According to contemporaneously scribbled memos of the gripe-filled meeting, at points animatedly ranting and at others dragging:
She said, it hurts to read the headlines.
It hurts to open my laptop.
It hurts to check my phone and hear the chime of notifications.
It hurts to stay home and it hurts to leave the house.
It hurts to make a date and it hurts to plan ahead.
It hurts to talk to friends.
It hurts to watch people eat animals…so many animals.
It hurts to extinct creatures far better and smarter than us.
It hurts to discover you’re part of a slow-motion mass suicide pact.
It hurts to be part of the human race at this sour, late point in history.
It hurts to lift these arms.
It hurts to wake up engorged.
It hurts to make this much milk.
It hurts how cute and vulnerable she is.
It hurts my back to sit like this.
It hurts that the center cannot hold and we don’t learn from history.
It hurts that memory is so short and means digital capacity more than personal experience or collective knowledge.
It hurts to sleep in dreams involuntarily invaded by such impossibly shitty politics.
It hurts to call my senator.
It hurts to sign yet another version of that petition.
It hurts to explain the obvious—this feeling, this condition…I just can’t.
It hurts that dystopias are more realistic by the day.
It hurts to imagine what’s coming.
But most of all, they agreed, leaning hard on disbelieving smiles and a joy that won’t be denied, it hurts to laugh.