Member-only story
Can Things Get Worse?
Always.
As I woke up this morning, hoping to feel better than I did yesterday, when I hoped to feel better than I did the morning before, instead I felt like I’d just had a grand piano fall on me from the sixth floor. Crushed. Flattened. Splat.
So I did what I always do when I’m feeling low: I went to my computer to check my email, Medium, and my lifesaver YouTube. I can watch videos of cute kittens, dogs and cats being healed on “Bondi Vets,” how things are going at Mapperton in England, and generally just take my mind off my worries.
And I found today just like yesterday that my internet is so slow that I could clean the entire house while I wait for anything to load. “When I needed sunshine, I got rain.”
I try to tell myself that things won’t be as bad as I’m afraid they will be, that life will go on pretty much the same, that handing the government over to a man who is going to put Hulk Hogan in the cabinet and hand over “government efficiency” to the richest man in the world won’t hurt that bad.
But then I think of the people who will be deported, the Ukraine, Palestine, all of our allies. So I go to Amazon to find an inspirational bracelet that will raise my spirits. And I clean another room while the damned computer takes its sweet time to obey a simple command.
I put my faith in those who say we can still resist, still fight, but I can’t see a way forward when the men who want to destroy our democracy, strip restrictions that protect our planet have no guard rails, nothing that I can see that can stop them.
Maybe there are ways that I don’t know about, things I can’t see, that will save us. I hope so.
Until then, I’ll stay squished under this piano with a computer that won’t help me out. We will survive. Right?
