*sigh*

It's driving me crazy.
Nothing is making sense.

Or maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe it's time i tell halva that the world is not meant to be controlled or understood.

I spent yesterday counseling a woman out of suicide. She was emaciated. Her eyes looked as if she was looking across me into another dimension. She kept saying "the water is calling me".

So there was me saying really useful and effective things like "Stay away from the water", "I know how much you're hurting","Suicide is a sin", "The water is evil" and "I am sure there is a palace in heaven for you right now as we speak".

I went in to do my designated work and was not really prepared for glazed suicide prone skeleton. Or 2 year olds eating roaches. Or old women wailing about their friend who died in detention last week, asking me what their crime in life was. Or babies breast fed by mothers who get meals twice a day and who can't seem to stop crying.

Worst yet, that there was really no conceivable way to get these people out of their situation. Their country rejected them because they were not the right religion or race. They have nowhere else to go. I had to exit without giving hope.

It is physically painful.

Last week i saw a 19 year old raging against the world and everything that stood in his way of happiness. Told me he wanted to be Mandela and throw himself in jail at least he would stand for something. Told him Mandela would not be Mandela without the pain, suffering and sacrifices he made.

Saw an Arab who had nothing but anger, despair and desperation. So much anger. So much anger. So much anger. Absorbed it all, frightened by its intensity.

Saw a Tamil who was tortured by a bag of rats put over his head. And whose father was killed brutally in public. And who detonated landmines for a living. And who told his story as if he was speaking about the weather.

Met a Muslim woman who was gang raped but who refused to talk about it out of shame.

Talked to a Christian woman who shed quiet tears for her mother who suffered a heart attack when learning about her rape. Met a Christian man who sobbed shamelessly in between choking accounts of his father who died in prison from blows by police who were looking for him.

Met a Buddhist soldier who served under an army which commanded the death of Muslim civilians. Met an African who was part of a rebel group and spoke of mainly death, hate and revenge. And who issued death threats.

Also, if there was one thing more apparent than before, particularly now with the London bombings, is that Muslims are the pariahs of the world.

The implications of the bombings on my clients are enormous. Nobody wants my Muslim clients. So they will rot and die in jails and camps. And be led to the waters.

My neck hurts all the time now. I keep thinking of the skeleton.

What twist of fate allows me to sink into soft sheets and smells of lavender cream at nights while she has cold, hard cement for a lifetime, for simply being.

But also, strangely, i somehow feel that that i've always wanted this moment. And in an even stranger way, it's a sort of relief that i'm finally here, after searching for so long. And to realise how anger is futile really, because there is so much to be angry about. I think that's really why i am so exhausted.

Anger is a decidedly unsophisticated response to the world's injustices.

And i take inspiration and bow my head in reverence to my interpreter (also a client) who told me, over coffee -

"I realised that my early life prepared me for the life i am destined to lead. My life was always hard, and now i know that it was to help me deal with my life the way it is now. So i can adapt, i can change, and i can make it convenient for me. I can survive".