Another post about feelings at the end of a terrible week

On Tuesday I had a rather extended crying breakdown, which is fairly rare for me because of the brain meds that keep my emotions and tears pent up. It was after another day of reading terrible news, of friends going through hard times, of not eating and not taking care of myself, and the thought of sensitive children being forced to repress their curiosity and true selves everywhere they are in Texas. I couldn’t take in another shred of horrors. My body had to release something.

I had therapy this morning and we commiserated about the state of, you know, everything. I told her about the breakdown and she said she’d been in a similar state. I yelled a little about how it feels like women are the ones trying to fight back — calling our reps, creating through our rage, advocating for others, organizing — while many men around me are kind of useless when it comes to taking action. I love my husband, but you will not find him calling Ted Cruz for any reason.

If I’m being honest with myself, the actions I take are meaningless. I am powerless. Whatever power women and vulnerable people have gained over some decades has been wiped away so fast it feels like we’re in the aftermath of a disaster, stumbling around with new eyes, witnessing shocking landscapes stripped bare.

With all of this in my head today, I needed to get out. I needed some treats. I headed down I-10 to the nearest Spec’s so I could pick up a nice bottle of red wine to go with the steaks my husband is making tonight. I missed the turn into the overly complicated shopping strip and ended up in the neighborhood I’ve never had a reason to visit called Spring Valley Village. I was just trying to find a back way to get back east behind the shopping center and ended up in this sprawling, confusing neighborhood of multi-million-dollar homes right as school was letting out. White children rode their electric scooters down pristine sidewalks. Trump flags were limp in the cold gray air.

I turned another awkward corner trying to get out of this nightmare and found the street blocked by two fit, wealthy white men playing pickleball, a net spanning the whole street. Like they owned it. The world is their playground, infrastructure be damned. I glared at them as they moved the net for me to drive through.

A bit later in a high-end grocery store, where I fought a whole hive of men picking through single-stem roses to get a couple for myself, I spotted a white woman with a bad suburban haircut. Out of place, but clearly wealthy. We ended up in the parking lot at the same time. She opened the back of her white SUV with a Come and Take It AR-15 sticker. These women, always imagining themselves under siege.

As I meandered my way out of the wealthiest parts of Houston back to my just-unaffordable part of Houston, my music app pulled up a song out of nowhere by a band that I’d recently been trying to remember. I haven’t spoken the band’s name because I couldn’t remember the band’s name, so it’s not like my phone is listening to me. All I could remember was that there was a dude in the band who married one of the sisters in the band and took her last name and that I saw them at the Satellite Lounge probably when I was in college, so how Apple Music somehow knew that I was trying to remember folk-pop band The Nields, I’ll never know.

At a stoplight, I frantically scrolled for the album I knew I’d owned once and listened to a few tracks. So sweet and sing-song and rhyming and sunny, even when a little dark. Not particularly good, but felt like walking down a sidewalk on a pretty spring day, flowers blooming. Simple. I thought of that younger me, in my early 20s, waiting for everything to arrive. I loved sunny then. I loved sweetness. I wanted all of that. I wanted a man to marry me and take my last name.

(They’re divorced now.)

I had a bright future. My college had been paid for in scholarship money. Jobs weren’t hard to find. I had strong desires. I believed in humanity. Nothing was perfect, but nothing had yet been taken from me. I was innocent. I was naive.

I am not that anymore. I am heavy with the weight of what I’ve seen and what I feel and I am scared.