post-11/13 thoughts

I don't really know where to start. I know that I am lucky. I know that I am scared. More scared than I should be. I wasn't near any of the places that got attacked. I wasn't mentally or physically traumatized. Yet I still feel too scared to go outside, cowering indoors with the shades drawn and rationing my food as though I am a prisoner

I'm questioning my future. I had always wanted to go to areas of conflict, from when I was a child declaring I wanted to be "a doctor without a border," to when I wanted to move to Rwanda at 13 after getting a pen pal from there, to when I began dreaming of going to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan to become a journalist, inspired by the great Nicholas Kristof and his Half The Sky. I always believed that there would be a time when the world would be peaceful enough that I could visit my friends from Women2Women in Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, Chad.

And now, suddenly, the conflict is too close to home. I feel selfish and weak, knowing that I have friends in Palestine and Lebanon and Kurdistan who know attacks like these intimately. And here I am, the sheltered American girl who can't handle one attack that, compared to the rest of the world, is truly a drop in the bucket. Part of me just wants to give up on my dreams to change the world -- it's too fucked up to even bother. Part of me wants to run away just so I'm never in danger. If you can get gunned down in a restaurant in Paris, at a concert, watching a sports game...who knows where you can ever be truly safe. This could have happened in Boston. This could have happened in Edinburgh. It still can. Maybe it will.

I'm heartbroken with the knowledge that this attack will make it infinitely harder for refugees to flee and come to a safer country. I am heartbroken knowing that there are people who fled IS in Syria, only to come to Paris and find them among us. I am heartbroken knowing that I am helpless, without any clues on how to change the system, how to help. I am scared that I no longer believe that people are good.

Though it felt, and still feels, wrong to focus on myself, last night I couldn't help but feel slightly cheered by witnessing how many people cared about my well-being. I had countless messages from friends near and far, some of whom I hadn't spoken to in years or had fallen out with, who knew I was in Paris and wanted to make sure I was safe. It was strangely comforting to know that if I had died, people would care.

I remember doing an interview project in ninth grade on the Cold War. I interviewed older teachers and librarians, asking what it was like to grow up during the height of the tensions. I remember every one of them individually telling me: "We practiced nuclear bomb drills in school. We knew conflict was inevitable. It was coming; there was no doubt of that." And I remember thinking to myself, well, that was silly of them -- clearly it didn't come. Only now I feel that same inevitability. With ISIS going global and extremism rising, an international refugee crisis, natural disasters in all corners of the world, and previously-eradicated diseases coming back to life...something is coming. We're on the brink of another world war, I can feel it brewing hot and heavy every passing day. Nothing will ever be the same from here on out. Our children will learn the same bomb drills that the generation before us knew. Yesterday I truly believed I could prevent that, that I could be one of many to help change the course of the world and bring peace and understanding, an acceptance of diversity. But today, I'm not so confident.