Daily Life

I wake up and check my phone before I speak to anyone.

This is a choice I make and then regret

and then make again tomorrow.

*

I am going to be direct about what I feel.

I feel like something is being destroyed

and I cannot stop it

and neither can you

and we both know this

and we keep talking anyway

because silence feels like surrender.

*

I am not talking about a kiss of death.

I am talking about specific institutions,

specific protections,

specific people who will be hurt

by specific policies

passed by specific men

who know exactly what they are doing.

*

I want to label the feeling precisely.

It is not depression, though it resembles depression.

It is not anxiety, though it produces anxiety.

It is closer to watching someone you love

make a decision you cannot reverse for them.

Except the person is a country.

Except you are not sure the country loved you back.

*

I go to work.

I do ordinary tasks.

I eat lunch.

Somewhere during lunch I think about what I read this morning

and I lose my appetite briefly

and then I finish eating anyway

because I am still here and I am still hungry

and despair does not actually stop digestion.

*

That is something nobody tells you about political despair.

Your body continues.

Your body is completely indifferent to your conclusions about democracy.

Your body wants sleep and food and warmth

while you are busy being a citizen.

*

I donate money sometimes.

I have signed things.

I have called representatives

and spoken to staffers

who typed something into a spreadsheet

and thanked me for my concern.

*

I do not know if any of it matters.

I do not know how to calculate

whether it matters.

I continue doing it because stopping

feels like becoming someone

I do not want to be.

*

But I want to be honest.

There are mornings I read something

and I feel nothing.

Not acceptance. Not peace.

Just a temporary exhaustion of the capacity to respond.

Numbness is not wisdom.

I know that.

I come back.

*

What I cannot do is pretend

that everything is a cycle,

that it all comes around,

that history self-corrects

on a timeline I will find reassuring.

Maybe it does. I do not know.

I am living inside this particular moment

and this particular moment is hard

and I want to say that plainly

without making it a figure of speech for something larger

because it already is something larger

and it is also just Tuesday

and I am just a person

trying to decide

how much of this to carry

before I set it down

and call someone I love

and talk about something else

for twenty minutes

so I can pick it back up again tomorrow.