He Killed Himself on Live TV

And then someone else was in charge.

There was a new leader plopping himself into the chair in front of the camera. He started to mop the blood, and then remembered that he was in charge and didn’t have to.

He had been unceremoniously promoted.

He sat down and began his address.

Here is what he would do differently.

She changed the channel. She didn’t bother learning their names anymore.

Any happiness or elation was mania, and had to be subdued. Any sadness was depression, and had to be medicated. Feelings like shock took up too much time.

Shock was too inconvenient. And then, it was gone.

(There were still no women leaders, though, because despite the constant violence, that was still too shocking somehow.)

There was one emotion: Exhaustion. Lethargy. Sleepiness. The mild thrill of completing a mediocre to-do list. People mildly proud of doing their laundry and throwing away receipts. People so burdened from post-shock that any self-care was a fucking miracle worth Tweeting about.

No ups.

No downs.

Just sludge in the blood.

No flips or cartwheels for the hell of it. Everyone had carpal tunnel from posting their feelings and deleting the comments they disagreed with. All the wrong people were medicated and vaccinated: Sick people didn’t believe they needed help, and almost happy people recognized the post-shock world and were frightened right back into their depressions.

They could do something about the depression.

It was harder to change the post-shock that everyone, everywhere, was feeling.

And so the people most capable of changing the world stayed depressed, their sensitivity perceived as weakness, their potential identities drowning under a strange need to stay mentally unwell.

Because if they were actually healthy, and if their brains were just adapting to the environment, then what did that mean about the society around them?

Her lover was dead. He had killed himself. She made a post about toxic masculinity. It got…

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