For the last few days, I’ve been experiencing what can only be called “total system shutdown.” All things thawra pinch me with annoyance. I still believe in it; if anything I believe in it more because there is no longer fear that I will wake up and find that it snuck out the window. After Sunday’s numbers, I’m confident that this will, at least, make it to Day 30.

So what is this feeling? This resentment? This guilt? At first, I thought it was coming from disengaging from the constant ebb & flow of the protests, for the need to momentarily come up for air.

“Look out for yourself.”
“Your mental health is important.”
“You have to have a life beyond the thawra so you know what you’re fighting for.”

But that isn’t it.

It’s because I realized that, even if the government were to fall tonight, even if we were given every human right scribbled on white boards, even if we were presented with the roadmaps to our utopian Lebanon, even if the blueprints were unrolled and the technocrats were getting every check on the ballots…I realized that all of it would not be for my generation.

I’ve been repeatedly saying that this is a long road, that these changes will take time, that patience and perseverance are the tools we need to sharpen to win this. But only now have I seen that that also means, as an almost-32 year old single female with just a cat as a dependent, all the battles we fight will be won for the generations after my own.

As a parent or student, it is easier to be filled with adrenaline for this. All you have to do is think of your child or of the next decade of life beyond graduation. It has been heartwarming to see tents filled with the proud, hopeful civil war generation and the determined, empowered Lebanese youth. But as someone in between those two phases, it is heartbreaking too. I am absolutely willing to fight but I am overcome with envy. I do wish the match was struck a decade earlier. There is shame in even admitting that I feel this way but I’m acknowledging how furious I am that those of us who have stayed here will have to sacrifice more when our friends have already left, when our elders are already sick, when our careers are already stunted. Hasn’t she taken enough?

But all these thefts only act as daily provocations that shove me to continue this revolution. There should be no going back.

This revolution is not for me but it is for my younger sisters. It’s for my aging parents. It’s for parents who have passed away too soon from illnesses they shouldn’t have had. It’s for every kid who was rejected from a hospital. It’s for my female friends who have married foreigners and want their unborn children to be seen as equals. It’s for the mountains, the tomatoes, the hyenas, and the olive trees. It’s for every word I have bled for this place.

It’s for my country. And hell, it’s for my cat.

And if it’s for every one of them, then I guess it is for me after all.