I am so fucking scared. Not in a hypothetical way. Not in a “things are concerning” way. In a deep, animal, body-level way that sits in my chest and makes it hard to breathe when I stop moving long enough to feel it. Every day there’s another name, another story, another person crushed by a system that treats human lives like acceptable losses. Renee Good should still be alive. And the fact that I have to say that, again, makes me feel like something is fundamentally broken beyond repair.
What’s terrifying is how normalized this is becoming. How quickly we’re expected to absorb it, post about it, feel bad for a moment, and keep scrolling. How violence gets wrapped in language like “procedure” and “enforcement” and “policy,” as if that strips it of blood and consequence. I keep wondering how many people have to die before we admit that this isn’t a series of accidents. It’s the point. And knowing that makes the fear sharper, because if this is intentional, then what comes next?
I don’t know how you’re supposed to live a normal life inside this. I don’t know how you plan for the future when the ground keeps shifting and the rules keep changing and safety feels conditional. I don’t know how you grieve people you didn’t know personally but feel responsible to anyway. Some days I feel frozen, like my brain just can’t compute how bad this is allowed to get. Other days I feel like I might crawl out of my skin if I don’t do something.
I keep coming back to the same awful truth: I don’t have power. I don’t have protection. I don’t have influence in the rooms where these decisions are made. What I have is stubbornness. Anger. A refusal to pretend this is fine. I have a voice that won’t shut up and hands that won’t stay idle, even when they’re shaking. I don’t believe silence is neutral anymore. I think silence is how this keeps happening.
So I’m choosing determination, even when it feels thin and fragile. I’m choosing to stay loud when everything in me wants to hide. I’m choosing action not because it’s heroic, but because despair is exactly what this system feeds on. I don’t feel brave. I feel terrified. But fear doesn’t get to make my decisions for me. If all I can do is keep naming the harm, keep showing up, keep refusing to let this be invisible, then that’s what I’ll do.
I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know what’s coming. I just know I won’t make myself smaller to survive it quietly. If this is the moment we’re living in, then I’m going to meet it with rage, grief, and a spine. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s loud. Even if it scares me too.