I'm sorry for the cruelty of this picture, but I couldn't see Amina and not share her story. Trigger warning: eye injury (bloody eyes).
Amina Ghanem, 13 years old, says: We were sleeping and we heard the sound of tanks when they came and walked over the caravan in which I, my father and my siblings lived. The tank squeezed us inside the tin all night, and we were ran over, until the morning. And when they finally let us out, I found that my father and my little sister have been killed. Now we've been brought here.
She tells her story in this video with her little brother beside her. They're all on their own. Their mother is outside of Gaza and cannot get in or get them out. They have no way of communication, their father and sister are killed.
if my body could speak, blythe baird // i put the coffin out to sea, lisa marie basile // @/belovedbi // ? // been a son, nirvana // elektra, sophokles; translated by anne carson // ? // churching, kristin chang
I've seen people say the found family trope is queer because it's about "choosing" rather than being "given," and while that's true, I think there's another reason people often gloss over or misunderstand:
found family is queer because the labels don't always fit.
sometimes a character falls somewhere between a brother and a cousin. sometimes they're a big brother, a father figure, and a weird uncle all at once. sometimes they're a sibling when a third character is present, but a parent when they aren't. sometimes any attempt to label them just falls short.
often when a lot of people are fighting over what traditional family role a member of a found family is, I find myself thinking, "maybe you're all right, and all wrong, too. maybe there isn't just one label. maybe it's a found family, so it's queer."
I woke up and apparently the moon was gonna hit the earth, but everyone was like, really chill about it.
I talked to my mom and she said: “Yeah, the moon will hit the earth in about three months, you still have time to say goodbye to the people who you care about."
I was like "damn”, and then I said: “How do you guys knew before me?” And my mom said: “Its because we watch the news and you don´t.”
When Johanna has to leave her parents and she becomes a scared kid all over again, Hilda thinks her mum chooses to stay over her. When Hilda says ‘this is a dream, and they’re only memories’ it’s because Johanna isn’t a kid anymore, she can’t make new memories with her parents, not in the way they want to, because life isn’t the same in Fairy Country. To stay in Fairy Country is to stay in the past. To stay in the past is to abandon the present, and to abandon the present is to abandon the future. You can’t live when nothing ever changes, our living is marked not by the passage of time, but by the change we go through. Change is different, and it can be sad, but it can also be good. If you were to live in a world of stasis, you would only be existing, and Hilda and her mum were meant for living. Despite the comfort of Johanna’s past, she can’t stay in it. Hilda doesn’t want to stay in it. She doesn’t want either of them to stay in it. Johanna has to choose between her past and her future (and with it her daughter’s future). Her parents left the life they built FOR JOHANNA, and Johanna leaves the life she lost FOR HILDA. She chooses what’s best, even if it hurts her, even when the child she was is begging her not to, because that’s what parents do. They choose their kids. They choose their kids every time. Don’t you see?? There is so much love.