![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Climate Despair
Jul. 4th, 2023 08:55 amEverything hurts right now.
I'm dealing with some spotting between periods and abdominal aching right now, and the gynecologist can't figure out why, suggesting with a shrug I try a different birth control method. An old pinched nerve in my shoulder blade has flared up and refuses to go away, even with two weeks of steroids and muscle relaxers to try and aid the healing process. My digestive tract is behaving very erratically and gives me trouble damn near every day. My body seems to be malfunctioning in every conceivable way, and I only have one plausible explanation for it all.
Climate anxiety.
Every summer it gets worse. I'm tense all the time, looking out the window and gulping down a lump in my throat when I see the dry hot yard that, just a few years ago, would have been drenched in rain because this is supposed to be a fucking rainforest. I'm connected to the internet all day every day and am exposed every minute to news about wildfires, flooding, extreme weather events, heat domes, etc. Every day the prognosis for our planet's livability gets more and more dire; first we had twenty years, then ten, then five, then two, and now many are saying it's too late. My own head betrays me with sudden visualizations about what life might be like even next year, and the thoughts that arise unbidden cause my heart to race and pound in my throat.
But I've been keeping all of this to myself because everyone else is just... continuing to live like none of it matters. I look around whenever I go out in public (not too often anymore, unfortunately), wondering about the inner lives of the people I see bustling about doing their shopping and socializing. They look so unconcerned, it appears their worries are very narrow in scope, but what is really going on beneath the surface? Are they as terrified deep down as I am? Do those moments in between the business of daily existence flood with freezing horror at the prospect of having to live on a husk of a world sooner than expected? Do they stew in the depression and despair like I do?
But I can't ask, not even online. There are so many people who reject having to see or hear anything regarding climate anxiety and despair. I have to hide it behind a spoiler tag or else people will pile on and accuse me of fear mongering. "You're not helping the problem, you're just making people feel worse about it," I'm told by the finger-waggers. "None of what you're saying does anyone any good. Doom and gloom only gives us all depression, and then what good will we be?"
So I keep my anguished screams bottled up until such a time that it is deemed "appropriate" to let them out. Maybe that time will never come. I could be dying in the midst of a heat dome or flooding event and people may still, in that moment, ask me to keep my suffering under polite wraps so as not to disturb anyone whose day it might ruin.
My best bet may be that society decides on sane and sweeping adaptations to lessen the devastation, so that my screams dissipate naturally without being disruptive. But that seems like too much to hope for anymore. Everything seems like too much to hope for these days.
I'm dealing with some spotting between periods and abdominal aching right now, and the gynecologist can't figure out why, suggesting with a shrug I try a different birth control method. An old pinched nerve in my shoulder blade has flared up and refuses to go away, even with two weeks of steroids and muscle relaxers to try and aid the healing process. My digestive tract is behaving very erratically and gives me trouble damn near every day. My body seems to be malfunctioning in every conceivable way, and I only have one plausible explanation for it all.
Climate anxiety.
Every summer it gets worse. I'm tense all the time, looking out the window and gulping down a lump in my throat when I see the dry hot yard that, just a few years ago, would have been drenched in rain because this is supposed to be a fucking rainforest. I'm connected to the internet all day every day and am exposed every minute to news about wildfires, flooding, extreme weather events, heat domes, etc. Every day the prognosis for our planet's livability gets more and more dire; first we had twenty years, then ten, then five, then two, and now many are saying it's too late. My own head betrays me with sudden visualizations about what life might be like even next year, and the thoughts that arise unbidden cause my heart to race and pound in my throat.
But I've been keeping all of this to myself because everyone else is just... continuing to live like none of it matters. I look around whenever I go out in public (not too often anymore, unfortunately), wondering about the inner lives of the people I see bustling about doing their shopping and socializing. They look so unconcerned, it appears their worries are very narrow in scope, but what is really going on beneath the surface? Are they as terrified deep down as I am? Do those moments in between the business of daily existence flood with freezing horror at the prospect of having to live on a husk of a world sooner than expected? Do they stew in the depression and despair like I do?
But I can't ask, not even online. There are so many people who reject having to see or hear anything regarding climate anxiety and despair. I have to hide it behind a spoiler tag or else people will pile on and accuse me of fear mongering. "You're not helping the problem, you're just making people feel worse about it," I'm told by the finger-waggers. "None of what you're saying does anyone any good. Doom and gloom only gives us all depression, and then what good will we be?"
So I keep my anguished screams bottled up until such a time that it is deemed "appropriate" to let them out. Maybe that time will never come. I could be dying in the midst of a heat dome or flooding event and people may still, in that moment, ask me to keep my suffering under polite wraps so as not to disturb anyone whose day it might ruin.
My best bet may be that society decides on sane and sweeping adaptations to lessen the devastation, so that my screams dissipate naturally without being disruptive. But that seems like too much to hope for anymore. Everything seems like too much to hope for these days.
