cooler heads prevail
Well, that was intemperate. I am sorry.
[I have edited out some chunks here to avoid hurting peoples’ feelings pointlessly.]
A great deal of my anger is survivor guilt. I got away by the skin of my teeth. I came within a hairsbreadth of jumping under a train (a horrible, unkind way to kill youself. Think of the driver. Don’t do it.) But when I left I left behind a lot of people I cared about, to fates I can’t imagine.
I tell myself I was only a teenage girl, but that’s cold comfort. I knew right from wrong. I could have done more. I should have done more.
The rest of my anger is raw grief. Patriarchies eat their sons as well as their daughters. When the strong prey on the weak, the weak prey on the weaker. A mother shakes her baby son to death. That little body in the tartan suitcase, that heartbreakingly beautiful face; that child was our future. We should have died rather than let anything happen to him.
What is the matter with us?
