I don't trust anyone. Not a soul. I don't trust my brother, my sister, my uncles or aunts. I don't trust my cousins, my boyfriend, my friends. I learned early on not to trust my parents, although it didn't stop me from hoping that they would change, that one day they might actually love me. Of course they did, in their own way, love me, but not so that I actually could tell, or so that I could actually feel loved, down to my core solidly good and lovable. Funnily enough, in death they have become quite reliable, quite wonderfully unable to disappoint me.
Certainly I am not the only one with suffering from this dearth of love and excess of frustrated longing. And my problems seem so trivial in comparison with what so many others.
I spent most of the day learning about our wonderful war in Iraq, all in preparation for class tomorrow with a group of students who found almost nothing positive to say about last week's book, the play based on Rachel Corrie's journal. These kids seem to care far more about the grade they're going to get than about the number of people who lost their lives in stupid bloodshed today. It would be such a comfort to know that at least one of them took the time to read the papers today, to learn that at least one of them gives a damn that we're now estimating 100 deaths a day in the country we've "liberated." It would be nice to be able to trust my students to give a damn. This morning's Times reports,
The Iraqi government and the American military refuse to release overall civilian casualty numbers; both give numbers only for a few categories of deaths, making it difficult to get an overall picture. One of the last official reports on civilian casualties came in January from the United Nations, which, citing morgue and hospital statistics, said at least 34,452 Iraqis were killed last year, or an average of nearly 100 per day.
I think I will try to do something positive and get to bed a few minutes before midnight. Up at 6.30 again tomorrow.
