Sometimes I Scare Myself

During the semester I don't have the time to myself to just sit and think. So you know it's got to be dangerous when I do.

I scare myself sometimes.

I just came through a semester where I performed the character of Rachel Corrie, who left her life of privilege to go live with and try to understand the world from the perspective of people without rights, let alone privileges. 

She was scared of herself too, you know. Her words are still in my head; I can tell you. She was terrified of the complacency she knew she was capable of. 

That I know I'm capable of. That I have.

"I'm scared of people. Particularly people in the greater Olympia area. This is another place where progressive white people escaped a few decades ago." "If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who know where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me. It wouldn't be a metaphor. It would be a reality. And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it. To console myself." "For a long time I've been operating from a certain core assumption that we are all essentially the same inside, and that our differences are by and large situational... I understand there's a good chance that this assumption is actually false. But it's convenient. Because it always leads to questions about the way privilege shelters people from the consequences of their actions. It's also convenient because it leads to some level of forgiveness, whether justified or not. It is my own selfishness and will to optimism that wants to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don't just sit idly by and watch." "And I won't be afraid to come back, like I've always been afraid before." 

I say I want to make a difference.

I say I want to be selfless.

And here I sit, enrolled at a private university I'm not even paying tuition for. Planning to spend twelve weeks in Europe over the summer and hoping to attend graduate school after that. Shopping for shoes and dresses I'm not even paying for, sitting in the mall eating $5 ice cream I shouldn't have bought silently hating myself. Sitting on the couch and binge-watching a TV show about a privileged upper class English family, not even bothering to read about the violence and horror and atrocities that are happening in other parts of the world as I type that we never hear about unless we make the effort to search for it, and certainly not lifting a finger to help. Not even bothering to volunteer in my own community. Walking through the parking lot and noticing a pile of trash someone must have carelessly shoved out of their car and thinking, "I'll pick that stuff up and throw in in a trash can when I come out of the store," then walking straight past it, getting in my car and driving away. Shedding tears for complete strangers as I read reports of what happened at an elementary school hundreds of miles away but hesitant to even turn around and shake hands with the people I've never met sitting behind me in church. Shake hands. My God. Who am I?