Heavy

Heavy

**DISCLAIMER: I reference a couple recent murders in this post. Stop reading now if you don't want to be exposed to that topic.**

Oof, the world feels particularly heavy right now. 

I was scrolling Instagram the other day and accidentally watched the Iryna Zarutska murder. I hadn’t yet heard the story and didn’t even know what I was watching, but seconds into the video I see a young woman get repeatedly stabbed in the neck while she’s just sitting there on public transit, minding her own business. I swear I’ll never unsee that.

Soon after, still in a funk from watching the Zarutska murder, I stumbled upon the Charlie Kirk video. I don’t know what compelled me to click on it—it’s sort of like a car crash—I didn’t want to see it, but couldn’t look away. At the time I didn’t know that Charlie had been killed, only that he’d been shot. I pictured him taking a glancing blow to the arm with a low caliber pistol or something like that. I never imagined I’d witness him getting shot through the neck with a high-powered rifle. As soon as I saw it I knew there was no surviving a shot like that. Say what you want about the man and his politics, I don’t want to watch anyone get murdered.

These are merely two examples of a multitude of awful things that have happened recently. Hearing about them is bad enough, but seeing them has had a particular impact on me.

To be honest, I was initially angry at Instagram for even allowing these murders to be seen on their platform. Something as innocuous as the female nipple is banned yet murder is acceptable?! 

But most of all I was angry with myself. 

Angry for giving social media the power to show me these things in the first place. I’ve known for years that social media is not good for me and doesn’t have my best interest at heart, yet there I was scrolling away. There’s some things that I never want to see, and if the social media platforms aren’t going to filter them out for me, the responsibility becomes my own. I’ve known that, yet I haven’t done anything about it. And so if I’m going to be angry with Instagram, I must also be angry with myself.

I can’t imagine I’m alone in feeling any of these ways about any of these topics. And I know the world can feel dark and scary and overwhelming. So for now, instead of trying to write some fancy line to wrap this up with, I just want to send you all a bunch of love, support and a great big virtual hug. And I’ll leave you with a powerful quote that I’ve shared before and I’m proud to share again. Maybe someday we’ll actually take it to heart.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Read that again.