Wordlessness.

For someone who aspires to be a writer, the worst thing that can happen is to run out of words. To have unruly thoughts bounce off the walls of your mind, unable to find a single word that can articulate it and let it out. It’s even more distressing when you want to articulate oppression, be it your own or someone else’s, and you find yourself short of words. What is the word for when your rage doesn’t yield any words, when it doesn’t translate into meaning, when you are exhausted of saying the same thing over and over and over, in different words, dressed in different phrases, compressed into different sentences?

What’s the word for when you have reached the end of the tightrope but realise you have to walk back and forth a million times more before you can step down?

I find it happening more and more these days. Not just with me, but with the world in general.

I see an unshakeable exhaustion creep in, brought forth by the increasing violence of everyday life. Hopelessness that settles like dust into your pores. Another attack, another rape, more bloodshed. We crack, we break, we think we can move on.

But we can’t.

Racism, sexism, misogyny, bigotry wear us thin in more ways than we can comprehend. It dilutes our empathy. It chips away at the edge of our sanity.

We lose more words. We lose more meaning. We lose a little more of ourselves each day.

And one fine day, when a dead child is washed ashore, or an entire tribe is burnt alive, or a woman’s body is turned inside out, we pause. We mourn. But there is no meaning to our mourning anymore.