April 24

I wrote a long post tonight about the Armenian Genocide. But I am too afraid to post it. Can you believe that? I live in Canada, a country where it’s now illegal to deny that the genocide did in fact happen. Yet I’m still afraid. Afraid for my family who still live in Turkey. Afraid of what people who drop in via Google will say. Afraid that any mention of Genocide will land me on some watch list that will have someone get all fundamentalist on my opinionated, liberal, female, Armo ass. It's happened before -- just over a year ago, to a journalist who was as critical of Armenians as he was of Turks. That's effed-up.

Interestingly enough, I must have googled enough red flag stuff to make Big Brother shut down my Internet connection temporarily. I took that as a sign.

I don’t like to get political on my blog. It’s my sanctuary and I loathe when strangers decide to take a shit on my blog carpet. I don’t mind when people scold me for a snarky viewpoint, or disagree with a choice I’ve made. It’s the pure anonymous vitriol that gets under the skin of most bloggers. But hey, if we’re exposing ourselves on this level, then we should just suck it up, right? Unfortunately we are humans with feelings and that’s harder to do sometimes than it is to pay lip service to.

But sometimes it's good. Sometimes a comment that smarts gets you thinking. Last year on April 24, all I was thinking about was my sorry pregnant self, when I received a comment that said, "What a post for an Armenian to make on April 24th." I was mortified. How could I forget?

All I will say about the Armenian Genocide is this: We have to learn to forgive in order to have a future. We’re never going to get back our lost relatives. Most of them would be dead by now anyway. We’re never going to repair the lives that were severed (on both sides) because of this horrible black spot in history. It's never going to hurt less that an entire government thought that we should be exterminated, or that the world was too busy to do anything about it. But maybe, just maybe, if we could find a way to release the hurt and the anger, we could start over again.