So This is the Apocalypse…

I think I was about six years old when I first heard about nuclear missiles on the news.  I asked my mom what that was, and she wouldn’t tell me.  So of course, I harassed her until she finally told me.  My mom is not a scientist, so she gave me the 1977, this-is-what-I-gather-from-trying-not-to-hear-the-news version, “They’re rockets that can destroy the whole world.”

I think that’s the first anxiety attack that I can specifically remember.  In fact, now that I’ve written that, I’ve realized that that may actually be why my panic attacks always feel apocalyptic.  I remember laying it bed that night crying that a bomb would land in my room.  I told my mom, and she chuckled and told me, in a way that I think she actually believed would comfort me, “If it does, we’ll all die with you.”

I’ve always imagined that the end of the world would be very theatrical.  Mostly, I was afraid of war.  We were in Germany at the time, and my stepfather was in the Air Force, so, now that I’m thinking about it, we lived in Military communities until where kids would have parents who would worry about going to war during the cold war.

Ok, I’m having a tiny bit of a “breakthrough” while writing this entry.  I think I just figured out why I was so obsessed with apocalypse and dying as a kid.  And that’s where all of my panic attacks lead:  it’s the end of the world.

There was a show my parents liked to watch way back then called, “Black Sheep Squadron.”  The intro played an air raid siren.  I would put my fingers in my ears and twist them around so that all sound would be drown out.

I remember kids at school talking about nukes and Nostradamus’ prophecies.  There always seemed to be a looming threat of doom.  So it’s not such a leap to see why joining a religious community so focused on “rapture” was so emotionally devastating to me.

So…. back to the topic.  When I have imagined the end of the world, which I have done countless times over my fucked up life, I imagine a cacophony of violent slaughter.  A few idiots at the various global helms – men, of course – willing to destroy life as we know it, including themselves, if it proved that one of them had the biggest dick.

Since my crappy weekend, I have begun to wonder if maybe this is what the apocalypse will look like.  Everybody just sits at home, waiting for someone else to fix everything.  Slowly, people will die from this virus, or run out of food, but The Dick-Wielders will keep us distracted with their pettiness and we’ll just let it happen while we wait for them to do something about it.

Of course, the most brainless of our fellow humans will be out in force protesting the quarantine because they believe that this is oppression.   These are the same people who are crying about confederate statues being removed from universities.  “The Negros liked being slaves.”

Isn’t it funny that everyone wants to call millennial “entitled?”   Yet the supreme colostomy bag is a Boomer.

I think that this stream of consciousness has turned into a river of sewage.  For now, I’m out.