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My name is Marah Baalousha from Gaza.

Computer engineering student

I hope you are well . 🇵🇸

I write to you with a heart full of hope and faith, and I ask for your urgent help. My family is in great danger due to the war, and I am running a fundraising campaign to save them. My father and mother suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure. Help me secure them

Please, any donation makes a difference in our lives, and every reblog helps reach as many people as possible. 🍉

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for any help you can provide.

i dont think Home is something you find.

i think it's something you build

bit by bit,

piece by piece,

until you can sit down one day and say,

"this is it

"this is Home."

and then you stand back up

and you keep building.

not because it isnt Home–

240 - Sunrise // 3.2.22

A phrase in my feed caught my eye. "20 years" was trending. 

"People share their memories and experiences 20 years after the first Surge," the caption claimed.

I press my home button and– yep. June 21st. The first time the world turned upside down was exactly 20 years ago. 

When I was in primary school, we learned about the Surges on the anniversary of the second Surge. They say everyone remembers exactly where they were during the Surges– my mom was out for lunch in lower Manhattan while on vacation in NYC. She said it was terrifying, she just stood there shocked. Unsure what to do, if she could even do anything at all. 

It used to be that every anniversary, she'd spend the day distracting herself, doing just about anything but acknowledging what day it was. In the years since, she's attended therapy, and support groups for "witnesses". She barely even flinches at the memory anymore. 

I wasn't born in time for the Surges, but I can sympathize with how traumatizing it must have been. Still, it's always been hard to relate to those who saw it happen. Even the oldest of my peers were something like 4 when it happened. A lot of the people who do remember call those of us who weren't around for it ignorant, or insensitive for criticizing all the rash decisions people made after it happened. I don't think that's fair. We don't see it through the same lens they do, we didn't watch it happen. All we have to judge them on is what happened next. The rights that have been violated, the opportunities that were robbed from us, the people who were killed in the pursuit of some spectre of evil who caused this all to happen. Hell, in some circles, bringing it up in even a semblance of a critical light is taboo.  I heard last November, a congressperson was almost shot on the steps of the capitol by some lunatic because they said that 'hey, maybe fucking killing people was a little much' after nineteen-and-a-half years.

I don't know. Maybe I am just insensitive. Maybe after 13 years of it being drilled into my head, I actually don't, in fact, understand the situation at all. Maybe it really was some spirit of absolute evil in east Asia who did this to spite us specifically, while also, in the process, making everyone's life much harder, their own included. Who knows? 

There was no sound when It happened. 

No alarms, no fanfare;

The gates of heaven and Hell didn't open up, neither angels nor devils spilled onto this mortal plane.

But everyone felt it. 

How could you not? When the entire world is suddenly turned upon its head, all at once, it's impossible not to notice.

When factions no one has ever heard of, and ones that no one ever even knew existed, suddenly pop up all at once, and begin fighting themselves and each other in equal measure, everyone takes notice. 

No one ever cared to stop, and think about what we could learn from It, or that maybe, just maybe, It actually did some good. It was just so much easier to pick up our long-lain swords, and begin fighting over the bad. And it was even easier, now that It had given us new blades to hurl at one another. 

If I had had the time to think, I bet I would've thought it sad that the walls we had finally torn down were rebuilt so easily. But I didn't. After all, I too had noticed. And I too now had swords, old and new, thrown at my feet.