As terrifying as it is I think it’s about time I start to share some of my writing. I’m hoping that if I put it out there I will be less afraid and that’ll encourage me to write more. To start I’ll share something I wrote on the fly rather than something I’ve been working on for a while, that way if no one likes it I don’t feel as devastated.

The following was what I wrote for a writing exercise at the Foothill College Writers’ Conference that I went to back in July. The exercise was simply to write about something I’m passionate about. I decided to tear through the fear and to do exactly what the exercise asked. I wrote about what I’m most passionate about despite being attacked for it in the past. The result was a stark naked emotional piece that I wrote without hesitation or fear of attack. I wish I could write like that more often. Please, be gentle…

I’m afraid to write about my passion because I’m afraid to share. If someone does not share my passion where does that leave me? Suddenly I’m facing their anger, their fear and their confusion.

How can I speak to a listener who is defensive about a girl who died, shot in the head for looking over a railing. Her brother, who ran to her aid, pulled her limp body to the car and was stopped at a checkpoint while she bled to death – a human sacrifice for the bomb he didn’t have hidden in his car.

An animal to the man in the army fatigues who stood there with his rifle pointed at a helpless man who cried out to let him pass! He cried out that his sister was dying, why would this man not let him pass to the hospital on the other side of the checkpoint?

There she died for the security of the settlers who moved in on government subsidies , who moved in supplied with government weapons to use on 14 year-old girls because their curly black hair was a threat. The weapons used to spit bullets in the mosque because the way they knelt as they prayed was a threat.

And then the government came in and split the mosque into pieces for their safety. Checking IDs at the entrance and deciding who gets to go where. Muslims to the left, Jews to the right. They did it for the safety of all who pray there except anyone could go to the left, but only Jews could go to the right and the government who protected them was the same government that supplied the weapons to the man who desecrated the mosque and sowed the seeds of suicide bombers.

The vicious cycle began and continued in a circular motion – one and then the other, the chicken and then the egg – but the cycle began somewhere and somewhere there would be an end.