Sumar Sleem - "It's been a year"

One year now…

It’s been a year already and I still cannot shake this feeling of bitterness inside. I still try to blink a few times, maybe I come to a different realization, or maybe this reality will sink in at last, but still…it feels like an illusion, a bad dream that I still hope I will wake up and brush off…but it’s not.

Such a hard never ending moment when I feel I’m freezing in time and running out of it. I have no explanation for it. Is it pain? Is it despair? Is it numbness?

Still, I don’t want to reach that phase when this feeling will fade away, because for me, it will be the time that I will cease sensing things around, or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit and assuming that I have some lost sense of sensibility toward my surroundings.

I really have good intentions to pray more, to be there more and to do more but I epically fail all facing the amount of pain around. I feel as if I am silently drowning under waves of emotions when the storm hits and the ship fails to sail to shore, no screaming, no nothing, just surrender out of helplessness.

Much has happened during this year. I know that life is not the same anymore and I can still smell death in the air. I see fear becoming the new identity and dread undeclared the new pandemic.

But then who am I to judge? Who am I to proclaim I can see the unseen? Maybe I’m just another blind person trying to lead the blind, maybe I’m too deaf to hear the truth or maybe I’m too distracted with my self-righteousness that I lost sense of discernment. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s one year now and life has never been the same again. Life is life they say but what if I have my own understanding of this say? What if it means something else and I’m missing out on life post-war?

Driving down the streets, I start wondering what emotions are taking over the people standing as shadows of themselves, or walking dead, or fighting for no real reason but pride and anger. I reach a crossroad and see someone rushing to cross first in a suicidal mission, making it look like a small victory over the evil. Small wins matter after all, they build up stamina and push to move forward, God only knows where. So much daily nonsense, so much arguing just to argue and so much proving a point when there’s no point to be made, just to feel like living rather than merely existing.

It’s as painful and ironic as it can be to listen to both sides complaining about each others’ approaches, blaming them for all the bad decisions and recounting the tails of their wrongdoings. Neither bother to listen to the other, because they know God is on their side, not the other people's side.

I, as well, come up with my conclusions. One is that this is an ongoing tragedy for centuries now where sides are stuck proving themselves right and the others wrong, justifying every action and reaction of theirs and deeming themselves the executioners of God on earth. I am no better person than them when I choose the illusion that I am any different or that I see things differently. This is the moment when I realize one more time what a miserable creature I must be, giving a good impression. Better sustain my villain image where my life was deemed and my soul was saved, maybe then, I will stand a chance.

I imagine God the Father looking from above and sighing in grief, I imagine Christ agonizing on the Cross and the Holy Spirit leaving human temples not by choice. I imagine the Church growing over time, stumbling and maturing. I imagine men and women of God struggling when realizing they cannot do much because provocation always hadleverage over conscience.

One war is over and another starts, people come and people go and I watch one year gone by when the life I knew was gone and never back.