The Ambiguous Odyssey

You’d all think that considering the fact I’ve been living with death for the past two years I would be scarred. Bruised. Broken. That is nowhere near the reality, with every passing day, with every bomb that hits, with every missile that drops I grow invincible. Death is a vengeful sea. A sea feared by all but Yemenis, we have adjusted our sails and claimed that sea ours. Ours eternally. This Saudi-American led coalition might have ended 2600 little children’s lives, but that will not be a barrier. Every 60 minutes 6 children die in Yemen from different diseases as a result of both the air, land, and sea blockade and the illegal weapons they are dropping on our country. That means that every 10 minutes a child at his or her springtime of life have their lives stolen for no reason. Yemeni children are paying the price for a sin they didn’t commit. The children that do make it past the ten minutes are mutated because of the bombs that are dropped. The children are scarred for life ...

Everyday that we wake up and open our sockets of life, we change the filter and adjust the lens. We choose whether it will be gray or vibrant. Sometimes it’s easier to live passively, but as much as we’d all rather live that way, we are in fact the masters of our fates. We lead the lives we live. The thing about spiritual awakenings is that as enlightening as they can be they are equally frightening. We reside within these bubbles of comfort that when awakened we are shaken to the core. Our bubbles burst, they explode, and disperse completely. This paralyzes us momentarily. Once it is settled we are reborn; we are given the chance to be or not to be. We are constantly in direct contact with change, we choose to pass by it or to grasp it. So here’s to grasping onto change with all fours and to second chances. Here’s to life and our choices; the sane and insane. 

Death is not black, it is every shade of pink. It starts with a feeling of being high. High on an idea. A misconception. Death is a burst of color, every hue of happy. It overtakes your every thought, every breath, every beat. Death is love in disguise. It is everything we thought we wanted or presumed we needed, but time heals everything. Time reveals the reality of everything. Death can only fool us for oh so long, but here I am facing death. My pink death, my rose form of grief. Nothing is harder than grieving someone who is alive, ending a life -even if only in your mind- is a burden. A heavy burden. I can proudly say that at 18 I surpassed this. I have grieved my pink and I have made it past every cherry blossom out there. I can stare death blankly without fidgeting. I have withdrawn the hue of pink I thought was its’. It is now black, just like every other minuscule death that is of no value.