On suffering

I haven’t written since October 7th.

For so many people around the world, that day is significant.

For others, especially here in the United States, I fear, it was just another day.

Because I am in the former group, as the days went by, I increasingly felt unable to write. How could I write a book review or elusively complain about my problems when so many innocent civilians – many of whom are children – were being killed?

And yet, I am here.

I don’t feel like a full person — myself — when I’m not writing. I have written in my journal, of course. But as someone who likes to call herself a writer — albeit selectively — I feel somewhat reluctant to use the label if there’s not at least something I can point to others to read, even if I end up rarely sharing it with people I know.

And here I am, feeling unable to put down in words what I wish I could write and what I think I should write.

Maybe it’s best left for my journal.

Do people really need to know how I feel? No, of course not. But what is needed is for every human person to feel acknowledged for the pain they are suffering. We all suffer. Some people suffer literally with their lives, which is what is happening in Palestine right now.

But even those who have a roof over their heads, food in a working fridge, and some semblance of a family, they too can be suffering in their own way.

To deny my own pain because others have it worse does not necessarily mean I am doing something positive with my blessings. If anything, it may even lead to doom-scrolling, which in the past week it has, because it’s easier. Let’s just face it. It is easier.

But today, I allowed myself to be vulnerable in a way I didn’t expect I would be.

I have these carpe diem moments occasionally, where I find myself in unique situations that I may not ever be in again, so I do things that scare the heck out of me. I think that’s what happened when I sang “May it Be” in 2004 for my high school pops concert even though I have stage fright, when I decided to stand up on my paddle board when I was in Miami in 2016 even though I don’t know how to swim, when I decided that I too would go horse-back riding in Dallas in 2022 even though there were a number of others who were just as scared as I was and stayed behind, when I decided to go paragliding this past year even though I’m afraid of heights…

Today, I let myself cry on camera in front of a bunch of women I’ve never met before. I ain’t talking a few tears. I’m talking bawling my face out, eyes getting all red and puffy, nose getting all stuffed you’d think I had a cold.

Because I needed it, and also, because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be in a group like this again, with a bunch of women who know exactly the pain I am feeling, the grief I am still processing, either because they’ve been there themselves or are currently going through it. For those few minutes, I felt community in a way I haven’t in a really long time.

And while it does feel a bit discordant to spend time feeling my own pain while the pain of my fellow brothers and sisters in Palestine is so much worse, if I can get to a better place myself — which I must do, because I have the tools and support within reach, even if it’s a little uncomfortable, I’ll actually be in a better position to do something for them, whatever little it may be, knowing ultimately that my own suffering and theirs is not going unnoticed by al-Hakim.