Once
again, times are tough and it’s hard to know how worried to be.
No
one believes anything about the election that is already underway
(the polls are wrong, the media is lying) or wait, no, everyone
believes everything being spewed out, the conspiracy theories and the
bots flooding everything we see and hear.
It’s
exhausting and I suppose that too is by design.
*
A
dear family member is two chemo treatments into a six-treatment
regimen and the side effects are already dangerous, nearly
life-threatening. They’re hanging in there but the news has been so
relentlessly bad. It’s worrisome and exhausting. We spend time on
Zoom each week just to see one another and joke around. I keep a
private journal and screenshot everything and wonder who I’m
writing it all down for? Future me?
It’s
not like fiction where I relish not knowing the ending.
*
I
fell the other day, out of nowhere. Twisted the old ankle and down I
went into a patch of grass. The dog I was walking whined in surprise,
then stood next to me cronching the treats that had fallen out of my
pocket. Stay here, I breathed, willing my legs to stop shaking so I
could stand up.
*
Where
is there respite?
Part
of me wants to bear witness, to be in community, but much of me
wishes to go to sleep and wake up in February 2025 to a healed world.
I just know we won’t get there by accident.
