There’s a weird transitional moment when you wake on the first day after a vacation. You’ve already made your peace with your return to the real world, but (if you’re smart), you’re still drifting in a rainbow bubble of relaxation and bliss. There won’t be a stunning buffet—or to-die-for acai bowl—waiting for you, but your brain is still swimming with views of paradise, bubbling laughter, and a conspicuous absence of tension. You’re back, physically. But until you connect your phone back to reality, there’s a possibility that the world isn’t such an awful place after all.

Then you log back in and collapse under the weight of anxiety, depression, and panic you held back for a month.

A year ago, I woke up faintly disappointed to find myself home instead of in the luxury of a cushy bed with palm fronds swaying outside the window. Our trip to Sydney and across the Pacific to Hawaii had successfully distracted my brain from the encroaching nightmare the final week of January proved 2025 could be. I was happily drifting on a cloud of core memories filled with new locations I’d once only dreamed of seeing. Maybe I was no longer within the comforting embrace of vacation, but I hadn’t yet pushed myself to reconnect with reality.

My decompressed body and brain lasted all of three minutes once I switched on my phone.

Insulated against news in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I’d missed the veritable avalanche of idiocy and stupidity coming from Washington, D.C. Unlike everyone else, I’d managed to exist outside of Executive Orders, nepotism appointments, and sheer madness. I knew they existed (most likely), but I hadn’t needed to acknowledge them. International waters offered me a slim protection.

The creeping dread and horror had waited patiently for me, biding their time until I felt compelled to become a functioning human being again.

Within days, my body and brain rebelled. The weight of so much blatant hatred proved too great to support. How could I expect to create when the act of breathing required so much concentration and effort? I went from staring at a blank screen to staring at a blank page and back again. My thoughts shuttered. I could only ingest so much dystopian nonsense before crying was all I could manage. The couch—not my desk, not my drawing tablet, not my pencils—became my best friend. Depression, with all its attendant miseries, settled in for a long stay.

I stopped trying to write. I gave up attempting to draw. Hell, I stopped talking to friends and family, afraid they might have heard some snippet of news I’d missed that (amazingly) made everything worse.

“Meltdown” doesn’t feel like a strong enough word to describe the overwhelm that took over. What was the point of doing anything if all it did was disappear beneath rage and despair? The world was going to hell on a bullet train, and no silly little stories or scribbles would stop it. All I wanted to do was scream. Scream until the world shook itself apart and put itself back together in a more pleasing shape. I couldn’t stop screaming. Couldn’t stem the tears of frustration and fury.

Every time I blinked, someone else I knew and loved became a target. Each flick of my fingertip against the phone screen hung another sword over my head. A little more hope disappeared at the end of every day when no one stepped forward to do something. Everything was going to shit.

Lead flowed into my veins. I couldn’t lift my hands. I could barely lift my head. Even my anxiety collapsed under the weight, exhausted from conjuring worse and worse possibilities that somehow came true. (That isn’t how it’s supposed to work. The world isn’t supposed to actually end) Tim and I traded off breaking down, silently agreeing that one of us needed to project hope at all times. Whether or not we actually felt a glimmer of positive, we couldn’t let the other completely dissolve into abject misery. Oscar-worthy performances, to be sure.

I spent 90% of 2025 drowning.

No new short stories written. Only two essays—written in brief moments of absolute fury—set to the page. An extended absence from this site. Feeble attempts at monthly art challenges, protest art. My momentum ran out, and I slammed into the wall. The injury felt permanent.

And now we’re a year later.

I have a finger on the floating panel of wood.

It’s not much, and I still curse the idiots of the world for each day that I don’t regain my sense of self. But it’s proof I haven’t completely succumbed to the nightmares. A defiant rebellion, however small and insignificant. Little more than a whisper of protest, but at least more than horrified silence.

I miss that brief moment a year ago when all was as it should be. Before I popped the bubble and flung myself into daily hell. If I’d never picked up my phone, could I have stayed safe in that little cocoon for the year?

I know the answer. And I know how quickly my thoughts rise now to point out hiding only makes me part of the problem. Every voice of protest is needed, regardless of the strength behind the words.

My throat is still sore from screaming.

But I’m breathing. I can inhale enough to keep the rage pouring out of my mouth.

For now, that’s something.

A finger on the board.

“‘Hope’” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all.”
~ Emily Dickinson, “Hope” is the thing with feathers