It was on September 27th that the invasion of Artsakh began, and still it continues. To my deepest horror, the Azeris are getting closer to my grandfather’s village in the south. They want to join Azerbaijan with their exclave Nakhichevan, cutting off Armenia’s only border with a country it can trust, Iran (Georgia is run by a bunch of backstabbers). I don’t know what is going to happen. There have been three attempts at a ceasefire but the Azeris aren’t stopping.
Looking at Facebook and reading the news just stresses me out and depresses me. Maybe I should stop going on there so much. It’s not as if there’s anything I can do about the situation, beyond donate what I can (which isn’t much), sign some petitions through ANCA, that sort of thing. It isn’t good for my mental health. It’s putting me in a bad mood. If it’s beyond my control though, then I’m stressing myself out for no real reason, right? I should take a break from the internet altogether and watch a movie, read a book. Draw and write. I’m all the way in Florida, after all, where everyone’s more concerned with a stupid election (all other news besides the war feels trivial and irrelevant to me now) than a war on the other side of the world between two countries they have never heard of. Halloween is coming up. Maybe I should marathon my favorite horror films like I do every year.
Yes, let’s just bury my head in the sand and hope it all goes away.
Sure would be nice if the people actually on the frontlines fighting this war had that luxury, wouldn’t it? They don’t get to take a break from the war. Neither do the civilians holed up in bunkers. Neither do those who lost loved ones. Neither do those who lost limbs. Neither do those who are dead. How privileged am I? I’ve never been through anything remotely like that. What kind of person am I if I look away? A whiner. An awful person who doesn’t care about Armenia, that’s what. It’s a new Armenian genocide! How can I carry on with life, how can I keep posting that webcomic, how can I act like nothing’s wrong, when EVERYTHING is wrong? How dare I ignore it?
So you see my dilemma.
A distant cousin of mine died in the war. I only met him once, very briefly, when I went with my cousin Raffi to Meghri, Shvanidzor and Agarak, where his family lived. He was the great-grandchild of my grandfather’s sister. Am I even allowed to mourn someone I barely know? It isn’t really my tragedy. I can’t turn it around and make it about me, nor do I want to. That’s why I am not going to post about it on Facebook or anything tasteless like that. But how am I supposed to react? How am I supposed to feel? I don’t know at all. Perhaps, it just makes this whole war hit closer to home. It puts a face on the tragedy for me.
I can’t even smile or laugh without feeling guilty. And there is no answer.
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