On this Thursday in late May, the thoughts in my head are in a terrible traffic jam as though they are fighting to escape the millions of others for a respite in a more secluded space.
““I am finished with labels. Like everyone else, I am an individual. Is that a label? Perhaps.””
I can’t imagine the grief, the sadness, the disbelief, the anger, and countless other emotions the loved ones of the victims of the Uvalde, TX, school shooting are experiencing. I only know my own feelings and how painful they are as someone who did not know the victims. How helpless and powerless I feel. My heart goes out to these families.
Yesterday I woke up to the news that a young woman close to my family had passed away in her sleep. She had struggled for years with substance use disorder. Although her family members knew there was a good chance she would not recover, they were not prepared to lose her. They are devastated. It is unclear whether or not she succumbed to opiates, but it is likely the drugs somehow played a role in her untimely death.
Today I ate lunch at an uncrowded restaurant. The server for the first part of the meal was a very polite robot. I was entertained, yet felt a twinge of indignation for would-be workers that the robot was putting out of work. Then when the actual human employee came to our table, she was so disagreeable that I longed for the robot.