Respect Means to Look Again

Photo by Ludemeula Fernandes

(this is essentially a diary entry. It is unedited)

I am a graduate student who drives an hour to and from the university. I am fortunate because I have a choice of beautiful country roads and can, if I am not running late, avoid the highway. Unfortunately, the roads I drive are littered with death. Most people survive this increasingly cruel world by relying heavily on blinders and categorizing terrible things with terms that soften or add humor the blow. Terms like “road kill.”

I have been doing this drive now for a year and a few months, with a handful of months left to go. It is a mix of emotions, from awe in witnessing bird murmurations, regal bald eagles high in the trees, and adorable just birthed lambs to disheartenment in the state of humanity for just how callous and cruel humans can be. It can be especially hard on long stressful days when I am fighting exhaustion and racing home to beat the dusk because I am light sensitive and driving in the contrast of dark and hyper bright headlights (what is the deal with these increasingly bright, white headlights anyways?) so I do not crash due to being blinded.

For me, the hardest part of graduate school is the constant death on the roads. I am an “animal person.” That sounds so stupid but it is accurate. It is a compulsion in some ways … to protect animals from humans. I have been known to…