Teentakes

The world is on fire and I don’t know which way to look first. Wherever I look, I see destruction, chaos, injustice, power beyond consequences and just general collapse of this planet as we know it. Now, I don’t want to appear pessimistic but I don’t know how else to say this or how to even begin fixing this. I am alive at a time when the world is bracing itself for a world war. I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to help. Heck, if by some miracle I survive it, I wouldn’t even know how to rebuild civilization. I can’t even start a fire, let alone rebuild humanity.

I’m seeing genocide, an ecocide and a femicide being broadcasted to me live and all at once. I open my phone to randomly scroll through reels because I am privileged enough to afford distraction. But as I open social media, I am met with images of children in body bags. I scroll. Of Gaza reduced to rubble. I scroll. Of the streets of El Fasher: where bloodstains are visible from space. I scroll.  Of the children in Congo working in Cobalt mines. I turn it off. The feeling of my planet being destroyed. My own country, my own city experiencing floods and heat waves previously unheard of. But the biggest problems of the people who are meant to help are busy questioning and critiquing women. Uselessly and constantly. What do I do?

Who do I question first? The government of Israel for raining hell upon Gaza? Or the protectors of human rights for allowing all this to happen? Do I question the UAE for chocking Sudan for gold? Or do I question everyone buying a new iPhone every two years? Do I blame the billionaire and billion dollar companies for slowly poisoning our planet? Or should I question the consumerism that has plagued our world? Or should I question mankind as to why hating feminism is their solution to everything… Or maybe, I should question the people including myself for letting all of this happen?

What do I do? I ask myself this a lot these days. The truth is, I’m at a loss for answers. Whatever I do seems so small. I saw a line in a TV show somewhere that we can’t change the entire world, but we can change our own little corner of it. But my world is tiny and huge all at once. So I choose make a conscious choice, to help with the problems I can see in front of me, not just on my mobile.

 I see a little child, dressed in a tin costume, her hair and outfit sprayed golden, sitting still as a statue on a chilly road corner as people around her shop away. The only people who stop are men, whispering things in her ears that make her want to pull away, but how could she? She’s supposed to be a tin statue, sitting there so people put spare change in her tiny cup. How do I help those like her? I see streets filled with trash. I can clean one, I can clean two, but how do I fix the drainage systems of entire cities? I see people around me worshipping and defending pedophiles as they bomb little school girls . What do I do? So when I get too tired of all this, I sit quietly and feel the fire burn the edges of my mind and my world .Because if I’m not the one questioning, I become both the dead and the killer.