Excruciating pain coursing through my entire body.
Rage and grief combined in a tsunami of anguish.
Agony more severe than what the pervious version of myself even believed it was possible for a person to experience.
My chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vice, my stomach feels like it’s filled with rocks, my soul feels as if it’s being eviscerated.
Again and again, I’ve tried to find words strong enough to capture these feelings. Although I consider myself a good writer, with a large vocabulary, again and again I fail.
I could scream at the top of my lungs until my throat bled and my voice became hoarse, I could punch and kick until every object in my house was destroyed and my hands and feet were shattered into a million pieces, and it still wouldn’t be enough to express the pain that I feel inside.
Images of horror seared forever into my consciousness.
Hideous, gaping wounds that will never heal.
What was once a normal city square with a war memorial a century old, a war memorial that had never hurt anyone, now turned into something profoundly dark, contaminated, evil. An abomination.
Just one example among dozens, hundreds, all combining to fundamentally change the world from good to bad.
Actions that should never have taken place, leaving permanent scars on the landscape.
Actions so horrifying, so repulsive, so reprehensible, that a part of my brain cannot fully comprehend that they actually happened. Perhaps it never will.
One sickening act after another. Display after display of vicious intolerance. All part of a slow, inexorable chipping away at beauty, at happiness, at goodness. All part of an effort to destroy me, to destroy people like me, everywhere. All part of a brutal campaign to obliterate from the world everything that makes life worth living.
A city, a state, a country, an entire world transformed so that only people who are like the majority can feel welcome there. Only those who fit in, only those who obey authority, only those who conform to social norms, allowed to exist.
More times than I can count, I’ve considered suicide. Death has often seemed preferable to continuing on into a bleak future, slogging through day after day of a meaningless and miserable existence.
Five years of this agonizing pain. This weekend, in fact, marks the anniversary. A holiday that most people associate with cookouts, beach days, or remembering our soldiers, is forever associated with genocide for me. (Many will argue that this word is too strong, but I believe it is entirely appropriate.)
To someone named Gerard, this entire situation is funny.
The situation that I’ve described above is humorous, amusing, entertaining, even hilarious to him.
Clearly, Gerard has never experienced pain, and has never experienced suffering. If he had, he would not consider the pain and suffering of other people to be funny.
Seeing symbols of yourself, symbols of inclusion, symbols of your right to exist, smashed to pieces with sledgehammers as a mob rejoices and a brass band plays. Knowing that the bullies who want to eradicate you from existence will never be punished, will never be held accountable, will never even be criticized by anyone but yourself, will forever be perceived as holding the moral high ground in the eyes of society.
This is something that Gerard has never experienced, but I have.
There are no words that can fully describe what this does to a person, the pain that it inflicts, how profoundly it changes a person, forever.
Gerard’s jeering, cruel laughing face emoji does not reflect negatively on me; it reflects negatively on him. Gerard lacks empathy, he lacks morality, he lacks logic, and I would go so far as to argue that he lacks both a mind and a soul. Gerard does not hold the moral high ground. I do.