It should have been a usual summer, Summer 2016. I couldn't be more thrilled to once again embrace the madness (the good kind), the lazy reveries and the learning for learning's sake, that are so characteristic of this time of the year. Summer meant no papers and no finals, burdens that had come to largely define all of my May. At last, I had thought, summer!

But it hasn’t been so usual. I wonder if they’ll look back at us and think, "Pokemon Go!" was the breads-and-circuses of Summer 2016. That odd summer comprised of odd incidents instigated by odd people, lived by odd people. We are odd, it is safe to admit. My generation is odd. We are growing up in tadmeer, destruction.

My parents grew up in Pakistan, under martial law imposed by General Zia-ul-Haq. Like many growing up in the 80s, they held sharp intuitions about which side was wrong, politically. This was also the time of Cold War when the ideology of communism was looked to as a threat to the post WWII world order.

But my generation is tongue-tied, wide-eyed, faced with all these ‘truths,’ tired and tried. The evils of this world are not so apparent to us, even when they are. Denouncing one presidential candidate over the other has become a matter of the lesser-of-two-evils and still, our hearts are not convinced. The Republican candidate relies on populism to further his hate-ridden campaign and rally supporters. It’s not even possible to describe the extent of debauchery he promises to indulge as the president of the US. But the Democratic candidate isn’t any better if she promises to continue the legacy of President Obama, to play the politics of respectability that mar the lives of Black Americans, the politics of counter-terrorism that haunt the civilians in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan instead of targeting the actual hooligans and the very same politics that condemn undocumented immigrants and Muslim communities under the auspice of national threat.

So much is beginning to slip out of our grasps. After Zia-ul Haq, my parents saw a leader in Benazir Bhutto. For my first vote in a presidential election, I don’t see myself like that. What has exacerbated my inability to connect with any leader are the deaths that we have seen. Beyond our political turmoil lies the carnage, an exorbitant amount that was not expected of one summer, of the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan, and in one case, of a week. To say that we are in pain and tired would be the understatement of a lifetime. There is no language for what we are living. Today, right now, we are living in numbers. I’ve become dazed, disoriented, desensitized and I can’t breathe.

I counted Orlando, Ankara, Baghdad. I counted Nice, Brussels, Dhaka. I counted Munich. I counted Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, their deaths separated by 10 days. I counted Amjad Sabri, the famous Qawalli singer, and Qandeel Baloch, the outspoken young woman who died in an honor killing. I counted Kashmir and Palestine. And Syria. My heart goes out to Syria every night because children are dying because of air strikes and those fourth of July fireworks, so reminiscent of my early days growing up in America, now remind me of my privileged pampering and the dispiriting deaths of these children. I still count everyday but I don’t know what I am counting to anymore. Number of times Clinton's emails have indulged our political dialogue? Number of times Muslim-Americans have had to prove their loyalty? Number of times my Muslim friends and I condemn the acts of terrorism on social media? Number of times mass incarceration disproportionately targeted Black Americans? Number of times 'furtive moments' were enough to run a bullet through a human being because the color black was also in the equation? Number of undocumented immigrants who have fared stellar academic records this past school year? Number of Pokemon I’ve caught in the three weeks since the game’s release? Number of messages I’ve sent to my friend in Kashmir and haven’t received any response back? Number of views on my story? Number of sincere sujooods I’ve made in salat, prayer? Number of times I’ve texted my brother in England? Number of books I’ve read this summer? Number of times I’ve hated and loved and cried and laughed? Number of times my words have failed? Number of breaths I’ve taken?

Summer sixteen does not let me forget that I am living on borrowed time. Helpless and hopeless, it forces me to remember. And remember. And remember. It forces me to come forward and take a stand. But I am not doing much, either out of this feeling of hopelessness over our current political landscape or the heat beating down. Camping inside during the day makes perfect sense. Coming out to catch Pokemon at night, a good retreat, a distraction. Cheap thrills. This is the general malaise that plagues my heart, that I am trying to forget by questioning the existence of a language that describes how I feel, even when I am constantly remembering by counting.