The Era of Being Down Bad
- Joy
- Jul 5, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 6, 2022
Two years of being in a pandemic have flown by a little too fast. The last time I posted a blog update was in October of 2020 and somehow it's July of 2022. Back then, I could not have imagined this global crisis would actually last this long and now I don't even remember 2021 happening.
It's weird trying to justify feeling shitty in this unprecedented time of catastrophic world events. I won't even try. I'm privileged to be sitting here at my computer, with food in my refrigerator and clothes on my body. I'm privileged to have an able body and financial security. But sometimes, it's hard to recognize and conceptualize this when I feel like I am constantly at war with my own mind.
When I was fourteen years old, my primary care physician was a great and wonderful doctor. He never failed to make me laugh during my physicals and my parents' both adored him. I can't remember if he retired or if he transferred hospitals before I went to high school, but I do remember that one of the last times I saw him, he told me: "You live so much in your own head. Don't forget to come back to reality every now and then."
It might be dramatic to say that nothing has resonated with me more, but I am a fairly dramatic person. I think about this a lot when I find myself in a long period of disassociation, unable to cope with the real world around me. I was asked a couple times over the past couple weeks about how I was dealing with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this monumental loss of reproductive rights. When I was younger, I think I could feel more infuriated. I think I felt more anger at lawmakers (especially cis, white, straight men) who felt they could make laws regarding women's bodies.
But now, I think about the children they say they are protecting. I think about the children I see on the streets, begging for food, for money, in torn clothes. I think about the children in volatile, abusive households, or at the mercy of foster care. I think about children who are disabled, but do not have the resources to get the help that they need. I think about the 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion, and oh God am I just horrified. I'm horrified at the way this country treats children and how it pretends to care about their safety and protection, when it could not be more clear to anyone watching us: that it does not. It does not care.
According to WebMD (I know, I know—WebMD or Google in general is the last place you should go when trying to identify what your ailments could be symptomatic of), disassociation "is a break in how your mind handles things. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity or your perception of time... When you have disassociation, you may forget things or have gaps in your memory. You may think the physical world isn't real or that you aren't real."
This generation, I believe, is experiencing disassociation in unprecedented levels.
It's hard to wake up each day and think positively. Each morning seems to bring about a new feeling of doom. I look at where I am at in my life and wonder, if I have things so good, why do I feel so awful? And why do I feel so awful, but don't do anything about it? It's almost like I don't even think anymore. I just live in this world I've created in my head, where nostalgia doesn't wrangle its ruthless claws over my heart. Everything is as good as the last time I remember the world being.
Then 9am comes. Emails come, responsibilities come. This reality is a little bit more gray than it used to be, a little bit more blurred around the edges. The hours pass by and it's almost 7pm now, I'm just logging off. At some point during the day, I had something to eat. Maybe I had some coffee. Maybe I took a nap. In a few hours, it'll be close to midnight and I should be getting ready to sleep but maybe I'm watching a YouTube video, falling down some rabbit hole.
Before I know it, the day is gone and wasted. Another day I haven't traveled, haven't gone outside, haven't met someone new. The days string along like this until it's suddenly Friday, until it's suddenly the middle of the month, until it's suddenly the middle of the year. Until it's suddenly July of 2022.
It seems so easy to say, go outside. Take a shower. Go to a protest, feel passionately enough about something to go to a protest and be around people who want to make an active change. Text that person back. Flirt with someone. Turn on Netflix and watch a sit-com and laugh. Smile today. Write today. Eat today.
It's weird trying to explain how my mind will simply not let me do that. How, even as I am writing this, I don't feel connected to myself, even though I had hoped it might. How I feel even more separate from myself than I have in a while. How the only thing that has tethered me to reality is my affection for my kitten, but how even lately I don't even know if I feel affection anymore. And how I am privileged enough to be sitting here, with access to mental health resources, when people I love do not have those resources.
The real world aside, my personal life is a wreck. Sometimes, I want to fix it, but most times I could not even care less. What's the point if nothing ever changes and this is the life we are to live for the rest of our days? Yes, I am only twenty-four-years-old and yes, I'm still utterly inexperienced when it comes to so many things, so how could I possibly know what I am talking about?
But this, I suppose, is all I mean when I say I am constantly at war with my mind. And how it's become so exhausting that this world doesn't even feel like a real world I am living in.
In my fantasy world, I travel a lot. I've seen so many different places, tried so many different cuisines, met so many strange and interesting and complex people. I know French, maybe Japanese, maybe Norwegian. I wear sophisticated clothes, the kind that I used to cut out from sleek magazine pages. I laugh a lot. All the celebrities I've had crushes on are my friends. We post glamorous photos on social media, sometimes blurry so you'll know we've had a good time partying.
This world looks like a glittery overlay, the kind you'll find on mood boards on Pinterest. Love is deep, rich, and bitter like red wine, just as intoxicating. Romance is stars that poke through the twilight sky, tiny speckles of silver light in a stretch of a darkening sky. 'You' are 'you.' I am a less painfully awkward, more charming, 'me.'
Even so, this world doesn't always feel so good.
Because, like every single good thing in life, it must eventually come to its end.
A List of Resources to Take Action For Reproductive Rights:
Please also do not forget to include non-binary and trans men in your abortion discourses: https://www.heyjane.co/articles/nonbinary-trans-abortions
Comments