The charming who get turned away before they can flash their brilliant smiles. The forgiving who are given nothing but punishments for the actions of others.
The aspiring doctors, teachers, or parents whose lives were cut off or thrown off course.
The eloquent whose thoughts will have to be shared in diaries instead of at universities. The confident who get put down until they would rather stare at the ground than at a mirror.
The brave – the ones who perilously fought for their country, who can’t receive their medals or see their families after a long, hard battle.
The humans who are treated like less than they are, and much less than they deserve.
This is for all those in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya who have faced injustice, not just from every-day Islamophobia, but blatant xenophobia from the leaders of a so-called “great” nation.
I don’t cry often, or at least not as much as people assume I do.
Before I turned nine, my tears had no depth. I would cry because I couldn’t get the Barbie I wanted, or because I wasn’t allowed to eat the chocolate bar I craved. It was like I was standing on the shore, only to get my chubby feet wet. They would be salty tears of defiance, and yet, they were noticed more. No one ignores a little, pig-tailed girl with puffy, wet eyes and a solemn face. People would rush to my side to be my hero and save me from my sadness.
In the summer before my fourth grade year, I truly cried for the first time. I was curled in bed and the breeze made the leaves on the tree in my backyard hit against the window with a soft thump. A mountain of blankets weighed down on my crackling shell of a body. My mom was angry at me, and I was convinced that she undeniably hated me. Even though that wasn’t the case, my cheeks seemed tattooed with the streaks left behind from my crying fit, and they stayed like that until the morning.
Only after that night, did I realize that I can only sincerely cry alone and wrapped in many blankets. It’s an odd revelation, but one that I will testify to for the rest of my life.
When I sat in the first row at my mother’s funeral, I was the most anxious I had ever felt in my entire life. I felt like her closest family and friends were watching me like beady-eyed hawks. My legs were neatly crossed and my black, lace dress itched in ten different places. I tried to focus on my aunts and uncles speaking about their beloved sister, but could only think about the choir show I was missing. My attention only perked up when my sister went to speak.
She stood with her right foot tilted ever so slightly inward. You couldn’t see it because of the podium in front of her, but throughout my entire life she had done it whenever she was nervous. She greeted everyone with a half-smile and red eyes, and you could tell that she was trying to make my mother proud. My grandma was holding onto my skinny wrist like it was a treasured jewel. I looked down at her black shoes and fixated on the curvature at the front. Then I heard my name. My sister had water welling up in her eyes and looked to me to turn the attention away from her. I wiggled out of my grandmother’s grasp and walked reluctantly to the stand.
“Um, I miss my mom. Not a day goes by where I don’t miss her and I loved- uh, I mean love her always and for-” my voice cracked.
All of a sudden, tears gushed out of my eyes as if someone turned on a hose. I ran away from the microphone and sunk into my seat, and wished I could evaporate. Those tears weren’t of evident sadness, but rather were a scapegoat to leave the gaze of all those gloomy visages. After that moment, I wasn’t sad but embarrassed. It is such a normal thing to cry at a funeral, especially the funeral of a parent, but it was one of the most fake and shallow outbursts of emotion I have ever experienced.
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After that, I couldn’t cry for months. My body was no longer capable of that type of emotional release. Whenever I do cry, it is of exasperation. A way to rid myself of pent-up frustration.
Some say that teenage girls cry about everything. When we break a nail or have a split end, it is as if the world is falling apart. Even when the world is crumbling around me, I pretend that I’m standing in a field of daisies, a defense mechanism I’ve created for dealing with my emotions in public.
And with all that said, people still think I cry all the time. But I guess that’s just what a girl’s gotta do.
What happens when the things around you seem to become dark and grey?
What about when your life gets flipped upside down and all of a sudden the things that used to make you happy remind you of everything you have lost.
You look around and suddenly the people who used to be there for you everyday, the ones you couldn’t go a day without talking to, disappear without a trace.
Everything that made you, you is gone in a flash
The hikes that used to love to take now feel like every breath is a burden
The bike with a wicker basket that you used to ride around your block, which was once filled with amazing memories, sits in the back of your garage rusting away.
When everything that made you happy now makes you feel dejected and hurt
Lack of control, lack of consciousness. From a passing feeling of anxiety grows a larger, stronger sensation.
A pit embedded so deep in my stomach, sprouting vines that spread to the very tips of my fingers. The pit grows larger and larger, heavy as rock, hard as steel.
I pass it off as nothing. All in my head, nothing of significance. But this rock, this sensation, leaves me hyper aware.
Each movement shoots throughout my body, ricocheting off of every surface. Any tingle, shiver or prickle is felt in every nerve, magnified by my growing alertness.
And this greater attention leads to a realization, an understanding of this feeling. My depths are screaming to be let out, stopping at nothing to be heard.
I fall, deeper and deeper into my head; I am below the surface, unaware of the world around me. This pit, this feeling, is overtaking me.
The vines wrap around my brain, my eyes, anything they can grasp, bringing darkness to my world and shutting out any understanding.
