Dystopia fault

The horizon is glowing.
The days keep coming, in purple and blue.
„Is this my Dystopia fault?“, I ask my witch.

In the past years, I have come across one statement about the newly felt fragility of life very often, and I have constantly felt as if something about that was not right.
So often have I read or heard that only those friendships or relationships could suffer under or even be ended by the pandemic that were broken in the first place. Something had to be wrong about them, if the next big crisis could end them. There had to be something that was not working and it just needed a specific situation to show.
To show their weakness?
Their fault?

I am wearing a lace top and the temperature in my bedroom is down to 8°C.
My eyes look as if they have never been open before.
The coffee is getting cold.
„What is a Dystopia fault supposed to be?“, my witch asks, posing in front of the mirror wearing nothing but my extra warm pair of tights.

“Have you ever picked up the shards of something that was once much loved?”, I ask Layla. “Something that is missed dearly, but had to fall apart? Did those shards find rescue somewhere between your skin and bones, for every wrong movement to be a reminder?” Painful words make my witch listen to me with glowing eyes. “And maybe you were wondering, why things were able to fall apart like this?”
Maybe there was something wrong with them in the first place?
„Let me guess“, my witch giggles, still enjoying winter clothes that did not swallow her body shape completely. „People told you to let go. To start over. To accept things the way are.“

And I did not want to.

Is this my Dystopia fault?
Should I have looked out more?
Should I have looked at my beloved moments of the past and seen the fine lines in them? The pattern along which they could crack to eventually break for good?
Should I have abandoned them and looked out for something safer?
Something more functional?
„Should I have not fallen in love with the most sensitive boy I have ever met?“
Layla sighs. „Should I have been born to a mother that would not have died as early?“
„Should I have chosen another best friend, that would not retreat into spending her days reading books in her dead mother‘s bedroom?“
The list could go on.
I should probably have been born into a family where not only a very few people liked me, who by the way were the oldest ones and the first ones to die. I should have maybe been happier as a teenager and made more friends so that the ones leaving would not have been noticed so much. I could have had siblings, or cousins, to not feel so lonely in the winter months or on holidays. I could have been born to parents that could not pass on their mental illness to me.
I could have been born to a millionaire.
With blond hair and blue eyes.

I find this view on things terrifying. I found it terrifying in the pandemic, I find it even more terrifying in the light of more and more conflicts exploding around our heads with each moment, or when thinking about our collapsing climate, economic system. You name it.

We cannot decide under which circumstances we enter this world. Sometimes, there is no safety net and it is tough to build one with nothing to start. Stating that only those things break that were too fragile in the first place underestimates the beauty and the quality in all things fragile, weak and odd. And those things also deserve to be loved and cared for.

„I don‘t think it‘s our Dystopia fault how easy things can end“, my witch disrupts my thoughts, now sitting on the window sill, still topless and no curtains in sight.
I nod and slowly sit up.
We deserve to live in a world that is supportive and gentle.
„Right now the horizon is on fire“, I complain to my witch and she laughs.
A new day begins.