There is a pervasive weight in the air these days. A sense of wrongness, a sense of loss and despair that invades the lungs with every breath and weighs down on the shoulders. The heart.
It is the feeling of being in a very bad dream and knowing you are in this dream, but cannot awaken.Trying to reason with oneself in waking moments, one repeats the mantra that it will be okay. One tries to distance oneself from the wrongness by thinking that all of this wrongness doesn’t really affect us.
It is something we often say to ourselves: “But, I’m okay, right..?”
You know how you felt on September the 11th.
But, I’m okay, right?
Now, think about how you felt on September the 12th.
It was all real. The numb sickness of a new reality dawning- it was all real.
But the sun insisted on rising and your lungs insisted on breathing and you could not say why. Because it should not be. Because the world had ended. Yesterday. Hadn’t it ended?
No: Altered. Folded. Collapsed. Hurt. And all too real.
But, I’m okay, right?
Always- always a lack of air for me to breathe.
Now, think about feeling that way every minute of every day without escape. Laughter that sounds false and distant- like someone else laughing in another room. And you know why people do it. Why they stop living. Whether they are dead or not.
God and I agreed to disagree on September the 12th. We went our separate ways. And still, for every one who cries:
“What kind of a god allows this to happen?” there is one to say:
“God doesn’t do these things- people do these things”.
And there is no way to end this argument. You can only switch sides.
But, I’m okay, right?
How much do we normalize the wrongness in order to just keep going?
When do we say, “I’m not okay”?
