Rage and Hope – both flickering flames, ignited instantly, burning you up, turning to ashes before you know it – and you feel it too right?
Nothing incites rage like crushed hopes and nothing calms rage like hope – fulfilled or wishful.
It’s been a week of spine-chilling details in the news, and I have been waiting for this rage to subside but ….
Maybe this rage is not meant to subside?
Maybe this rage is supposed to scar our souls so that the next time we feel this incessant urge to dictate how a woman should walk, talk, sit, stand, dress, work, live, breathe – this fire consumes us whole and we stop ourselves from advocating systemic inequality.
The crackles of the burning pyre mingle with the divinely wild, free laughter, as if to say:
Every time you trace my skin with your filthy fingers,
~ untouchable ~
Every scratch, every bruise, every mark you leave,
Speaks of you.
You do not disrespect me.
Trust me, you cannot.
You do not have that kind of power over me, over any other human.
Never did.
And never will.
You disrespect your own existence.
You dishonour the life that begets you.
You disregard the life that comes from you.
You peel off your own humanity while mine remains intact,
You tear apart your honour while mine remains unscathed.
Respect is not skin deep.
It’s so much more than a mere human body.
Respect is a way of living.
My way of living.
You mutilate my body beyond recognition,
Yet, I remain.
You slash and cut at my body searching for a soul to stifle and a mind to silence,
My life bleeds out unto the death of yet another of the myriad,
But you do not find a soul to rip off, a mind to slice through, a voice to suffocate,
My identity that you so desperately wanted to crush with your own mighty hands eludes you.
And maybe,
Maybe, now you know why I am, truly, untouchable.
But then, as the paralysing fears turned anger turned freedom rise up in smoke, I remember kindness too. I remember compassion. I remember –
That man who stood up for a stranger when he could just as easily have turned away,
~ glimmers to every trigger ~
That woman who did not measure up another woman to her own standards of feminism.
The good men who call out their not-so-good friends’ sexist comments,
The women who don’t give a damn about being good because they are too busy being right.
The women who ask all the right questions,
The women who claim rightful equality without waiting for society to hand it over to them on a silver platter,
The women who deny opportunistic favours to grant men the equal dignity they have earned.
The people who put everything at stake to stand with people who speak up when they most definitely don’t have to but they choose to.
The women who choose courage over compliance,
The men who choose integrity over social validation,
The humans who choose faith over fear.
The men, and women, who also weren’t taught right, were denied a safe childhood and yet, yet have grown into who they needed but never had,
The humans who have had their souls shattered and yet choose not to rip apart the world with their shattered pieces.
The men who are ceaselessly struggling every day to make sense of their emotions and ours after years of being told that men are not allowed to be emotional,
The man who checks in with me – who checks himself a thousand times only to make sure I am not uncomfortable in any way,
The men, and women, who are learning to embrace the mushier masculinity and the powerfully dynamic femineity in the global human community.
The women who care ever so passionately, and the men who care enough,
The men who cry in furious helplessness, and stifle their suffering to make us feel heard,
The women who despite a raging war inside, dare to love the men who deserve to be loved, accept men as they need to be accepted.
You are the glimmering light in the monstrous darkness. You are hope.
And perhaps no state of perpetual rage is enough to snuff out this hope filled glittery light. Not yet anyway.
Can you see how the ashes douse the flames and the flames rise up in ashes? And with all the flames and ashes blurring our vision of the indefinite future, the fire keeps burning. And this fire needs to keep burning. For the warmth of this fire once turned stray humans into a prudent, civil community – and waits to someday purge the immaculate soul.
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