I really don’t know how to write a blog post without addressing the tragedies in Paris. I don’t think it would be right to ramble about boys or mishaps or other minutiae when our world exists in a state of mourning.

I don’t generally like to write about things like this, because I feel like I’m never educated enough, or it would be disrespectful, or just general fear of offending someone. But I think that with things like this, or the bombings in Beirut, or the tensions in Missouri.

The world is a hurtful, fucked-up place. And it’s painful. And it’s chaotic. And it’s cruel. And I don’t know if I can say anything that will be new or revolutionary. Actually, I know I can’t. But I can say that I have never experienced that fear that so many people went through in Paris. Or Beirut. Or Syria. Or Missouri.

All I can do right now is offer up prayers and sorrow and breathe in their pain and try to shoulder some of it. And that might not be a comfort. That might be pointless. But I think to roll over, to claim this as inevitable, to pretend it’s like a tsunami or an earthquake—a natural phenomenon—destroys what we are trying to accomplish. Maybe there will always be people with evil intentions who want to hurt. Who want to smash. Destruction is easy. It is vicious and indulgent and venomous.

But they are not immortal. They are not forces of nature. We can fight back. And we can say that this is not the story. We can say that they do not determine how we end. We stand strong. We mourn and we hold each other but we stay resilient. It’s so dumb-sounding when I write it out but I can’t not say it and I can’t think of anything else. Because these tragedies can drown us if we let it. They can distinguish our faith in the common good of humanity.

We can see humanity as inherently evil. As doomed to implode. To dissolve into entropy. To accept this as the natural order.

Fuck that. Fight. Scream. Yell. Tell those who would tear us down—terrorists, racists, transphobes, misogynists—those who would divide and destroy and vanquish to go fuck themselves. There are a thousand ways to respond to stimuli. They responded with violence. And anger. We can choose a different way. We can choose resilience, strength, iron spines and gritted teeth. We can choose to stand back up. We can honor our dead, protect our living, cry and wail until the grief becomes infinitesimally more manageable.

I do not know what those people went through. In Paris. In Beirut. In Syria. In Lebanon. In Missouri. Across the world. And to claim that I do is vastly inappropriate. But I want to hurt with you, to mourn with you, to honor you. I want to fight for you. I want to give us the freedom to control our own stories. Our own endings.

The world is a hurtful, fucked-up place. It is painful. It is chaotic. But to accept that as fact doesn’t work. It ends with people like ISIS winning. It ends with us at each other’s throats. The world doesn’t have to be a hurtful, fucked-up place. Evil isn’t a tsunami. It isn’t a natural phenomenon. It is a mutation. And it can be fought against. It is not the final word. It is not the closing of the book. We can let it not be. I don’t know if this was right or smart or coherent. Because sometimes our responses aren’t. But I’m sorry, to Paris, to Beirut, to Missouri. I’m sorry and I hurt for you, and I’ll fight for you. We will tell your stories. Your bravery and your love and your fight won’t drown. They won’t dissolve into entropy. They will multiple and expand as infinitely as the universe. They will expand upon matter.