Are you ready for the next crisis? You better be because as soon as you deal with one the media wants to be sure you hear about another one. And if it isn’t the media telling you about one it’s someone on social media, or your neighbor, or your mom who calls to remind you that you can die from Lyme Disease and what the stats are on the cases this year in your area.

Can we just stop for five minutes?

Can we just put a hold on declaring a crisis every waking moment?

Can I have a cup of tea before I’m alerted to my impending doom and death?

I’d like all the statistics to be recognized for what they are and that is usually a bunch of crap that was poorly researched and then presented to the public as a reason for them to freak out, have a break down, and curl up in a little ball while crying and buying whatever everyone is selling to help them out of said crisis.

I decided to take a break from social media and news for the month of June. I thought this might slow down my thoughts, for one, but also slow down the barrage of panic porn from news and social media sights, which is ultimately what causes my thoughts to speed up in the first place.

I didn’t do great the first two days, no. I looked at a couple of news items. I read some Tweets (and I’m not even on Twitter). My panic started to rise. I turned off the news and tried to take a deep breath. That’s when the phone rang with the only person who ever calls me — my mom, who felt it was very important at that moment to read to me the latest article in her electric company magazine that informs all of us in this part of our state that we may die very soon from a tick-borne illness. (No, that’s not how the article is actually worded.)

Thank you, Mom. I love you, but was it really an emergency for you to call me and read the entire article to me, shattering what I had hoped would be a nice, calm, news free day? Welp — I guess so.

Sigh. Of course, she didn’t see it as shattering anything about my day and it wasn’t her intent. It was how I felt in my anxiety jumbled mind. She felt like she was making me aware, not so I’d panic but so we could do our best to protect ourselves and leave the rest in God’s hands.

Sometimes it feels like everyone in the world these days is thriving on panic porn, on doom scrolling even when they don’t know how to scroll or simply don’t scroll.

We are moving beyond Covid, even though cases are still around, but the media tried to tell us there is another virus coming and we have to be ready. Roll up your sleeve, it’s another vaccine that you have to have, or you will get sick (even though everyone who rolled up their sleeve to keep from getting sick from Covid is still getting sick). We are moving beyond Covid but Russia and North Korea have bombs and they aren’t afraid to use them. And China? Oh, man, don’t even get us started. They want you dead too.

The message all day long, even when you try to shut it off, is “Panic! Panic! Panic!” but when you do actually panic people mock you and suggest things like “your oxygen dropped when you had Covid because, you’re such an anxious person.” Hmmm…I’ve been anxious my entire life but my oxygen levels never dropped. Weird, huh? I guess Covid really is a hoax and didn’t cause some people to have health issues they never expected. *sarcasm alert*

At the same time I know Covid isn’t a hoax, I don’t think it is the widespread murderer so many of a certain political persuasion thinks it is and I say this even though I am someone who ended up on oxygen while having it (for two days…but you know…that’s because I just thought about it too much, not because an actual illness caused it to drop.). Here’s something – if you look for Covid with a stick in your nose every single day, you are bound to find it, symptoms or not.

I don’t know who needs to hear/read this but we are allowed to be in the middle of an opinion and choose a little from column A and a little from column B. We don’t always have to believe things are all one way or all another way when it comes to certain issues – like Covid. We can – gasp! – think for ourselves and not be a betrayer to our “party.” *eye roll*

To be quite frank, I am tired of looking for the bad and for the next thing to kill me. I am tired of the doom and gloom and the panic mode.

I am beat down. Not just emotionally and physically, but also spiritually.

I have tried faking it by watching comedies. I have tried faking it by pretending I am an author. I have tried faking it by reading fluffy, sometimes ridiculous books.

I have tried faking it by faking it but it’s hard to keep faking it when ever time you climb back out of the hole someone kicks you back into it. Those kicks are hardest when they come from the sources screaming at you to “calm down!”

Like Santa with the bottom of his black, polished boot in the middle of Ralphie’s forehead, pushing him back down the slide, I am being pushed over and over again back down the slide of doom and gloom, only instead of crying out what BB gun I want, I am crying out what level of peace I desire while I clinging with white-knuckled fingers to the top of the slide.

Sadly, unlike Ralphie, who got his BB gun for Christmas, I will only get the level of peace I desire when the Lord chooses to take me from this world.