My hands are immobile, unresponsive to my commands. These vines suffocate me, wrapping around my neck and my brain, squeezing tighter and tighter.
I have lost all ability to speak – to guide and to oversee. Dark clouds loom over my last drop of consciousness, obscuring my last speck of assurance.
Not for even one second did the boy break eye contact with the girl until he collapsed in front of the praying people. The girl carefully lowered her glare to the wound that was slowly growing on the boy’s front; without disturbing the rest of the group she carefully picked up the feather-light boy and brought him to an empty building.
She left shortly after, only to return with singed medical supplies. She quickly and deftly removed the tooth from the long gash, and then with a large amount of rubbing alcohol cleansed his grimy wound.
The boys eyes stayed closed the entire time; she spared a quick glance at his face before starting to stitch him closed, he was awake she knew but she also knew that he would not show any sign of it. Once the stitching was done she left the boy in the ruins of the building, to come out on his own terms, but she took the tooth with her.
She held the tooth in her left hand and strange weight settled in her stomach. For some reason she knew what this meant, but at the time she was unsure; eventually she would know what to do, more specifically in one days’ time. Minutes later the boy came out of the building and sat himself next to her. The last crowd on earth stared at the two of them from afar.
The girl started the conversation: I’m not sure who you are, where you came from, why you’re here; but I can tell you this you’re not on earth anymore, no, I’d like to personally welcome you to Tartarus. He looked down, at his hands: yes, I know. Her head whipped toward him her hair flying into her face: then why do I see hope in your eyes? He looks away from the searing stare of the girl: redemption?Redemption, is that a joke? He sighed through his nose: no.
Then what is it? She snaps. The world’s screwed up enough as it is without some cracked up looney with a superhero complex trying to tell anyone left that it gets better.Honestly I don’t know why I’m here, alright? It’s the only civilization for countries and I was about to die of blood loss. She stared at him for a long time, the weight in her stomach growing: rest for the night. She sighed: there’s – there’s something important that I would like to show you tomorrow.
When the boy found her in the morning she was turning the tooth around in her hand, as if comforting herself. What was it you wanted to show me?Follow me, she stood up quickly. Her short figure moving more gracefully and quickly than the boy’s ever would. They traveled in silence for the entire journey out of the city.
The tear and dust stained people disappearing into minuscule figures behind them; at the edge of the city the girl looked back to see the people who survived, only those too afraid to live left to live out the rest of earth’s days, she shook her head. She turned back toward the road: this is going to be a long walk, try not to tear your stitches. She turned off the road and began trudging into the woods that were at a steady decline toward the south bay.
Would you mind telling me what this is about? She stopped abruptly causing him to run into her back. The forest had been one of the few places not damaged in the waves of radiation; for some unexplained reason it had remained immutable, unchanging. The thick green was almost suffocating, the damp moss-y-ness in the air sickening.
Never has a new person ever wander into this city of dead; never have we seen anyone dragging hope like a heavy flag behind them. Is it coincidence that three days after the human race got down on its knees to pray for their savior, to pray for hope, a wayward traveler with hope alight in his eyes shows up on the door step of the one city that holds what’s left of God’s will? He stumbles back from her, lightning dancing through his brain: you don’t think I’m the messiah do you? She looks down and swallows: We still have four miles, let’s continue moving.
When they reached the south bay the girl smoothly dragged a decrepit kayak from under a dense covering of foliage. She calmly lowered herself into the back, ready to push off from shore but he, the unlikely savior, was cemented to the higher, dry sand. The girls tawny eyes were cast downward, unwilling to meet his pale green ones: messiah or not, the last of the humans the rest of the world needs a savior right now and I – it all comes down to you, are you getting in the kayak or not?
In that moment something unknown spurred the boy on, he unceremoniously dropped himself into the front of the kayak and took the paddle and handed it to the girl. As they pushed off the boy let a question tumble from his mouth: why aren’t you the savior? The girl continued to paddle, with all the force of two people: I have my reasons. There was a pause: It’s…a story for another time.
‘Just trust me,’ a phrase often used in our language, but not so often meant.
Our brains work by emotion, wired for compassion, understanding, and trust. It calms us, soothes us, and controls us. Learn more here.
So let’s start at the beginning. You are a small child, and your parent promises you ice cream. You have been exited all day, but when you finally get home, they say they are too busy for something so silly as ice cream.
You are already beginning a pattern of distrust. And you get older, friends, family, strangers, everyone you know throws around this idea of a promise as a way to calm, a short-term fix for a long-term problem.
We are often told not to make promises we can’t keep, good advice, yet seemingly impossible in our community today.
“Do you promise?’ ‘Swear on your life?’ ‘Pinky Swear?’ (Which, by the way, used to mean that if the promise was broken, he who was at fault would promptly have their pinky removed.)
Well, you say, how can we fix this? The answer is not that simple. You see, our use of human emotion as leverage has been evolving for a long time.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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