“I have often found myself at the mercy of the cocktail Ennui + Melancholy”
2 AM Thoughts
“I have often found myself at the mercy of the cocktail Ennui + Melancholy”
You’d forgotten what real anxiety felt like—the physicality of it. The imagined sensation of ribs collapsing into one another, of your heart slipping beneath its cage to swan dive into stomach acid.
The week had been promising: Monday through Wednesday—even most of Thursday—was filled with pockets of joy. It was a mosaic of contentment, interspersed with crushing realities soon displaced by the next pocket.
Thursday is different. Thursday holds a sense of foreboding you can’t quite place. Thursday is largely filled with pockets of joy found within work: reading book reviews, tending to gentle regulars, and discovering a previously unseen photo of your father.
Thursday reminds you that last year is not over until the jury makes its decision.
It guts you, the news. And due to a combination of for-better-or-for-worse censors and unfortunate headlines, the news doesn’t reach the same amount of eyes needed for pure, cleansing outrage.
So you rage as privately as you can. You stop for a pick-me-up of chocolates from the drugstore, and when the cashier—a familiar stranger—asks the question, you’re compelled to answer honestly: “How are you today?”
Your tongue trips over the word “tumultuous” twice before you give up and declare, with a laugh to reassure him that you’re not on edge, “I’m in turmoil!”
You pay for your chocolates and sit silently in your car. You try the word again: “tumultuous.” Turns out, third time was the charm.
This small victory carries you down the road, and your anger doesn’t reappear until you’re stomping down your parents’ stairs with reckless abandon.
You deliver a yearbook that’s not yours—a pocket of joy you wanted to share—before the anxiety slips from your lips with bite. Your mother attempts to calm you, but you keep questioning, “Why now? Why always when things start to ebb?”
Deep down, you know why. These threads swing loose at your sides, disrupting the shape of your half-formed ribcage.
It’s an election year.
Taking a brief hiatus from the newsletter. I’ll be back with something either funny or angry, but deeply sincere. Take care of yourself. ♥