this is not normal
on what the fuck is even happening and how i feel like a collapsing star
I clocked into work today. The virtual space felt liminal, in an ominous and threatening way. I wish it was peaceful. I wish that going to work felt grounding and provided me with a sense of normalcy.
What the fuck is normal?
Who defines it?
I don’t think normal exists. I don’t think any of this should exist.
I checked my work email this morning. I had a meeting with my supervisor. It was good. They are a great supervisor. They held space for me while I cried. They validated that it feels insane to be clocking into work right now.
Then I went back to work. The virtual floor. The Teams message hellscape where I feel mostly connected to my coworkers and yet I don’t really know who any of them are. We collectively move toward our mother nonprofit’s goal of preventing suicide. Of being a shoulder to cry on over the phone. Most of us are just as burned out and mentally unstable as the people who call us. We don’t tell anyone that.
I checked my phone. I did my work tasks. I earned my salary for the day.
I felt nothing.
I listened to Heather Cox Richardson. I sat at my desk and wondered why I am here, going through the motions, while scores of civilians burn for the enrichment of defense contractors and megalomaniac fast food addicts. I checked in with my brother-in-law to make sure he’s alive. He’s in Doha on an air base. I begged him not to reenlist.
I felt everything.
It isn’t worth it. Serving this conglomerate that I exist within does nothing for me or my family or my neighbors. The idea of America is good on paper, and in practice, there have always been a handful of ketamine-rotted, alcoholic, angry male narcissists with too much money and too little humanity standing by to ruin it for everyone. The women they attempt to own stand by their sides and perform their Stepford wife routine. They all see the people on the other side of the world as pieces in a stupid game of checkers. They see us as pieces. Sections. Items. Checkmarks on a data sheet.
They aren’t hateful of anyone as much as they hate themselves. Every action they take is to punish us for their own mediocrity. The sheep who follow them guzzle down their lies as though their lives depend on it, refusing to see how each sick gulp of propaganda kills them a little more each time.
I listened to my favorite artists while I dissociated on my lunch break. I am not scared so much as I’m tired. I’m not even suffering the way most people are. I feel that I don’t have a right to complain. But then I remind myself that pain for one part of humanity is pain for all of us. I am suffering. I’m suffering every time I check my phone and see more children broken, bloody, displaced. My family might die over there, in Qatar. It might be my brother-in-law, it might be a stranger. Either way, I’ll lose a family member.
I’ve lost so many of them. It takes a piece of me every time.
Seeing them on live streams, social media, weaponized for some dipshit’s political campaign. Bombed into oblivion. A fat, lonely man thanked god when he spoke to the press about his genocidal actions.
The sheep bleat for him. They are proud to be sheep. Their dead idol was a shepherd, after all. So they follow blindly. Are they even human anymore?
I don’t know.
This isn’t normal.
Don’t let anyone convince you that empathy is a fucking weakness.
I won’t.
I can’t.
This is not normal.
Whatever this is,
Whatever this demented, sick experiment is,
It is not normal.
Humanity has rotted itself from within and now we purge our rock of all that is good, beautiful, worthy. I will do what I can to fight back. I always have and I always will.
Right now, the diseased flesh of zealotry and its zombified hivemind has the upper hand. But even if it kills me, I won’t let it infect me. I will die as myself. Me. Messy but alive, full of soul, of joy, of rage, of pain. My blood will spill all over the pavement and paint the ground with the hopes I have for the world.
I will continue to suffer alongside my Earth family.
If you burn, I will burn with you.
If you hurt, I hurt too.
This is not normal.
I see you.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Tomorrow, we might die.
Tomorrow, I’ll go to work again.
Tomorrow, I’ll thrive out of spite.
Again and again and again.
Until it’s over.
Fin.
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-M