Follow the Disintegrating Thought Spiral

Ruby Slippers Optional

Okay, Brain, this is important—very important. You have one job. All you need to do is think about one thing. (I suppose we could write it down… But we're smart enough to remember one thing)

Are you ready?

Here it is: Muffin. We need to get a muffin.

That isn’t so difficult, right? “Muffin.” Everyone loves a muffin. You like muffins. Muffins are yummy and healthy and sweet. And who could forget “Muffin”—easily the most important character on Bluey.

I’m not the only childless adult to develop an obsession with Bluey. Plenty of others have become enraptured with the show. The inside jokes you know the writers slide in there for the parental demographic. All the clever plot lines that speak to so many generational levels in the space of a few moments. Only need ten minutes to feel better.

Maybe more.

Maybe an entire season. When I’m feeling particularly down. Or depressed.

Or horrified.

I was horrified on Wednesday. I woke up to a world where millions of people elected a fascist dictator to the presidency.

That’s a funny thought. You don’t “elect” dictators, do you? They’re appointed. Or, rather, they appoint themselves. Isn’t that what happened here? A raving lunatic who orchestrated a fraud “democratic” vote while yanking on puppet strings to direct so many foolish idiots to pull levers and fill in bubbles?

I had a panic attack about the bubble on my vote. What if I accidentally filled in the wrong one? I double-checked it after finishing the ballot. Re-read everything. I didn’t want my one little slip of paper to be the reason for the destruction of a country.

My brain does that, sometimes. Equates my actions with catastrophe. Because I am (clearly) the lynchpin standing between the collapse of the dam holding back the Apocalypse.

Somehow.

We watched Apocalypse Now in AP English. Mr. Andrews told us it was based on Heart of Darkness—probably how he squeaked it past the strict Bible-belt school administrators. I don’t think Joseph Conrad would see much of his work in the drug-laced treatise on the Vietnam War. Maybe that iconic line—“The horror. The horror.”—the only thing I much remember from the book. No one said anything when the movie ended. Too heavy a topic for seventeen-year-olds coping with the recent suicide of one of our own. No one had a word for non-binary in 1996. And we weren't allowed to discuss sexuality. Or suicide. No mental health or instability talks permitted in class in those days. (Are they now?) Besides, I hated war movies.

I hate war movies.

Everyone at Camp Thunderbird insisted we see Saving Private Ryan during our weekend off. I wanted so badly to fit in with the group. I always wanted to fit in. Everywhere. Same reason I sat through Apt Pupil and that horrible scene with the cat—gasping and trying not to sob aloud. No one could hear me crying and think me weak. Self-imposed torture, prising my eyes open, staring at the screen, and trying not to save the images in the reserves of my memory. Searching for cold, analytical terms for everything to distance myself from the raw emotion.

I think I’m nothing except raw emotion.

Is it normal to feel jealous of fictional characters? Riley in Inside Out gets a suite of emotions. All I have is Anxiety, permanently affixed to my control board. No one ever comes to coax her hands away. Fear stands at her side, egging her on. “You’re hurting her.” Joy’s quote from the movie bounces around my brain like an untethered memory orb.

But it doesn’t stop the constant shaking.

The racing pulse.

The impending sense of doom.

If I think of every possible consequence, the endless risks associated with every radial turn of the planet, maybe I can head off the worst disasters. Scribble down lists of Go bags, surveillance cameras, evacuation routes, emergency supplies, and protest speeches. I possess a brain capable of incredible intelligence. My thought processes are capable of getting every single detail—good and bad—down, if only I take the time to do so. If only I’m given the time to do so.

I can think my way out of the end of the world.

Can’t I?

People always survive disaster movies: Volcano, Earthquake, Twister. Mother Nature rebels, and She rages against a chunk of the population (who certainly deserve it), but there is always a handful that crawls from the debris in the end. Hollywood executives who demand the shiny, happy ending, no doubt. Proof of human resilience. Or is it a need to demonstrate human dominance over Nature?

Doesn’t climate change death tolls show different?

Definitive proof of the planet screaming out in terror, and still people turn a blind eye. They cobble together fantasies to explain the punishing heat, the monstrous storms, the bone-crunching freezes. Present them with a living dinosaur, and they’d call it a horse. Or a dog. Look to whoever they’ve baptized their personal savior for the proper label. They no longer want to think for themselves.

It hurts too much to think like someone else.

Wait…

What was I thinking about?