No one chose to be here.

That’s the thing that keeps spinning around in my head lately. Like, literally none of us picked this. Not our parents, not our country, not our skin, not our bodies, not the time period we landed in. We were just dropped here. “Congrats, you exist. Good luck.” And somehow people still walk around acting like they earned being here, or like somebody else deserved less. Like, I can’t wrap my head around that. None of us chose this. How can you look at people suffering — Gaza, Palestine, the border, the Black community, women who can’t afford to exist safely in their own skin — and not feel that? I cry. Every damn morning sometimes. Because I want to stay informed, but I also want to keep my head above water. And that’s a hard line to walk. You can’t do everything. You can’t fix it all. But you also can’t unsee it. And the guilt that comes with that? It’s a special kind of torment. Knowing that the world is burning and all you can do is raise your kids and keep your family safe, and somehow that has to be enough. But it never feels enough, because if anything ever happened to my girls — if the world took them — I’d break. Completely. So I keep going. I can’t check out. I don’t get that luxury. And that’s why I care the way I do — about everything. Even small things. Especially the small things. Like my hamster, Louie. She’s two years old now, which is basically elderly in hamster time, and she has this tumor that’s probably going to take her soon. I know that. And still, I’m doing everything I can to make her comfortable. Because it matters. Because she’s here. Because she didn’t choose this body or this lifespan or this stupid little tumor. And maybe it sounds ridiculous to care that much about something so small, but honestly? That’s the point. That’s exactly the point. Every act of care, no matter how tiny, is resistance against the cruelty of this world. It’s proof that I’m still human. That I still feel. So yeah, I’ll sit up with a dying hamster. I’ll talk to my plants like they’re people. I’ll cry for strangers I’ll never meet. Because empathy isn’t a burden — it’s a responsibility. Energy is energy. Life is life. Nobody chose to be here, but we’re here anyway. So the least we can do is make it softer.