can’t calm down—Hand Habits (2024)

So take me back outside
I don’t want to hear the sound of buzzing lights
Bring me back to my old house
I want to see that tree I used to climb

Back when I was small
I don’t want to be that

Anxiety is what happens when your inner chaos doesn’t match the apparent normality of the world around you. When your body is shutting down, screaming for help, but nobody hears you. It’s when you’re the storm in the calm.

It’s been over twenty years since a panic attack sent me into the emergency room psych ward, and I don’t worry much about that these days. I know it’s not real, and I learned long ago the tools to breathe through the waves. A panic attack is a false threat, a physiological misunderstanding.

If panic is a lightning bolt, anxiety is slow rolling thunder. It looms, taunts, urges you to fear a much stronger storm — even when the sun’s out.

Anxiety is your oldest relative, warning you, the dark shadow you can’t shake. Just when you think you’ve learned how it moves, what draws it forward, it’ll shapeshift and find new places to haunt.

What if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in my bloodline?
And what if the faces of the holy
Are just faces from a fantasy and I
I can’t see it through their eyes?
Although that I try

Not much surprises me anymore. I’ve seen too much, watched too many facades crumble, lost and found and lost again. I’ve learned to shrug off rejection, tolerate the worst outcome even when I anticipate its opposite. I was prepared for Trump’s win on November 5th, even though I went in slightly more optimistic than was healthy. But I was not surprised that he won, as I suspected he’d find a way, no matter what he had to do. I raged at my home state of Ohio, deactivated all my social media accounts, fell into bed defeated, grief-struck, terrified.

The low roar of anxiety didn’t find its way back to my stomach until the next day. In business-as-usual meetings as if the world hadn’t just ended, in the Berkeley Bowl grocery (in BERKELEY!) as shoppers smashed carts into one another with smiles on their faces, out on the streets as runners ran and small groups chatted and laughed.

And then the next day, and the days after that, the anxiety grew louder as the shock hit me. Not that Trump won; I processed that long ago, what it means and what comes next. No. I was shocked by you, all of you who shrugged and moved along into the new day. I expected collective grief, as in 2016, as on 9/11. I expected eye contact, public sobbing, a walk-out of a country gone fucking mad. But it never came.

That truly shocked me. Still does.

A struggle left undefined
Asking for clarity doesn’t justify the crime
And only if memory serves
How can you be certain of what was deserved?

And what if they were wrong?
I don’t want to be that

But ain’t that the thing about grief, how sometimes we’re slow to process the change. I was never less anxious than in the first few hours after my Mom died, when I stood in calm and packed for a cross-country drive to bury a childhood. So calm I sat at my computer and wrote an email, “I’ll be out for a few days. My Mom just died. Call me if you need anything.”

But ain’t that the thing about that first stage of grief, the way we simply deny the existence of what’s been lost. The way we move along, as if on instinct alone, to wherever we’re needed next, checking off the mundane tasks that await.

That’s you, America. Right now.

What if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in my bloodline?
And what if the faces of the holy
Are just faces from a fantasy and I
I can’t see it through their eyes?
Although that I try

A Fascist can’t reorder the world without chaos first; anxiety can’t rattle you without creating chaos within you. It’s all the same. But at some point, you need to look around you to see what’s changed, what’s still standing. You have no choice but to find your balance again, make a plan, and move forward.

Trump IS anxiety, the chaos that tremors underneath everything. Rattling the foundations that were meant to withstand any pressure, stacking aftershock upon aftershock so as not to give you time to process any of it, leaving you dizzy but still moving forward.

And what if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in my bloodline?
And what if the faces of the holy
Are just faces from a fantasy and I
Yeah, what if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in my bloodline?

That’s the other thing about anxiety. It’s always rooted in something unresolved, something looming, something feared. It’s your body telling you to pay attention.

Wake up, America. This isn’t a dream, or a simulation. This is your reality, and January 20th, 2025 is coming quickly. Perhaps you’ll be fine, for a while, lost in your own little world, tuning out what hasn’t reached you yet. But it will. It’ll reach all of us.

And what if the faces of the holy
Are just faces from a fantasy and I
Yeah, what if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in mine?
Yeah, what if I can’t calm down
And I don’t have that in mine?

~

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