Hi. 💔

Trying to put my feelings into words.

I know getting emotional isn’t really my beat. (In fact, some of you may just assume I’m devoid of emotions.) Everything I originally had planned for this week’s newsletter doesn’t even remotely matter right now.

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with my therapist. It went a little something like this:

“I’m trying to look at things from an ‘abundance’ perspective, but my anxiety is out of control. My body feels tense 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It feels like the world is on fire. We’re on the brink of a recession and stock market crash, there’s a baby formula shortage, a housing crisis, a war in Ukraine, a war on women’s bodies, a possible impending war in China, soaring rent and gas prices, another COVID wave, a monkeypox outbreak, and there’s, like… no end in sight. It all feels really, really hopeless. I thought to myself the other day, ‘What if I just ran away?’” 

“Where would you run to?” 

“I haven’t thought that far yet.”

“First of all: This is a really, really tough time.” (Love when she validates my feelings. If your therapist isn’t validating your feelings, get a new therapist.) She continued: “But just like every other tough time in history, things ultimately get better. They will get better. They always do. There’s always hope.”

And this was before an armed gunman in Uvalde, Texas locked themselves in a fourth-grade classroom and massacred 19 children, their two teachers, and injured and traumatized many, many others. 

Right when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. Unfathomably so. Any “hope” I had after that conversation completely dissipated. 

It’s like we’re living in hell, knowing that nothing will change. It never does. I know that sounds cynical, I know I am generally very cynical. But the truth is, our elected officials won’t do anything about our country’s gun problem, because they never, ever do. The more stories that come out about the Uvalde shooting—the armed policemen’s cowardice, their failure to breach the school for nearly an hour, the way they barred panicked parents from saving their children while even handcuffing some of them, the way one of the murdered teacher’s husbands died of a broken heart just two days after the shooting—the more I want to bash my head against a wall.

If Sandy Hook—something that’s become a flashbulb memory for so many of us—didn’t enact change in our country, what possibly could?

It’s easy to get “desensitized” to mass shootings. I still hadn’t fully processed the one that happened roughly two weeks ago at a grocery store in Buffalo, when a white supremacist live-streamed his rampage—also with a semiautomatic assault rifle—that killed 10 Black people. A community he’d purposefully targeted after getting radicalized by websites like 4chan. 

This time, I’m anything but desensitized. I’m uncontrollably angry, devastated, even physically ill. I’m pissed off at the inaction of our elected officials, even the ones I voted for. Pissed off at the police officers who stood outside the school while an 18-year-old massacred 9- and 10-year-olds with a semiautomatic assault rifle. Pissed off at the politicians who will blame anything but the murderous weapons they’ve legalized. Even pissed off at people with platforms—people with “influence”—who’ve stayed silent. “Pissed off” doesn’t even cover it, honestly. My anger and hopelessness is off the charts. It sounds unhealthy, I know, but no news story has affected me quite like this before. The photos of these babies—innocent, smiling, receiving Honor Roll certificates mere hours before their violent deaths—broke me. When I saw the news, I left work, I cried, I called my parents, I dry heaved. 

The hardest part is feeling like there’s no hope. Knowing nothing will change. Being told to “just vote.” Getting informed by the president that, “guys, it’s up to you!” (You’re literally the president, bro. And I know I had several people on Twitter try to kindly explain to me how the checks-and-balances system of our government works, but… you’re the president, bro. If anyone can do something, it’s literally you!)

Unfortunately, we happen to be alive during a time of unprecedented access to breaking news at our fingertips. The truth is, our brains weren’t built to withstand so much devastating information at once. I tweeted yesterday that, upon telling my dad this felt like the worst time to be alive, he tried to remind me that it’s a good thing, actually, that I’m not alive during the 1800s. Is it a good thing, though? Would it be so bad if we didn’t have access to every detail about every single atrocity worldwide as it happens via the internet? Would it be so bad if I was churning butter all day instead of reading sickening headlines on Twitter that are worse than the last?

I’m only half-joking when I say that. I’m trying to get back into that abundance mindset of being thankful for the cards I’ve been dealt, counting my blessings, and knowing many, many people—both alive today and those who’ve experienced war and genocide and famine and persecution for centuries—have had it unfathomably worse than me, or you, or any of us who just want to throw in the towel right now.

Yes, I’m cynical. But I also know my therapist is right: There’s always light at the end of the tunnel, even when it doesn’t feel like it. I know that sounds silly and cheesy and trite, but without hope, what do we have? Do we just give up? Should I just run away to that yet-decided location? Many of us are hanging on by a thread, and what I’m clinging onto right now is the idea that maybe we’ll eventually live to see the tides turn, to see something change.

I’m not even sure where I’m going with this. When I called my mom in a fog the other night, unable to move off the couch, she told me, “You feel too much sometimes. You have a lot of emotions*. Maybe you should write about this, to make yourself feel better.”

*more proof that I do have emotions

She was right. Writing about this has made me feel a tiny bit better. And I encourage anyone reading this to—if you haven’t yet—find an outlet that you know could make you feel better, too. Or, at the very least, just take care of yourself. Delete Twitter, hide your phone in a drawer, turn on Stranger Things or whatever, go outside. I know it’s easier said than done, but hunching over my newsfeed has certainly done me no good this week—or ever, honestly.

In the meantime, these are tangible ways to help:

Make a donation to Everytown, an organization that works tirelessly for gun control legislation.

Make a donation to the Uvalde victims’ fund, and/or the Robb Elementary Memorial Fund.

Make a donation to the four children left behind by Irma and Joe Garcia.

Make a donation to Gliffords, which fights our country’s gun lobby.

Make a donation to March For Our Lives, created by survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Contact your state’s representatives at www.commoncause.org, or reach any member of congress via 202-224-3121.

Join a march on June 11 in the city nearest you, calling congress to act now and end gun violence. Text March to 954-954.

Just know that you’re not alone. Everything sucks. It feels like the worst timeline. But hang on, if for no other reason, to see what might change. Curiosity can keep us going. When things eventually get better—they will, my therapist says so, and she’s always right—you’ll know you went through hell to see it.