in my head

the future

          I've just finished watching the Lord of the Rings movies again. It's only been a few months since I last watched them, yet they struck me differently than usual, and I could not stop crying as the credits played. I wasn't crying because their world is still ruined even at the happy end, though that is still sad. I was crying because, though Frodo will never heal and be happy and thousands still lie dead, my world is not like their world.
          In my world, I can't fight for power as woman by going to battle with a sword in my hand and a battle cry in my throat. The battles to join in my world are for wars I do not support; where strong female soldiers are mocked, sexually assaulted, and killed. Where innocents are butchered and life is less important that money. In my world, I will find no glory in war.
          In my world, I cannot simply don a cloak and travel the world. I am still a legal child and thus a belonging of my family, though I do not hold value over such ties. I cannot simply walk the earth, for the earth is also thought of as a belonging; a right and property to those with money and power. Travel has been tainted by promise of profit and shiny brochures, and where you go, it is not as it was before. In my world, I will find no peace in travel.
          In my world, love has been distorted and twisted into a weapon. Your 'love' of your god gives the right to demonize and slaughter millions. Your 'love' for your partner gives the right to control them; to own them. Your 'love' for your country gives the right to put a bullet in all those whom you deem unfit to inhabit it. Your 'love' of life gives the right to control a body that does not and will never belong to you, for no body but your own will ever belong to you. Even then, your right and love of your own body will be disputed by others; by strangers with whom you've never spoken. Your love is misplaced. Your love belongs only to you, and no one else.
          Just as you do not have the right to anyone else's life, you do not have the right to force your love on another. Turn it inward, and keep it close. Nothing in this world belongs to you, for better or for worse. Happiness that is gained through objects and the origins of our home and family is an illusion. Pride and superiority are inspired by insubstantial events in the scheme of the world. The only thing that belongs to us is the happiness and love we share for the life that we possess.

          So, I am crying. I am crying for an uncertain future that I do not care to live. In my world, I don't have premonitions of the future and the magic of starlight to fight evil, for starlight is covered by clouds of pollution and evil is never black and white. I sit in my ugly armchair of privilege and write such mighty words, though I have no courage, strength, influence, beauty, nor skill. Right now, I wish nothing more than to be a rock so that my uses will finally suit expectation. But I will write about that in the next chapter.