DISTANCE

I made a placard and cycled to the embassy, and there, looking at our tiny tiny group of people thought: one assassination + one assassination, makes two, and like that slowly and rapidly the number came up to 40 000. Maybe we, slowly and rapidly become enough, all of us.

It is very bizarre. I did not leave the country because of the political state it was, or the level of violence on the streets, but it is certainly now one of the main reasons that stop me from coming back. 

It is really sad to realized that your family slowly stops asking you to come back, and suddenly they even suggest not to do it. Like if they ran out of good reasons other than them missing you. 

It is very sad to have a shit life overseas and still think its potentially better than back home. I don't think I have given too much thought of how the prospect of coming back actually scares me. 

It is not only because the majority of my adult life I have lived it away, and I have less than a hand full of friends left there, or because I fear my career would have no future, what actually scares the hell out of me is that slowly slowly, the whole situation there (the corruption, the assassinations, the poverty, the many injustices), will become such and everyday thing that it will be just normalized, and become immune to it probably after a few frustrated and pitiful intents to change it. 

So I suddenly got really angry and thought, what the hell is going on?! Why am I so fearful of my country? why do I have so little hope and faith for it? why do I find it so sadly broken and decaying that I have stop trying to understand it and look away. 

I dont know how much or little I can do from here, to start regaining some of that lost hope. Specially since I had actively given up on reading the news and stay informed.

While I was outside the embassy, I started to think of the distance, between London and Mexico, between the country I used to know and the one that has become. 

Other distances have become shorter, like whit my family for example. 

I though of the consequences of those distances. 

Last week, I saw my dog being put down after an illness related to old age, on skype. It reminded me of the many things I am missing out, the ageing of my parents for example. And how somehow, that dog was to me 5 years old, like when I left almost 9 years ago, his life length has shortened.

Like the lives of those assassinated. Shortened. 

I thought 40 000, is only a number.   

I tried to imagine what it actually meant 40 000 shortened lives. Lives that have become this number, an statistic. Numbers can also mean distance. 

And thought of how long in terms of distance can a shortened life measure.