I’m struggling with what I’m seeing and how it makes me feel as a human being.

Living with fibromyalgia has changed the way I look at people and what they might be going through. When you live with pain that other people can’t see, you learn pretty quickly that you really have no idea what someone else is dealing with. Someone can look completely fine and still be struggling just to get through the day.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the times we’re living in, and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this disappointed. As I’m writing this, I realize it’s more than just being disappointed. I’m genuinely concerned about where we are as people.

I’m not writing this to start a fight or tell anyone what they should believe. I know people see things differently, and that’s okay. What’s really getting to me is the human side of all of this.

How did we get to a place where we can watch people hurting and somehow become so used to it?

Maybe that’s why seeing families afraid, kids caught in the middle of something they had nothing to do with, and people dealing with life shattering events hits me so differently. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not pretending I do, and I’m not claiming one side is 100% right while the other is totally wrong.

I just don’t get how we can disagree so fiercely that we completely forget there are actual human beings caught in the middle. People with families. People who are terrified. People who have left a mark on someone else’s life, or who are just trying to get through the day in peace.

What scares me most is becoming numb to it all. Seeing so much suffering that we just scroll past it, shake our heads, and move on because it isn’t happening in our own backyard.

Maybe I feel this so deeply because I know what it’s like to have your life uprooted by something you never asked for. Fibromyalgia took things from me I never expected to lose, but it taught me a hard lesson: you can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control how you treat someone who is going through a battle you know nothing about.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I just hope we never get so divided that we forget how to actually care about each other.

As the saying goes, “Before we are anything else, we’re human.”

That really shouldn’t be so hard to remember. We have to take ownership of the things we say and how we treat people. We might not be able to fix the whole world, but we can control ourselves.

“Change starts with you.”

P.S. I’m not sharing this to offend anyone or dictate what you should think. I’m just pouring out what’s been heavy on my heart lately. I know we don’t all see eye to eye, and I respect that. I just hope we can still talk to each other with a little bit of grace, remembering there are real people behind these issues.d