words can be a welcome cancer.
when emotions are piled atop the other…
written by Dawn Garcia
Words can often feel like a cancer. They grasp onto your vessels, penetrating your blood, becoming their own life force within you. They - are your conscience. Recently, I sat down to watch Restrepo. A documentary about war. While it took place in the Korengal Valley, this movie was not about location. It was about the process of war. The placating world that thrusts human beings into a situation of survival where “kill or be killed” is put into practice. In war, that mindset seems necessary. In life, that mindset is being used as an act of psychological warfare and individual gain.
War is not always something that takes place deep in the heart of some town or city or country that is tyrannical. War is also often unjust. War is most often something that takes place within us. It breeds in the darkness of hate; in the gestation of ignorance; the act of non-acceptance. I have seen extraordinarily good people get lost in a vacuum of misunderstanding and in turn, they become monsters. Stress is an archaic trigger for violence and irrational action. When I sit and think about what this might look like within, here is what I see: A face. Perfectly beautiful on one side. Flawless, intrinsically unscathed. The other side of the same face is dipped in fluid, cracking and tearing away the flesh. All beauty becomes thrashed and thwarted and when you look closely, inside of almost every crack, exist words. Tiny little words escaping - hateful, messed up words - religious slurs and twisted ideals - political corruption - lies - outbursts of curse words, “fuck” being among the most common in the swarm - intolerance - subordination - sheer disillusion. Inside all of the cracks is ALL of this unchecked emotion is just piling atop the other, crushing any visible signs of life. THIS is what war inside of us looks like. This is why words are my welcome cancer.
Words are really like both chrysalis and disease. They can form such exquisite beauty and then shoot out like daggers bathed in poison. Either way, I don’t mind. In fact, much like someone is called to fight for their country, I am called to write. I can curse like a sailor, camouflage my emotion, survive on next to nothing, take fragmented bullets in the form of humanity’s flawed structure of speech, I can see comradery in a stranger who understands the pain of knowing to write and tell a story is like removing your own limbs. I honestly feel like someone has shoved their spiked-fists into my gut and attached themselves to my insides before ripping them out with malice when I see the things human beings are capable. When we live in a world of such technological advancements, such potential to unite - I cannot fathom nor understand the reality that we are more filled with hate and jealousy and judgment than we ever have been. We are not in the times of the Romans. We do not need to tear down every visible sign of culture to make this world a better place. History does not need to be repeated but a lesson better be learned.
I tell a story because there is a story to tell. One that includes all of you. ALL. This story may come from my subjective mind but perhaps that’s where yours intersects. We need to pivot forward. We need to figure out that the wars we are fighting go much further than the barrel of a gun. It starts with you. Don’t be the catalyst.
Words are subjective. There is no way to say otherwise. Objective words are not possible by definition. The mere act of trying to be objective is subjective. See? We keep creating more dichotomy in a world that needs simplicity. The value of seeing life as it is from a million different perspectives is, in my own opinion, incredibly liberating. We are all lab rats. We are all taking part in this experiment. Somehow there IS a common thread.
