AuDN4T

I’ve been thinking much about this. Trying to navigate it with AI, bounce thoughts.

Reflecting on my grandfather’s birthday. The man he was. What he endured. What my grandmother endured. What their families endured. This isn’t to say there were stupid stereotypes in the village with other religions. This was a common issue in Eastern Europe.

Though from my understanding, my grandmother would never say a terrible thing about a person. I wonder why their kids would follow onto the stereotypes of Jewish people. This is a pretty shitty thing to do – to isolate people. I do think we’ve come a long way in Ukraine. I think the younger generations don’t really care for different religions – or oppressing someone who is different from them. I feel like that is the case… or at least in Toronto? I’ve had people say – oh yeah, there’s this cute girl who is Jewish but I can’t go about dating a Jewish girl. LOL – why? There’s so much you can learn from each other. I didn’t think twice when I dated my first gf. I thought she was cute. End of story. Like there’s some things you know are wrong (stopping yourself from dating someone because of a religion) and you just need to break that cycle and call it out. If they’re a good person who cares – it’s all that matters, right? Have I repeated things that my parents have said? Yes. Do I regret saying those things? Yes. But that’s the shitty thing about this world. Families repeat this garbage and it gets passed onto their kids and onto their kids. And you isolate yourself from that group of people without getting to know them and you don’t have a true version of them. You really are missing out by not getting to know these different people.

Tracking back on this intergenerational trauma. There will be people of different ethnicities that have endured it more than others. It’s not a competition… we need to look at who is likely to have more power – white straight men who are anglo-saxon. This isn’t to put them into shame, it’s just the reality of it. There are white men who understand this, they understand their privilege and work on making amends. But I think we need to have a hard look at who we treat differently. Who are we really afraid of. Who tells us to be afraid of these people. Are they doing this to divide us? Why do they want us to be divided? Is it an oppression tactic? If we can’t speak out together about how terrible our leadership is – we won’t stand united to take them down. They can further exploit us while they keep making money off of our backs. They take but never give back.

Oppress Ukrainians by dispersing them across Poland – make them farm the land but give them little to no resources. No resources to care for their family members with disabilities. No resources to care for their family members with dementia.

All the insane things that my grandparents went through was passed down to my mom. It can be visible in my mom. She watches a lot of Ukrainian historical content on Operation Wistula and other Stalinistic events that had occurred. You hear it in her voice. You hear it if not daily, on a weekly basis. And this is where I’ve somewhat had to disassociate because it is a lot with everything else going on. Life pressures – school, work, deadlines, relationships, world events (i.e., COVID, russia invading Ukraine), wanting to buy our own place, hiding AL from my mom for 6 years, general ND overload. It’s a lot.

I understand that is likely her coping mechanism. Trauma was dumped on her. She heard stories about family members living in the forest because of the risk of being killed by the Polish Army. She heard stories about those forced deportations – her grandmother being almost killed because she wanted to take her cow with her to feed her kids. Stories about her uncle getting their hands blown off because they were playing with a grenade from WWII that they found. Stories about her uncle almost causing his family to be killed by the Polish soldier in the middle of the night. Stories about her uncle missing and her father constantly wondering where he is. What happened to him. Only getting some vague response from some Soviet member that he’s gone. That’s it. No body to bury. No idea where he’s been buried. No real closure.

Hearing these stories over and over again… it’s hard. You end up shutting down. It’s a weird compounded trauma. Throw in some domestic violence and you’re more exhausted.

This impacts your psyche – I think. You start losing your confidence in combination with being different (ND) and being bullied. You end up feeling small, unsure of yourself…. and part of that is ensuring you’re 100% aware of all the facts.

All this trauma and you end up burning out faster and just thrown to the curb because you’re no longer useful to anyone…. despite being able to run laps around stupid politicians who make obtuse decisions.

We really need to reform our decision making process, how much is spent and change legislation to actually hold political leaders accountable. If an organization CEO can be fined and jailed for negligence, a political leader should be able to have the same consequences. That way they are afraid to make stupid decisions… because of risk of jail time/fines.

I’m simply exhausted now. I didn’t think I’d be sleeping that long today. I just wish I had more drive but also get compensated for this stupid trauma (including what happened at work). The fact that I don’t know how to proceed or feeling barriers with everything is hard. I end up doing what keeps me grounded like spreadsheets/powerpoint. But that’s not healthy because it’s not getting me anywhere. There’s no compensation in that. Yes, art is therapeutic. But that isn’t bringing any money. I need to pay for bills. Some accounts act wonky and I just don’t have the energy to fight that either. Even trying to work on anything today felt exhausting.