Curate, connect, and discover
A phrase in my feed caught my eye. "20 years" was trending.
"People share their memories and experiences 20 years after the first Surge," the caption claimed.
I press my home button and– yep. June 21st. The first time the world turned upside down was exactly 20 years ago.
When I was in primary school, we learned about the Surges on the anniversary of the second Surge. They say everyone remembers exactly where they were during the Surges– my mom was out for lunch in lower Manhattan while on vacation in NYC. She said it was terrifying, she just stood there shocked. Unsure what to do, if she could even do anything at all.
It used to be that every anniversary, she'd spend the day distracting herself, doing just about anything but acknowledging what day it was. In the years since, she's attended therapy, and support groups for "witnesses". She barely even flinches at the memory anymore.
I wasn't born in time for the Surges, but I can sympathize with how traumatizing it must have been. Still, it's always been hard to relate to those who saw it happen. Even the oldest of my peers were something like 4 when it happened. A lot of the people who do remember call those of us who weren't around for it ignorant, or insensitive for criticizing all the rash decisions people made after it happened. I don't think that's fair. We don't see it through the same lens they do, we didn't watch it happen. All we have to judge them on is what happened next. The rights that have been violated, the opportunities that were robbed from us, the people who were killed in the pursuit of some spectre of evil who caused this all to happen. Hell, in some circles, bringing it up in even a semblance of a critical light is taboo. I heard last November, a congressperson was almost shot on the steps of the capitol by some lunatic because they said that 'hey, maybe fucking killing people was a little much' after nineteen-and-a-half years.
I don't know. Maybe I am just insensitive. Maybe after 13 years of it being drilled into my head, I actually don't, in fact, understand the situation at all. Maybe it really was some spirit of absolute evil in east Asia who did this to spite us specifically, while also, in the process, making everyone's life much harder, their own included. Who knows?
Who knows.