Reasons, All. Justification, None.
[TW: Violent descriptions of a protest]
[Saturday, July 25th]
It’s three in the morning, and my body has already surrendered to the old ritual. No hands, no feet, no mouth. My eyes still work, and they go where they always do. Right across the room to the corner by the washroom door. It’s there. Tonight, it carries a shape I recognise, mine. To my surprise, the other me doesn't cross the room to place a knee on my chest to knock me out. I’m watching me. Unmoving, stationary, and more disquieting than ever. My therapist tells me that it’s unhealthy to attach any emotion you feel when seeing it, but that’s not happening tonight. Shame is the closest word that comes to mind. Maybe, maybe not, but that’s what I feel. I keep my eyes locked on me for a long time, not sure for how long. It feels like I want something.
Soon enough, the spell breaks the way it always does. I am gone, and I wake up covered in cold sweat. Sleep is not going to return anytime soon, so might as well drink some water and settle down at the desk. Outside, my city, my people, even my friends have spent this last week choking on tear gas and bandaging their deeply bruised arms and legs. The police did this to them, for protesting against a leaked life-changing paper, an education system that swallows your existence whole, for the twenty-one children gone just this year, and against a government that’s all too capable of spinning stories that mythologise them, all too egoistic to take accountability or even acknowledge the pain of its people. They call themselves a democracy, while whispering the words of totalitarianism under their breath.
I've watched countless videos of the protests, and I'm doing it again now. One tab of Instagram open on the second monitor as I start writing about hip pain for my day job. A man in a green shirt takes hits from six officers at once, screaming for more so that people younger than him don’t take a hit. A young girl, maybe twelve, tells the camera an officer tore her clothes and groped her chest while the women officers just watched. Another student is trying to stop the blood running down his face, having brushed past a nail-infused baton while trying to save someone. I watch it all, and go back to writing about butts. A WhatsApp group I muted three days ago keeps climbing in green numbers. Over this past week, I’ve watched enough happen to feel something. I did not do anything.
There’s a block right now, and I’m unable to write anymore. I know, I’ll play that old game I bought last week for cheap. no thing.
There's a calming, synthetic voice that keeps spewing random bullshit as I try to loop around the levels and hit that 100% on each of them. I couldn’t have told you what he was saying, even if you’d asked me for individual sentences. It’s difficult - between the chip tune soundtrack, the voice, and the ever-speeding player character - to keep your focus on those words. It’s difficult to complete each level too, as a single slip-up puts you back to the start. I died a lot, and each time the level began, all my attention went to my controller. Slowly, though, the random words of the narrator began to burn themselves into my brain as I kept replaying the level. The path becomes familiar, my hands learn what the mind gave up, and the mind begins to take note of the words. In the quieter moments that stem from this game’s design, when my scrambling focus goes still, the narrator keeps talking. Patient as rent, patient as rot. After enough runs of each level, I find myself repeating each word under my breath—
You are a simple office clerk, I know what you did, and so does the queen, the city is not sleeping, the city is awake, keep your head on the floor, do not look into their eyes, you are the simplest office clerk, crowd is not your everyday friend, stand in line for happiness, the simplest office clerk, eight hours sleeping-eight hours working-for eight hours-watching tv, our democracy, totalitarian regime, life permissions are given on the sixth floor, overrated by people, forgotten by people, simplest office clerk. It feels disgusting and transgressive to even write these words, my—
“Are we not your kids? Why are you doing this to us?” A young kid cries to a woman officer on my second monitor. I don’t remember scrolling, I don’t think much of the reels turning over on their own either. A pellet shotgun is being fired into a crowd of students now. A boy lay flat on the ground trying to run from a tear gas canister that landed and exploded right on his chest. A male officer is slapping a girl and threatening to do it again. Another is poking a kid’s rear with his baton while smiling shamelessly at his colleague. I could link it all here, but I don't want to.
The channels responsible for covering the protests keep finding a way to make the maths come out wrong. The numbers refuse to add up. They say that fifty officers, carrying weapons, helmets, vests, and shields, were hurt by stones thrown from a crowd wearing t-shirts, tops, jeans, and sneakers. The latter’s only shield, if you can even call it that, was their school and college bags. They claim that the students protesting are funded and supported by foreign organisations looking to break this nation. They claim that the protest was filled with anti-national elements that only want the worst for the country. They want to scream in my ears that this was a fair fight that nobody saw coming. 50 injured officers versus a few thousand kids with broken hands, broken heads, broken legs, broken hopes, broken dreams, and further disillusionment in the ruling party’s ability to take care of them. They want me to listen to this endless noise and burn it into my brain, until I can no longer think for myself and only spew the same bullshit, repeatedly and mindlessly.
I can’t say any of this explains why I didn’t go to the protest till now. Plenty of people watch the same things I did and still show up. Plenty watch none of it and help organise the whole damn thing. Watching wasn't the reason I stayed home, and whatever I can claim as the reason I stayed home isn’t big enough to carry the weight of the decision. There was comfort in staying at home and “trying” to spread these reels as far and wide as possible. There was fear, embarrassingly, of being on both the receiving end of the batons and of finding out in front of everyone that I wasn’t as certain as I’d have liked to be. There was tiredness from eight hours of work to seek eight hours of scrolling, eight hours of numbness. There was even hopelessness and cynicism. Twenty-one kids were already gone, the next year would bring its own list of names, and the ministers at our service wouldn’t be troubled by one more body - it’s all a statistic for them anyway. Comfort. Fear. Tiredness. Hopelessness. Reasons, all. Justification, none.
I’ve returned to the comforting blue of no thing's start screen again, no rush to load the next level. My phone, sitting face down beside me, is still lighting up again and again, the unread count still climbing in the dark. Suddenly, I feel something at the back of my neck. I don't know whether it's my double again, or someone else entirely. It’s a breath, I think, or maybe just the window I left open earlier, the first wind ahead of rain - finally coming to a city that's spent the last few weeks asking for something, anything, other than the protestors to break. I don’t check which. I still don’t want to know.
I don’t know yet if I’ll go today. I’d like to say I’ll try. Then again, watching myself say this just feels like one more way of not going, like the simplest office clerk, standing in line for happiness, overrated by people, forgotten by people, staying in a dream. I'd like to change that.