Unwritten Responses.

I’ve been online long enough to understand that there’s no real value for me to engage with someone who reads a headline like “Cancer Patient Reunited with Father Detained by ICE” and reflexively pushes the “laugh” react. There is no value for me to reply to someone who expresses further ongoing donkey guffaws at every comment that shows any sympathy.

The highest likelihood is that this person is either deeply, emotionally invested in their cult of cruelty, is being paid by a foreign troll farming enterprise, or is in fact a semi-sophisticated, relentless chunk of programming code rather than a human being at all.

But if you were none of the above.

And I cared enough about you to spare the effort.

I might say how much I pity you.

To go through life so terrified. Afraid of landscapers and contractors, afraid of housekeepers and caregivers, afraid of fishermen thousands of miles away who you have never met, afraid of a language that surrounds you and that you have used in fragments every day but that you choose to remain ignorant of understanding.

Afraid of individuals who dress in ways you wouldn’t and who experience love and friendship in ways you can’t. Afraid of those who perceive the known universe and believe in the unknown universe differently than you.

And moreso than any of those fears, you are afraid that you might be wrong to have them. You are so afraid of this possibility that when men in suits and women in too much makeup stare directly into the camera and assure you that everyone you are afraid of is a monster you are only too ready to believe them. You are excited to give them whatever power they ask for to protect you from the devils they have invented and the demons of your own anxiety. You will witness brutality done to innocent people and convince yourself it was necessary until your psyche can no longer manage even that, and then you will convince yourself that what you saw must not have happened at all.

You are afraid that you might be a bad person for allowing, for demanding, for facilitating, for applauding that these events occur.

Which is the only thing you should actually be afraid of.

Because it’s the only thing that’s true.