I’m No Longer Horrified
On being numb
I’m not sure when it happened to be honest. But somewhere along the way, I’ve become numb.
Watching a genocide unfold in real time and no one stopping it. Watching people being snatched off the streets and disappearing without a trace and no one stopping it. Watching rapists and pedophiles get away with it and no one stopping it.
No one is stopping anything.
I just keep getting up and going to work and paying bills and buying overpriced groceries and gas.
I keep scrolling the apps and seeing headlines about more bombs being dropped and no one is stopping it.
And now I know they’ve got us. Because if I can be lulled into a numbness, me, someone so ready to fight, that’s terrifying to me.
Maybe it’s that I feel a bit like Alice and seeing the world through a looking glass. I frequently have to ask myself what’s real.
What’s real? My husband still has heart problems, my children still aren’t speaking to me or I them i guess at this point, a dear friend has just found out they have stage 4 cancer, both cars need work done, the only family I have left on my dad’s side is planning his own funeral, me and all of my friends are going through perimenopause at the same time, the world is on fire and countless people are suffering.
And I am just this tiny human witnessing it all. Feeling battered and bruised and anxious and maybe not numb all the time. Because how can numbness feel like an itchy wool blanket? Heavy and stifling and rubbing my exposed skin raw.
It’s enough to make me want to scream.
And no one is doing anything about it.
The thing is - I know I should be. I know that I am deeply disturbed by all of it, but it’s weighed down. Buried under layers of life in this moment. How do we carry it all?
"How do we carry it all?"
That's exactly what I've been asking, though you've worded it better.
I'm right here with you, Mesa, on so many levels.