We can doom scroll, inviting the blue-light of our devices to sear this violence into our minds and hearts and lungs.

We can intellectualize and analyze and connect, drawing the throughline between patriarchy and imperialism and violence.

We can call our reps, we can protest, we can yell into social media.

We can organize, we can hold our loved ones tighter, we can also isolate and withdraw.

In the end, we were never created to handle this much grief and pain and death.

In the end, we are all just trying to make sense of this place:
- Where there is no time to exhale before we must grasp our next breath.
- Where there is no room to cry before the next crisis breaches our digital and physical boundaries.
- Where there are no adequate words to articulate this abhorrent reality.

Unlike my younger self I don’t blame people for wanting to stay in their made-belief Disneyland while fire is burning outside. Even without all the issues we face, life is inherently difficult. I think we have limited emotional and psychological capacity. We’re like puppies, we just want to run around, smell the wind and have some fun along the way. We wish to love and be loved. Not crank for exams, tire our bodies out, exhaust our brains – just so we can pay bills and look good to each other – over and over again. But to survive we have to pay bills, and to pay bills we have to crank for exams, manage our parents, children, colleagues, clients, bosses, our unhinged psyches, our suffering bodies. On top of that we have to care about justice, the environment, politics, violence, society. I too, want to retreat into my own Disneyland.