Interlude: How, necessarily, the world has our attention, as it should

This time of year, the night sky grows crisp and clear, bringing a sort of comfort in the way it grows closer. Image via Unsplash.

I never meant to leave this space blank. I meant to pour my words into this space like a spring feeds a stream. But lately, that flow has been far out of reach, deep underground. 

I’ve shared before that I live with both migraines and Sjögrens, which each take turns throwing me down. Add a lot of executive dysfunction from both autism and ADHD and unpredictable workloads from freelance copyediting work and you have a peek into what happens behind the scenes. 

After a busy summer of work and life, the beginning of October was such an optimistic time. I’d ramped up a preventative migraine medication, and I was hopeful migraines would be kept at bay. I was full of ideas, fresh off the launch of this Substack and the first post after a long hiatus, and all the ideas I was having about where this would go. Then, I went down for nearly half the month with the worst migraine of the year, and since then, I’ve been catching up and recalibrating to accommodate everything together but also reeling beneath the unexpected incapacitation of medication-induced brain fog, memory-loss, word loss, mental exhaustion, and full-body fatigue. It’s been an unbelievably tough time. I haven’t been myself. I’ve been submerged deep underground. Thankfully, with the collaboration of my neurologist, I will soon find my way to the surface.

I also want to speak to the fact that like everyone, my attention has turned towards the genocide of Palestinians, to the deeply intertwined liberation of Palestinian and Jewish peoples as we ask our world leaders to hold the nation-state of Israel accountable for its war crimes; as as it was called in the months before October 7th to the Armenians’ eliminated country of Artsakh and expulsion from their homeland by Azerbaijan’s threat of genocide; and how our attention has continued to be called to give our collective contribution as US taxpayers and consumers to oppression in Haiti, Congo, Tigray, and Sudan and all over the world.

I try to lend any bit of direct action I can from bed whether that’s been relentlessly calling and emailing my representatives in Congress, sharing information online, talking to friends, and connecting to those in my community who are directly affected across a broad spectrum of religions and ethnicities with familial and cultural ties across the SWANA region; and having conversations about moving forward with folks who are invested in liberatory movements. Protests around the world have been invigorating, calls for boycotts are revealing our dependency on consumerism and hopefully getting people to learn how to break free, and more people are joining the call to action to demand their representatives demand the Biden Administration call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

We have real limitations, all of us, via the entanglements of contemporary society. But I think we are all dreaming of something better, in spite of the ways we are stuck. The question is how to get unstuck. This has been the work the whole time, and that will continue to be the hardest work, going forward. I truly believe that our compassion, kindness, and solidarity must tighten our connection now more than ever before. Any small space that comes between us will give the people in power the greatest advantage to divide us. We must not let that happen. We cannot.

To me, solidarity is about coming together in spite of our differences. I stand with you in support of your fight for liberation because I know the root cause of our oppression is the same. Even better is when people aren’t part of an oppressed class and still stand with us. But the point is, we recognize how our liberation is intertwined and we want to see each other get free. That is solidarity. 

As I slowly find my way, and my way back to words again, it is my hope that you will continue taking care, and we will continue standing up for each other.