<*Trigger warning: this will contain descriptions of violence, death and a bit of politics*>
We don't talk about it, most of the time.
We talk about our daughter and how much she's grown and the funny thing she said earlier today. We talk about how we're worried because her kindergarten teacher told her and the other kids that it hurts her ears to hear them cry (I want to give that lady a real reason to say her ears hurt!). We're hopeful because she added, "but daddy said it's always ok to cry". We don't talk about how they managed to push 29 kids into that tiny bomb shelter and explain the situation calmly the last time the sirens went off. Last year we were worried about how much moving to a new apartment might affect her emotionally. Now I can't even begin to imagine what being the target for armed missiles is doing.
We talk about the bills, and things we have to do around the house. For two people with ADHD, getting things done can be really tough. It was much easier to get dragged into Netflix binges and endless scrolling through social media feeds even before we had a three-year-old to entertain throughout most of our waking hours. We don't talk about the fact that last week, if she had gone to return the library books we have lying around for far too long as she planned to do. She might have been shot and killed by terrorists at the tram station attack that day.
Sometimes she tells me another heartbreaking story she heard in the protests. About someone who was taken from his home at gunpoint and locked up in a cave somewhere, not knowing that his wife and children had been murdered. I wonder what will he have to live for if he ever comes back. Or about the one who lost his arm when a grenade was thrown into the bomb shelter he was in, and then survived almost a year in captivity, only to be shot in the back because the people watching over him thought he might be rescued. More often than not, I stop her midway, because it's too hard to hear. We don't talk about why I wake up at night to make sure our door is locked.
Sometimes we talk about the news. It's been so long since we had good news. But we talk about what is happening, and what we think might happen. I tell her another soldier died in the war. Some 19-year-old kid who hadn't had a chance to learn anything about life yet. Not that I know that much about it either, at 40. Or those schoolchildren up north who got hit by the rocket on the soccer field. There have been so many of them. So many happy voices have gone silent. We don't talk about how I can't stop listening or reading the news 15 times a day. We don't talk about the fact that our daughter will be obligated by law to join the army when she's 18, or how terrified we'd be if she does.
We don't talk about all the children dying behind our imaginary borders. I see the faces of dead babies blankly staring at me from my phone screen. I imagine their eyes scorching me with accusations that I can't reply to, asking me if this is justified. And sometimes I want to say it is. Most people here seem to think it is. At other times I want to say it's not. Most people who are not from here seem to think it's not. But to be honest I don't know what is right. I just want to be sure that my family will be safe.
I do think there is a solution to this unbearable situation, and I think it goes through an end to the occupation and a two-state solution. The thing is, I'm totally outnumbered here and I have no idea how I can change people's minds. From time to time we go to demonstrations. From time to time I leave a long comment with a detailed argument in response to some Bigoted Facebook post. Most of the time I just try to get by the best I can. I'm not charismatic enough to galvanize the masses. I'm not rich enough to fund big projects that might change the future. I'm not social enough to go and befriend people on the other side of the conflict (I don't even like talking with my next-door neighbors). I'm only an ordinary person who has been living here long enough to tell you that all the things everyone is doing, from funding settlements to the BDS movement are only making everything worse. I don't have any idea how to make it better, though.
So we just keep living our lives and hope for the best. We go to work, we raise our girl, we procrastinate, and we forget to return library books. All those things and all those people we don't talk about come back to haunt us in my dreams and in my waking hours. They are always in the back of our minds, never really there, never truly gone. They stand and stare from the corner of the room when I fold the laundry. They lie in bed with us at night. They are even there at the tip of our tongues when we say something like "How was your day?" I think that's how she feels as well. I don't really know; we don't talk about it.
Or at least we didn't—until I sat down last night, wrote this text, and asked her to read it. After she did, She was silent for a moment. Finally, she raised her eyes to meet mine and said:
"Hey...
Let's talk about it."
