i was scrolling past the news this morning you know the kind where the pictures are all mud and twisted metal and people looking like ghosts in the rain it was some earthquake somewhere else far away and i felt that hollow thrum like a drumbeat in my chest the one that tells you something terrible has happened and you should probably do something about it like drop five bucks into a digital bucket or whatever but my stomach was rumbling a low growl that felt more real than any distant tremor and i kept scrolling kept flicking my thumb across the screen my eyes just bouncing off the horror almost like i was actively avoiding it almost like it wasn't really there if i just didn't look too hard my brain just went to lunch straight to it what should i eat today what would make this day slightly less like every other day of work and bills and the constant thrum of just enough but never quite enough and it was like a slap in the face the sheer disconnect of it all the mud and the hunger in those people’s eyes and my own hunger for a reasonably priced sandwich i ended up getting the stupid chicken club with extra mayo even though i knew it would push me a little over what i’d budgeted for the week and the whole time i was chewing i could feel it a hot coal in my gut not the sandwich just this raw knot of something ugly a resentment that felt too big for just me and my sandwich like how dare i how dare i sit here and chew and plan my evening around cheap tv when entire lives are just gone just wiped clean off the map and i spent less on that whole meal than what a lot of charities ask for a single meal for someone else and i wanted to spit the food out i really did just let it fall back onto the plate a protest a small offering to the universe for my own perceived HEARTLESSNESS but that would be a waste wouldn’t it another thing to clean up another thing to explain to a coworker if they walked by and saw me just spitting out food like some kind of feral animal so i swallowed it all down the chicken the bread the mayo and that bitter taste of knowing you're a particular kind of awful even when you’re just trying to make it to friday it's not like i have money to just throw around you know i watch the numbers in my bank account like a hawk waiting for that direct deposit to hit because rent is due and my car sounds like it’s slowly digesting itself and i need new art supplies if i’m going to pretend i’m still passionate about this job but that’s not an excuse is it that’s not a justification for feeling so utterly disconnected from the sheer agony of the world i should have just made pasta at home and sent five dollars somewhere it would have been so easy so little to give and i just… didn't i just didn’t and now it’s two in the morning and i can still feel the ghost of that chicken club in my stomach a heavy unwelcome presence and my fingers are twitching to scroll again to find another news report to punish myself with the images the suffering the sheer scope of it all and i just feel this rage this quiet furious rage at myself for being so small so unbelievably selfish so utterly unremarkable in my failure to just be a decent human for like five minutes of my day