept this. supposed to shrug and say, what can you do, and go back to our lives while other people's lives are ending.

the news shows bodies and we feel helpless.

because what are we supposed to do? protest? post? donate? none of it feels like enough. none of it stops the bombs. none of it brings back the dead. we are watching atrocities in real time on our phones and we are powerless to stop them and the powerlessness is its own kind of violence.

the news shows bodies and sanitizes them.

blurs the blood. cuts away before the worst parts. gives us the version that's palatable, digestible, safe for broadcast. but we know what's behind the blur. we know what they're not showing us. we know the bodies are not clean. we know the children are not sleeping. we know the destruction is total.

the news shows bodies and makes it political.

makes it about oil, about borders, about power, about money. makes it about everything except what it is, which is people killing people because people have been killing people for thousands of years and we still haven't learned how to stop. makes it complicated when it's simple. war is wrong. killing is wrong. there is no justified genocide. there is no acceptable massacre.

the news shows bodies and we grow numb.

because how many bodies can you see before they stop looking like people? how many dead children can you witness before you stop crying? how many cities can you watch crumble before you stop feeling anything at all? we are being desensitized in real time. we are learning to look away. we are learning to survive the knowledge of horror by pretending it isn't real.

the news shows bodies and life goes on.

we go to work. we make dinner. we watch television. we laugh at jokes. we celebrate birthdays. we live our small lives while other people are dying and the dissonance of it, the guilt of it, the sheer absurdity of it, sits in our chests like a stone we cannot dislodge.

the news shows bodies and we say never again.

we said it after the last war. and the war before that. and the war before that. we built memorials. we wrote histories. we promised to remember. we promised to learn. and then did it again. and again. and again. because never again means nothing when the people in power profit from war, when weapons are commodities, when violence is policy.

the news shows bodies and i don't know what to do with this information.

i don't know how to hold it. i don't know how to metabolize the fact that people are being slaughtered while i eat my meals. i don't know how to reconcile my safety with their suffering. i don't know how to be a person in a world where this is normal, where this is constant, where this is everywhere all the time and we are all just supposed to keep going.

the news shows bodies and we are still here.

and i don't know if that's triumph or failure. i don't know if surviving the knowledge makes us witnesses or accomplices. i don't know if bearing witness is enough or if it's nothing at all.

the news shows bodies and we change the channel.

and somewhere, someone is dying. and we are alive. and I don't know what to do with that.