To witness

It can be difficult to witness all that is going on around me without becoming a part of it, or without it becoming part of me. I told a friend recently that my greatest fear is when all the abnormalcy around me begins to feel normal. She insisted that it will, at some point, come to be a new normal for me.

On my recent visit to the States the most enjoyable thing I did was walk. It was a good 10 degrees with the wind chill most days, but I insisted on walking everywhere. Its empowering to choose where your own two feet can take you. The power and freedom of anonymity, space and place is extraordinary, and the absence of those elements is very disempowering.

The knowledge and language of life here centers around checkpoints, and cease fires, and protests, and arrests, and incursions, and settlements.

I've woken up a couple nights from a deep sleep in what feels like a panic/anxiety attack. I've never had them before. I wonder if this is a new element of my life, like all the knew language and knowledge I've had to pick up. I try to talk myself out of it by reminding myself that I am safe in this moment. But my "logical mind" tries to convince me of all the ways that I am not really safe. This is not the kind of new normalcy I want to let creep into my life.