2003-11-03 - 8:42 p.m.

I wrote this on February 8th. I'm posting it now because it is still and more true.

There is so much to say. I am having a moral breakdown. The fiber of my soul tells me that being an American citizen at this time in history (perhaps all of history?) is wrong. Painfully, wrenchingly wrong. I am festooned in a pack of lies. A culture of propaganda and potato chips, war-mongering and worship-gone-awry, secular greed and SUVs, battle and bounty. My body is rejecting this turn of events in the form of a constant subtle nausea and deep discontent. I know that this has always been happening. All those days when I thought I was happy. All those times I pledged allegiance from rote memory as a child in corduroy overalls. We were bombing someone. We kill. I can no longer convince myself that They are doing that. I pay my taxes. I sign my name. I have a home. Here. In this place. I partake. I benefit. We kill. I acknowledge how fortunate, privileged, I am to have been a girl in this country. How lucky I am right now, as an American woman. Typing here in my climate-controlled home on my personal computer. Amid stacks of textbooks and a prosperous future. My mountains of waste are whisked away by unknown, unmet, unacknowledged labor. My water runs and my toilet flushes. I go to Wal-Mart when I need to. I buy tampons, deodorant and toilet paper to avoid my messy bodily functions from month to month. Blissful privilege. Ignorant wealth. Gluttoness consumption. No one I know believes that I should lose my clitoris in order to be an “appropriate woman.” No one abuses me. No one threatens me to my face. In fact, I can go outside and show my face any time of day or night without a thought. In the light of this privilege, it is worse. It is all worse. I don’t want to surrender this security, this freedom. But I cannot pay for it with the blood of others. I went to a lecture given by a social work professor who went to Iraq. He found that almost of all of the oppression the Iraqi people experience actually stems from the sanctions we have imposed. Comes from the call to rebel sent out by Papa Bush in 1991, which when answered went unsupported by our military. Don’t hear me say I love Saddam. I don’t. But neither do I buy to the lies. Ani D. says, “the media is not fooling me.” I am not okay. I am not being fooled, but it doesn’t help. What are we doing? Where do we start to make an end to this? When will we see the face of a fellow human and rejoice? I am going tonight to listen to great music. That will help. But I will still be nauseated. I will still be filled with discontent. I will still be afraid. So afraid. One of my fellow students is moving his family to Mexico today. Today. Tomorrow they will be in Mexico to live. He could not stomach what we are stomaching. We are swallowing it. I am drowning in it. How could I not swallow some?