There is a hidden violence in your hand when you turn the first page of a book,
and cover everything that came before that.
See, you can never trust a story.
A story never starts at the real beginning of things,
Is there ever enough paper in a book to hold a human being?
enough paper in a therapist’s filing cabinet to answer the question, “What’s wrong?”
When I was twelve, I scarred my memory by asking a sad boy a single question - “Why can’t you just be more happy?”
Ya Allah, Are there ever enough tears in my eyes to blur that memory?
Nameless seventh grade boy, I am so sorry.
He showed no anger, and knew that I would not understand, but still he said, “It doesn’t work like that”
Nameless boy, If I peeked into your records, your “patient history”, would I understand depression then?
Would the official explanation start your story from the time you were four and you thought you were the reason your parents were fighting so you walked out the door in the middle of the night?
Would your story start from the time you were six and you learned about global warming and could not stop crying, and fighting back with your own salty tides the rising of the oceans?
Would your story start from the time you were ten and you learned what global warming was doing to people, when you saw pictures of farmlands turned desert, skeletons in children’s sizes, and you stopped eating?
We see bad things on the news and we change the channel, pretend the voices of happy sitcoms can drown it out. But you let it seep in, and grow into you.
What is it about your sadness that made me so uncomfortable?
We see you mourning for the earth, for people you have never met and will never meet,
and we call it a pathology, give it a name like a disease,
instead of holding your shoulders as you cry and letting your tears baptize us.
I do not even remember your name,
but is it too late to say,
“I’m sorry. I understand, now.”
