Nerd Church - Hanau (& a Brief Note on the Flooding)

(Warning: this post discusses terrorism, murder, bigotry, etc. throughout, and flooding briefly at the end.)



I didn't want to write this post.

Sometimes it feels like I'm always writing about senseless acts of violence committed by lost souls and festering hatred.

But those 9 people (10 if you count the attacker's mother, which we should) in Hanau lost their lives.

They lost their lives to a White supremacist, far-right extremist, and terrorist, all wrapped up in the shell of one hate-filled man.

One hate-filled man took those lives.

And those lives mattered.

So here we are.

And I'm doing what I do - writing.




Hatred makes no sense to me.

The only hatred I understand, really, is the childish, passionate, kind - the gone-in-a-flash reactionary kind. 'You took my toy so I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!'

Very real feeling. (If my mother hadn't intervened when we were kids, I would've done my brother some serious injuries.) But extinguished quickly, all the same.




I've never been able to keep hatred up - never, luckily, had the knack of feeding it, letting it boil within me.

...Well. That's true. And it isn't. (I'm a walking contradiction, after all.)

Self-hatred I am very familiar with - that type of hatred I have to fight against.

But hating someone else...

How?





Beyond the previously-mentioned childish moments of pure burning fury, I can't imagine turning my hatred on another living thing.

Dislike, sure. We all have people who just irritate the hell out of us, or who we can't get along with for one reason or another.

But not hate.





How do you hate someone so much that you would plan to take their life? 

How do you hate a stranger that much? How do you hate anyone that much?

How do you hate a group of people simply because their skin is a different colour, or they speak a different language, or they love someone you don't approve of?





I don't understand.

I don't think I want to understand.

Instead, I'll let my heart break, again and again, every time I hear some awful thing on the news.

(Yes, I'm a 'bleeding-heart' - how can you not be? People are... so beautiful and amazing and terrible... how don't others feel that?)





Sure, it hurts. It hurts like hell. But the thought of hating someone? That hurts more.

The people killed in Hanau mattered. They mattered as much as anyone else.

They were beautiful, wonderful, complex, flawed, people.

And they deserved love, not hate.

Fill this world with love and hope, darling nerdlets - the strongest weapons of them all.

That's it for this week's Nerd Church, my dearest nerdlets, but I do want to give a brief mention to the flooding here in South Wales.

(I'm fine, don't panic - the weather's been wild & woolly, but no flooding here.)

Pontypridd is... my heart, and my roots; though I don't live there any more, and haven't, actually, since I was very small, it's still my home. Ponty is in my blood.

Likewise, lots of my family originally comes from the Rhondda, and many of the affected areas there.

Ponty and Rhondda people are the strongest and most resilient people in the world. We always have been. 

It's hard - some people have lost... so much, and let's face it - it was hardly the richest area in the world to begin with - but you'll get through this. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now.

My heart's with everyone affected, wherever you are.

← Previous Post