Random Shadow

I should have tougher skin by now, and not be this upset when people say the hateful things. Posting on you tube threads arguing with people over how their words only add hatred and don't help anybody should prepare me to be able handle these comments. I can most of the time too. It doesn't normally bug me. People say horrible things about it and I can just ask them why they say them and tell them how they demean the people they are fighting for. Then there are the people who start insulting me and say nasty things. Some subjects I should get used to and not be worried about, I should understand that they come along with subjects like Israel and Palestine. The Holocaust is something that directly relates but I'm always surprised and hurt to hear what too many people think.1

Even though I don't pick sides, having defied my family in that refusing to support Israel in everything she has done. My family thought it was betrayal to not support Israel because some of them are Jewish, at least my sisters and dad. They didn't think I understood that Israel was created to say "Never again", and they imply that I'm dishonoring our family members killed in the Holocaust. They have no idea that I shudder every person who denies it on threads, it is so upsetting. One of them brought me to tears- the pain was so raw- they were being nasty and saying so many things about how I was evil because I mentioned my family was Jewish- they joked about losing my family in the Holocaust and said it wasn't real. I should probably not have let him bait me but it was so difficult to not just respond. I already get made to feel like I am not doing the right thing- when in truth I want the hatred to just stop- on all sides. It’s so frustrating some times because I want peace and for my generation to not inherit a world that will just destroy each other. If we can't get it together I'm genuinely afraid. I want to make a difference and even I don't get recognized for it I just want things to change so my generation knows peace. 2

People are so full of their hatred because that’s all they have, I guess. I'm so used to tolerance and even as unflinching in this as my Dad and sisters are my dad is starting to listen to me about it - hearing all the hate and how much people are willing to have people die because they are a certain race just shocks me to the core. I feel like I got myself into this though- I can't complain. I chose to argue and to fight for the people who don't have a voice. I made that choice-no one else made it for me. I've been through so much I should be so much stronger than this. I shouldn't be caring anymore.3

Its not as if I actually know them, or they know me. 4

I need to get a tougher skin and I feel so useless and frustrated because I'm 15, and as much as I believe that shouldn't matter it does. I get condescended to by the same people who say 'finally there is someone speaking truly ' to my words before they know my age. 5

I've fought so hard to have the right to make my own choices and to be who I am today. I've fought so many battles for what I believe- why is this any different? I wasn't vulnerable for those and they weren't hurting me this way. Maybe I'm losing strength, I don't know. I fought past being ignored and hated, to making friends; I fought to be trusted by people who had no reason to. I fought to change to be someone else and to not be a victim from everything that happened to me. I fought to get out of situations that would kill my future before it began. I stood strong while the closest people to me deserted me in exchange for power and left me standing alone, with no one. I stood while they took the months they needed to find out that the person they followed didn't care about them and that they were much better being fairly and equal with me who was friends with everyone than looked at kind of by someone who was insecure despite external beauty.6

I fought during that time and broke through racial barriers to get passage into a tightly woven group bound by past exclusions that once opened with kindness and trust welcomed me with open arms. I became someone that had stood alone and was able to stand with them, stand with someone finally. After the ones who left me figured out they were wrong- after tormenting me and hurting me for months and isolating me from everyone- they realized that while they didn't talk to me I had built friendships with the group that ignored even them- I was there not challenging and I beat them in that all the time they only had the eyes to see my pain. At the end of that I stood strong and came out unable to trust again but I worked through that. I beat that- and now because of me the grade is united after I left. 7

How come after all that, and after almost losing one of the people who means the most to me in the world, after fighting to not lose her friendship, after fighting for all that still now I'm weak?8