Global chaos is mirroring my own personal chaos.

I only exist as a person because of the last regime change.

I am the smallest and most inconsequential possible element in all of this – it’s not about me in any way. Except to me. To me, it feels heavy and confusing.

This was a revolution where children were sent to walk over minefields so that they would be blown up instead of trained soldiers.

I learned from the people who were there never to trust any government. To never believe for a second that anyone was coming to save me. That the only person I can rely on is me.

The greatest gift I have ever been given is not that life, when it could so easily have been. I am too bold and outspoken to be anything other than a problem in that regime. I would not have survived.

I have a recurring knack of managing to pick up the exact book I need for the time I need it. In this case, unable to sleep at 3am, Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

I was expecting to have to read a lot of it. But I opened the first page to this.

I don’t think I can feel grateful for having happened. I am not there in that place and I don’t think I ever will be.

But the last part is true, I did happen. I cannot go back in time and change things and choose to wipe out my own existence.

But would I, if I had the choice? If it meant saving so many lives and so much destruction and unhappiness and the trajectory of everything that followed?

How could I not?