There’s nothing quite like being stuck in what amounts to a burning bag of shit left on the world’s porch. At least, that’s what it feels like to be a resident of the US these days. I’m not proud of it, every reasonable person hates it and is right to do so, the US government seems intent only on malicious destruction that has the potential to spiral out of control, and no one is going to come out of this without also smelling like shit. Our goose isn’t cooked or anything like that. Things aren’t irrevocably broken yet. They are irrevocably changed, though. Whatever survives this period of awfulness is going to have to find a path forward where none has yet been made. Any attempts to “go back to how things used to be” will only cause things to get worse. The only way forward is through significant change. Exactly what that looks like or how that would work… I don’t know. The whole idea of things changing for the better feels so foreign to me at this point that I’m not sure I can actually imagine what that kind of future would look like. All my conceptions of things being better are just images of the past, glimpsed through a heady filter of nostalgia and a genuine lack of awareness of how the world worked before I knew how to see it working. Who’s to say what positive change would look like this days, following the destruction of so much of the good parts of the US–such that they were–and this process can’t even be described as breaking a bone again in order to set it properly. It feels very “conspiracy theorist” to say it, but it’s difficult not to be aware of how the US is finally breaking along lines that have been slowly chiseled deeper and deeper over the last fifty years.

As scandals continue to mount without resolution, as capitalism continues to slowly devour itself, as the entire governance of the US bends and flexes around the demands and whims of the assholes in power, it is difficult to find a place to rest and recover and prepare for whatever fight is next. I’ve been writing about my worsening burnout lately, mostly in the context of work, but the impact of how my country is slowly falling apart and destroying the lives of immigrants and minorities on my worsening burnout cannot be ignored. I can’t just tune this all out, no matter how much I might want to sometimes. Partly because I feel compelled to pay attention so I can at least act as a witness even if I’m not doing anything else at the moment, and partly because I need to watch out for my own safety and the safety of those I care about. I can’t act should the need arise if I’m not aware that the need has actually arisen. Aside from that, though, news about what is going on in the world is everywhere. There isn’t a single place I can go online that doesn’t have the events of the day leaking in somewhere. Even the most protected of unrelated spaces tend to have it leak in through comments sections or blurbs from the creators whose work I’m trying to enjoy (which isn’t to say that these people need to keep their thoughts abut the modern world to themselves or anything like that. They’re welcome to do whatever they like with their online spaces, just as I am). And, should I shut myself off from the world entirely enough to avoid all that, my anxiety just picks away at me until I go check things anyway since the only way to effectively cut myself off from the world requires also being unreachable in case of an emergency.

It’s not a great space to be in! I spent my entire childhood knowing the constant threat of harm to my person that could arrive at any time, nothing but uncertainty about my status in the only social system I’d ever known, and that no amount of power I could ever amass as a kid would change any of that for myself. The best I could ever hope for back then was to be the only one who got hurt. These days, all of that is true again except now I can’t even make sure I’d be the only one getting hurt. All my old coping and survival mechanisms have been slowly picked apart by a decade and a half of therapy so I could have some kind of life, which means I can’t even just “fall back” into all those survival habits. I have to actively choose that stuff for myself and it feels even more miserable now than it ever did as a kid. Back then, I knew nothing else and couldn’t really imagine that my life would ever be different. Now I know things don’t have to be like this and it’s even more difficult to cope with a world that seems set on rewarding the self-centered people in power despite literally all of the rules we’re supposed to follow saying that all those people aren’t able to do all the horrible things they’re doing. Turns out there’s no such thing as justice and the only laws that really matter are the ones the people with all the power choose to enforce. A lesson I fought every day of my life as a child, that I accepted as a teen, that I struggled to reject in college, and that has come home to roost for everyone now as an adult. “Life’s not fair,” as they say.

I still don’t have any answers for any of my questions about surviving these days. No one does, as far as I can tell. At least not answers that are worth the air it takes to speak them, anyway. I’ve asked a lot of people at this point and mostly come up empty on anythign than the whole “rest when you can/need to and then get back in there” or “pick one thing to focus on” type of advice that isn’t super helpful for people who have multiple things they need to pay attention to for their own safety/the safety of those they care about. Plus, all of that is predicated on being able to actually escape this stuff at any point ever and, as I already mentioned, that’s not really something I can ever seem to do. Even when I’m having a “no social media/internet browsing” weekend, there’s always the chance that one of my group chats will blow up with the latest bullshit that’s been going on (it has happened numerous times now). It’s just so exhausting since even when I’m not following whatever horrible thing is going on, I’m still thinking about every horrible thing that happened and has largely disappeared from public attention on account of all the new horrible stiff. I’m so tired.

I wish I could just pause all of existence for a little bit so I can take the time I need to rest and recover a bit. I think that’s the only way I’d really be able to actually do that. I’d need to be able to sleep without worry that something new and worse than ever might happen while I was unconscious. I’d need to be able to take time away from everything without needing to do a cost-benefit analysis on not paying attention to the world at that moment. I’d be able to take a break from doing constant risk assessments about pretty much everything I do or how I spend all of my time. I’d be able to finally do nothing and rest without being swamped by guilt every time I emerged from my chosen passtime. I’d be able to just exist for a little bit. Free of concern or stress or anxiety. Just exist and maybe give in to the constant desire to fall asleep and let my mind unclench. Too bad that will never happen.