I had a bad dream last night.

I was rushing to pick up my youngest brother from school, but i was caught up at the grocery store. I couldn’t decide between a whole chicken and a 6-pack of thighs. It took forever to make up my mind. Chicken juice was on my fingertips from picking up numerous packages and setting them back down. All of a sudden I remembered, my brother’s waiting!

Suddenly, I was running down the school hallway screaming his name over and over. I busted through the doors of one classroom, and it’s a bedroom. My brother, who is 17, was a 6 or 7-year-old in the dream. he was collapsed on a full-size bed with piles of little person homework surrounding him. He was sobbing.

Even in his trauma, he was adorable, with his little jeans and flushed boyish cheeks. “Why do you always do this?” he hiccuped in the high-pitched voice I ache to hear again. I ran to him, hugged him, and smelling like raw chicken, attempted to console him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Over and over. and over. I woke up with a start at 4:03 a.m. All I could think about was the earthquake in Haiti.

I have not yet donated. I don’t know why. I am someone who usually donates. To my Alma mater, to public radio, to causes i believe in. I volunteered after Katrina. I don’t run away from hardship. But I have not yet texted that code to add $10 to my cell phone bill, in spite of Lady O’s request.

When things get busy in my life, the news tends to edge down the list of priorities. Not just busy in terms of commitments, but brain space. You know -– the point at which if you have to think about one more thing, your system might just shutdown. I know about these things, my computer does it all the time. Grad school, work, hubby, work, writing, friends, family, GMAIL. There’s no time to reflect on the Colts’ defense or the bank’s scrooge-like tendencies. I must summon and draw in my strongest energy to stay afloat and ahead.

My New York Times emails go without being read. You’d have to be a masochist to watch local news and CNN, so that’s never on the radar. NPR takes a backseat and the podcasts pile up on my iTunes. Then I start getting those annoying “!” messages asking me if i still want to subscribe. So, you will understand that when i heard about Haiti, it was through Facebook.

For me, Facebook is mostly mindless fun and reconnecting. Still, when I started seeing the news trickle in, I cringed and closed my mobile browser. How much can one itty-bitty country take, i wondered? In the days that followed as many were transfixed by the shocking images and tragic stories, I pulled a groundhog. I did. I’m not judging myself either way. I think of it as self-preservation.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine extended his typical vanilla Facebook status update from “long workday, about to eat a nice steak dinner,” to a full paragraph on his disgust with American donations to Haiti. He was pretty upset. Don’t freak out on me, I’m just sharing. His post read:

“Some of you may be pissed but…HELP HAITI?? What is going on with the natural disasters called poverty, drugs, crime, and helplessness experienced by the afflicted in THIS great nation? Cities like Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, New Orleans and even Orlando are plagued with the homeless who cant even get pocket change…yet 168 hours after a major disaster in ANOTHER country, the US [has] donated over 1.4B?”

Whoa. I should probably tell you that my friend is a member of our armed forces. I didn’t really know how to respond, so i didn’t say anything. I did the next best thing and judged his friends comments:

“I could not agree more…but I still donated because I’m a giving person and that’s who I am!”

“I didn’t donate shit for that country or for the bums asking for change.”

“Disgusting.”

Like it or not my friend has a point. Hold on before you accuse me of being Hitler, since he is the demon of choice lately. Americans are a very generous people. Very generous. However, I do think we often forget how much our own neighbors are in need. We spend a lot of time talking about celebrities’ mansions, not addressing so many millions who have no home. I think it’s because most of us don’t know. Honestly, I think most of us just don’t realize how bad many Americans have it. Or when we do notice, we attribute it to that person or group of people just not working hard enough.

At the same time, he kinda doesn’t make any sense. People in the projects may need help, but they aren’t piling up walls of dead bodies (some may beg to differ — have you seen “The Wire”?). And how do you explain our military jumping to the rescue all over the world when the cities he mentioned could probably benefit from some night patrols themselves? I dunno.

I finally commented on my friend’s post, addressing the adoption angle. There are so many American orphans who need loving homes, but many of them would not be deemed worthy of a “save the children” photo spread. Care to take home an angry and illiterate 11-year-old from St. Louis? No, i don’t think you would. Ask Child Services.

I’m just saying.

Of course, I’m not faulting anyone who does donate. Those relief organizations are doing wonderful work out there, and thank God for that. I’m just not sure where I fit in it all, and I think that explains my inaction. Funny…even my ability to mull over such a devastating topic from a bird’s-eye view could be, in a way, a testament to my own ignorance (arrogance?). Perhaps that’s just the freedom i get for being a middle-class American in Atlanta on the 12th of January, as opposed to being a Haiti resident on that awful day.

Like I said, last night, I had a bad dream.