I don’t think that fear is expressed enough online in a common, non-guilt tripping way. Or in just a non-immediate-crisis related way. That’s probably because this medium is typically used as an escape from the horrors of reality (if you avoid news outlets), but I don’t think it’s routinely enough discussed in person either. Sure, people complain about things – second nature to do so in small talk for many. But we are all so busy putting on our big boy pants and wearing our bravest smiles that we spend little time openly discussing unsolvable problems and the relentless, contagious disquietude conquering us day by day. When those nuggets do arise in conversation, a silence often follows, and if you’re lucky, a chuckle about the inevitability of our demise being completely out of our individual hands. What else are we meant to do about it? Besides laugh?

The most disturbing part of being extremely aware of the perilous state of this planet and those inhabiting it is that if you don’t close your heart to it and get on with your life, you’ll be swallowed up in despair, and even more useless to the causes you believe in than when you began acknowledging them. You have to keep living your everyday while learning about masses upon masses having their routines cut short. I have to scoop up my dog’s poop out of an unnaturally dewy patch of grass on a late December morning while longing to at least have a bit of sunshine since the climate is cursed with the absence of snow. I prematurely celebrated a home-team win, screaming my heart out, while a child collected bits of flesh from the sidewalk and screamed out theirs. I feel twinges of guilt and flashes of anger and pangs of deep sorrow because I cannot do anything but continue to live.

I am very afraid.

I don’t believe that limiting or restricting oneself from joy and laughter and the ideal human experience – i.e., punishing yourself – is any help to feel better about the suffering of others. I do believe that the lack of community and willingness to love wholeheartedly amongst the human race will be our downfall, as we see it already. I don’t know if there’s any cure to the made up system we have other than the total destruction deconstruction of it all. But I wake up everyday and hear or see the news and I just don’t know what to DO. No one seems to know what to do. And the people in charge are doing terrible.

I have no message of positivity or hope to leave you with, for I too, am very afraid.