neutralize gastric acid
WITHOUT A MAP
I need to know what you do when it seems like everything is getting worse and worse. Should I stockpile food and water? Should I throw up my hands and resign myself to the fact that my child will inherit a horrid, toxic, climatically fucked, desperate-gulf-between-first-and-third-worlds planet? Should I stop listening to the news and reading environmental-activism blogs? Should I get radical and drive myself crazy following all kinds of live-lightly rules, donating lots of money to charity, and irritating everyone around me? Should I continue to muddle along doing the best I can, and accept the occasional sleepless night as the new normal? Should I go on some sort of medication? Is there really a medication that will make you stop worrying about TOTALLY WORRYING THINGS like economic instability, terrorism, food safety, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the polluted oceans, natural disasters, and the whole “we’re running out of oil but there is no alternate plan?” Can that medication be in a 20-oz frosty mug and made with hops?
Wow, I am a huge downer, huh. But seriously, something may need to be done. After one of the aforementioned sleepless nights I was all owl-eyed and damaged and leaking life force like a bruised peach, and then I got on the train and there was this jittery guy who kept craning his neck to look around, and sometimes standing up for no reason and then sitting back down, and I was unable to read because I was all like HE HAS A GUN. He will start shooting for no reason at all, it won’t even be a misguided political statement, it will just be some bullshit whackaloon who causes my kid to grow up motherless. I was starting to get even more agitated than the jittery guy, and I thought oh, this is what my friends who suffer from anxiety attacks are talking about.
I managed to hold it together, and not do anything embarrassing like start crying or inconvenient like get off the train early, but it was not fun. And being a relentlessly practical person, I do not have immediate plans to medicate myself (other than in the usual, 21-and-over ways), because this does not happen often and it does not interfere with my everyday life. But what the fuck? It is not enough to have anxiety about things that are really happening (the economy IS an epic disaster, the planet IS becoming a toxic shithole), now I have to have anxiety about extremely improbable things (crazy subway shooter)? Come on, brain. Work with me here. We used to be friends, once.
—mimi smartypants is sorry if she bummed out your Friday.