Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Pan and Psyche
(c. 1892)

“Now that it’s here, I fear it might not go away.”

I feel a sudden overwhelming need to talk myself into engaging during these EndDays. I remember a kind of naturally flowing into and back out of engagements in before times, but now I seem to need to sit myself down and talk myself into beginning or, once engaged, sit myself down to talk myself out of continuing. Whichever, I feel a missing flow, as if I sense or perhaps know I will be further endangered if I proceed. I say ‘further endangered’ because I feel surrounded by danger, threatened, imperiled. This sense lends a certain uncertainty to my proceedings, and it might successfully amplify my sense of presence, but the resulting wariness drains spontaneity from my performances. I no longer lightheartedly float through my days. I slink through them instead, more likely some days to negotiate myself out of doing very much of anything if I feel I can get away with it. I do not always feel moved to contribute.

I accept full ownership of this state. I could point fingers and blame my condition on something external to me, like the presidency, but how pathetic would such an accusation seem? I have not been compromised. My ability to imagine has not been externally undermined. I admit that I have been experiencing existential dread on a more or less continuous basis, but I cannot properly ascribe how I react to those sensations to either my provocateurs or to their perturbations. My coping mechanisms seem to need some maintenance, maybe even some serious upgrading. Throughout history, many have been subjected to experiences much worse than I’ve ever imagined, without crumbling. I have not earned the opportunity to undermine myself while blaming it on forces beyond me. There have always been and will always be overwhelming powers utterly beyond my ability to influence them; they will always influence me.

The operant question can’t possibly be, then, who or what caused my response, but how it was that I chose to react this way. Maybe I have always tended to need to talk myself into stuff. I can acknowledge that I’ve carried on an extended conversation with myself since I first discovered that I could converse with myself, and that it would be completely out of character if I didn’t, at some level, require some talking myself into whatever opportunity presents itself to me. This just seems to be how I reason my way into and back out of whatever I do, whatever I’ve already done or avoided. I only rarely, if ever, simply step into any option. I have always had to negotiate with myself about whether I would take out the freaking garbage, though even more so recently.

I admit to feeling more fraught than usual during these extended EndDays, and I think it must be perfectly natural to engage in response in even more of whatever I might usually do in any given situation. I rightly should become myself only more so. What might have been in before times little more than subvocalized mumbles has sometimes become, in these more stressful EndDays, transformed into more extended soliloquies, some of which probably should trouble me. I catch myself asking myself questions that clearly couldn’t possibly find answers, and double-binding myself with queries that even if answered, couldn’t possibly alter a choice. I sense myself becoming a nattering hesitant, and I rightfully feel troubled by this realization.

I’d once imagined that I’d mature into an ever-expanding self-confidence, that as I learned and experienced, I’d evolve into or ultimately adopt patterns of living that wouldn’t leave me continually simmering over with questions. The opposite of this innocent aspiration seems to have happened. I seem to be nattering more but enjoying it less, questioning even the appropriateness of this familiar habit. I might be suffering from nothing more or less serious than a debilitating bout of extreme self-consciousness. The very atmosphere around me seems to be encouraging an increasingly troubling awareness of both dangers and opportunities. I struggle more than usual to decide. Maybe this serves as a lesson in being more careful what I wish for, for I once hoped to find presence. Now that it’s here, I fear it might not go away.

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