There's a Pain in the Back of My Neck

I am a sensitive person, and the world is too hard for me right now.

Collage by me. Enough 2 (2026).

I came home because I wanted meaning and purpose. When I watched Andor, I wanted to be home, dealing with the rebellion.

That little boy with his blue hat. 

I took today off. It’s my last 8 hours of PTO until I next get PTO, and all my coworkers are women of color closer to the frontlines than I.

And yet there’s a pain in the back of my neck. I have to be perfect. I have to be perfectly sane. I have to sleep more because I don’t know the last time I slept 8 hours at once.

I don’t know why I’m suffering so much. Am I externalizing the mental anguish that I’m internalizing from the world?

I’ve been getting very into hatred lately. I think thoughts that I have to hide, or sometimes I loudly proclaim them with my friends. The world is too hard. The little boy with his blue hat makes me want to hurt them back the way they’re hurting him and all the other little boys and girls and parents and kind souls who are being disappeared. 

I came home to make a difference and I’ve chased ICE vehicles on foot and recorded evidence and delivered food to families and gone to protests and written up legal protocols. I go into work five days a week and made an appearance in the NYT. I want to be a completely different person and meditate to self harm and I can’t tell how much of all of this is internal external from my family or from myself. 

I’ve been getting very into hatred lately and think a lot about the Nuremberg trials. I don’t want to hate. I want to forgive these hateful people so that I don’t carry this burden with me. But how can I forgive right now when the crimes are ongoing and the history is not in the rearview? How can I forgive when my pale privilege protects and divides me from my friends and coworkers? It’s uncomfortable having privilege. It’s awkward. I’m thanked for all I’m doing for their community and it’s very quietly my community too I want to whisper but cannot because where is the space for virtue signaling or for how can I have that conversation of all conversations right now when they’re thanking me for god’s sakes and can you take a look out of the window at what’s going on right now and your privilege protects and divides you.

And the poor little boy in the blue hat. My heart breaks for him. My heart hardens for him and it’s making me sick. The revenge fantasies that make me uncomfortable and waste my energy. 

This is what they do to you. They drag you down with them. They cannot bear beauty in the world so they sicken it, cheapen it, destroy it. I remember a former friend (obsessed with Star Wars) who was insistent on the need for armed rebellion and who was focusing on their garden at the moment. I don’t know why there’s so much stasis except to say that there’s a time and a place for everything and god knows why but it’s not the time yet and by the time comes it might be too late. 

But I think again of the little boy in the blue hat and everything about him that matters. The whole universe inside of him and all his family.

I’m beyond lucky to be able to work to fight against this. I’m so lucky that I found a path home to resistance. I’m so lucky for my privilege and my community and my job. So I guess I better get back to it. Amidst the hatred and the fear and the inertia, there’s always work to be done.