Thunder

It has always felt to me as if most of the world is too loud. There is this buzz of anxiety that vibrates within my head. It grows ever the more intense, decibel by decibel, each time my thoughts are interrupted, or I have to switch gears, or the music on the grocery store intercom clutters my brain, or eyes bore into me, or I say the wrong thing, or... Usually this unbearable sensation comes not from any truly profound loss or injustice, but from a multitude of small, ordinary things that accumulate with a collective weight.

These days, though, it's also the news that feeds this deafening buzz. The news generates never ending worries, about my future safety and wellbeing and that of my loved ones. About the lives of people I don't even know, but whose souls nevertheless reach across the miles that separate us and touch me. There are so many things about people that I don't understand, but I know what it is to struggle. To hurt. To feel vulnerable. It's strange, in a way. Sometimes it feels like I can only really connect with most people when they're sad, because in our sorrow we are alike, and yet, I can't bear their pain. 

It's as if my inner voice is screaming in my head, and always has been, but now our nation's collective voices are in there too, crying, filling my mind with this endless wailing. I just want so badly for it to stop. 

I try to drown it out, but it seems impossible to hear anything over the thunderous static. I can't focus. I try and I try, and occasionally I succeed, but mostly I don't. The things that are meant to distract us, the mundane tasks of everyday life that must continue on, most everything, it seems, simply cannot compel my attention the way that my fears can. I feel powerless to change this reality, so instead I circle aimlessly like a caged animal, trying and failing to function.

And I wonder how much of this is just because I'm me, and how much of it is just because I'm awake to what's happening, and it's grotesque.