Somebody Tell Me What's Wrong With This Picture...

...How long will it take before it hits ya
And you begin to understand
The dirty underhanded kind of plan
To place pandemonium upon the land
Face to face with the faces of death
On a daily basis
To the point we embrace this
Demonic debauchery
Negatively affecting the psyche
That's why we like to see
Some type of monster, chasin'
Erasin' people from the face of the earth like Jason
When that was just a movie really illustratin'
The illy type of shit that they really got waitin'
And I can't be condoning 'em
Sick minds perpetuating pandemonium


~ The Pharcyde




I am completely torn in half right now. Torn between anger and sadness. Between understanding and condemnation. So angry at both sides, for completely different reasons. (Thanks, Kidfos, for putting that so simply and clearly before, in a way that I was unable to.)


In this, as in so many other things, I straddle the line.


I haven't been back to London, but I understand things are a little better. Not good, but better. I don't know if this is just the eye of the storm, so to speak, or if the rioters have burned themselves out. Or perhaps it's just that the city's basically on lockdown now, and the police now have permission to use water cannons and plastic bullets.


A YouGov survey today said that nearly a third of people surveyed were in favor of using live ammo on the rioters. Evidently totally missing the point - or not caring - that use of unnecessarily strong force by the police was what sparked this crisis in the beginning.


These are our children. And they're in pain. Yes, they're dangerous. Yes, they need to be stopped. Yes, they need to be brought before a judge and held responsible for their crimes, and find a way to pay their debt and help rebuild the city. They do not deserve to be killed because of a feverish madness that has infected them briefly. And it is a form of temporary insanity, or they would do this all the time. Perhaps it takes someone who straddles the line to see that.


I'm supposed to be at work. I hate that I'm not. If I were a bank cashier or a shop assistant or a veterinarian, I'd be perfectly justified in staying home. But I'm not. I'm a youth worker, and a crisis support worker. Dealing with situations like this is my job, although we've never had anything on this scale. Public transport isn't reliable enough to get me in every day, even if I could afford the train tickets, but if I had someone in London to stay with...but then there's Mom. Perhaps that's the biggest area in which I'm torn in two. Wanting to go out and do my job, do what I know is right - but morally bound to stay home and protect the family and castle.


Times like this are when I most resent having people who depend on me. For so many years my job has been to look after my mother. And I love my mother, of course I do. I love her more than anything - evidently more than my kids at work, which is why I'm here instead of there. Yet I am past the stage in my life where I'm content to protect the home front, and it chafes on me that I am unable to go out and perhaps help a dozen people, because of that one who requires me above all others.


Stay home and ignore my job, and the kids who rely on me. Or go to London, do my job, and leave my mother unprotected. Nothing major has happened here - we had a gang of kids outside the front yesterday evening, talking loudly about wanting to loot, but after awhile they just went home - but you can never be sure. If they're kicking off in Gloucester, for pete's sake, then there's no reason they won't here. It's not so much the idea of leaving the home undefended, though, it's more the risk to me that going into London would cause. My heart and soul find this risk low and perfectly acceptable - I am not a coward, not someone who runs from danger. My mother does not find any kind of risk acceptable when it comes to me, no matter how long the odds of being hurt. And because of that, because of that refusal to loosen the bonds, my brain constantly bombards me with the same question - If you put yourself in danger and something happens to you, how will Mom survive?


This is not a question that most children have to deal with. Usually the people you have to protect are your kids, not your parents. But since I started walking and talking my main focus in life has been to make sure that mother is okay. And that means *I* have to stay okay.


I wonder how many parents feel this way. How many feel the burden of love that precludes putting themselves in any danger, not because they're scared of dying, but because doing so feels like abandoning their families. How many men want to join the military and fight for their country but feel unable to leave a clinging wife and children, amid unspoken accusations of desertion. How many people want to do the right thing, even when that involves some physical risk, but the guilt keeps them at home. Obviously not everyone feels that crushing burden, or nobody would ever leave home at all.


I have always known that love can smother as easily as warm, but at times like this that knowledge is amplified.


So I sit here, watching other people doing my job for me, and feeling totally useless and unnecessary.