I consume more than I create.
It’s hard not to, honestly. I anxiously devour TikTok, my finger swiping upwards; equally compelled by heartbreaking videos of parents mourning the fact that they have to raise their children in America, followed by soothing chakra healings featuring selenite and black tourmaline and rose quartz.
How can I create? All I can feel is an overarching sense of numbness, pierced only occasionally by a fleeting helplessness. I can hardly make my bed, or eat a healthy meal, or type out emails or write agendas for upcoming meetings. All I can do is let the tides of incoming information wash over me and hope for a brief moment of respite.
My mind seems unable to focus; to form sentences or string together coherent thoughts. I forget which words I want to use. I have no synonyms or acronyms available to me. News stories stretch a thousand miles in front of my eyes and my frantic, frenetic brain skips forward, picking up only bits and pieces. I follow the thread of language but I have no more details than when I started, but I am certainly more exhausted.
There is laundry to do but that feels inconsequential compared to the need to reform gun laws, to protect reproductive rights, and gay rights, and trans rights. Clean towels seem pointless against a backdrop of long standing police brutality towards black and brown men and women, against a system built to privilege people with white skin and to oppress anyone that doesn’t fit the European American standard. How can I care enough to get quarters for the machines when babies don’t have enough formula and Oklahoma formally bans abortion?
It seems as though tendrils of impending doom droop from the lush green trees that line my lovely street and I swear that the sweet scent of summer is laced with acridity; sharp and pungent winds from the west blow ashes and soot. Although I may not know the exact shape of things to come, the figure seems ominous in the distance. No amount of melatonin or yoga or sheet masks can fend off what appears to be growing ever closer.
How can I create when I am about to be consumed?