Everything is great (but why am I so scared?)

The standard of great is so low we no longer admit how unwell we are

drawing by me

The world around me is waiting in fear of something, and people of this world are going on with their days barely acknowledging that cautionary sensation. The dark curtain is falling on our heads – we’re already underneath it – but the rarest thing I hear in short conversations with people is I’m not doing well. Instead, all I hear is everything is great.

The standard for feeling great dropped so low in the last few years that people no longer feel the need to admit that they are unwell. We all know we are unwell. Why make our mouths say it? Why bring the trauma to the surface? Why admit that we feel weak. There’s blaming of others, but there’s no admission of one’s own fragility.

The curtain is blocking the light and we think that darkness is the new normal.

Even more, I’m afraid of how people decide to deal with this fear. The true men encapsulate in shallow — sometimes even comedic — costumes of masculinity. The true women hide behind “female things”. The rest of us know that it’s time to go silent because that’s what we historically learned to do – we’re always the first victims of hate, and hence we turn our invisible modes on to protect our lives. The world loses colour…