Nearsighted.

I’m only getting more nearsighted, the longer this goes on. I could hardly ever see all that far to begin with, but at least I could make out a few blocks, maybe half a mile on a clear day. I could see beyond my hair and ears, beyond my hopes and fears, beyond my scabs and tears. I could see upward. But then this all started and gradually my compass turned pointless, the stars blurred and the very thought of cities bent. Windows and televisions became interchangeable. Already so much, my family became everything, and coworkers became screen actors with no past and no future. Food began to appear on the porch like powerups in a video game, and essential friends emerged from the houses within shouting distance. My kids are being graded on how effectively they screw around on their computers, as their parents are paid for the same. I do laundry, and dishes, and shovel snow, and ride a bike that never leaves the basement all as if my life depends on those things, because it very much seems to, now.

I’m only getting more nearsighted. Tell me how any television network is different from any other. You can’t do it. Impeaching the president is the same as guessing the identity of the masked dancer is the same as shooting a zombie in the head is the same as the Nuggets/Lakers game is the same as Baby Yoda is the same as a bunch of tense chess matches is the same as binging ‘Monk' reruns. I wasn’t going anywhere anyway and that’s what showed up in front of me, so that’s where my eyes settled. My eyes don’t know or care about the difference and my brain increasingly doesn’t, not anymore. What matters now — what almost exclusively commands my attention, love, and prioritization — is IN the house, not what I’m seeing through the windows or the televisions or whichever. All those things up there I said are the same as each other, they’re also the same as the bare branches I can see through smudged pane across the street, or the soiled vinyl siding next door, or the shed out back, or those fucking squirrels.

I want to cry for the devastation of all we’ve lost, and I want to cry for the fortune of all I still have, and I want to cry because I feel like I should be having a reaction and at least that’s one. Very little gets me to react now, and what does doesn’t announce itself beforehand or even make much sense afterward. It’s a few notes of a song I haven’t heard in twenty years; it’s my son saying something that reminds me of a memory that may or may not even be accurate; it’s a particularly well-written half-paragraph online from an author I’ve never heard of. There remains so much to do but I’m not doing it, not as I picture others picturing I should but maybe they’re not, either; there’s still so much to feel but I’m not feeling it, not as I imagine others imagining I should but maybe they’re not, either. Peer pressure is here pressure, now.

I have crawled into a hole, not to die but to live more fully. I have retreated to advance. Pulled back into a revelation. More nearsighted, yes, but somehow seeing more. Unsure of how long this will last but certain that I am better equipped for its ending. None of this makes sense, but that’s a comfort now that lives inside when before it had been a dizzying, infuriating, saddening anarchic shrouded force hovering just outside. At an unknown distance, with an unknown intent.

Relentless. If it’s even there at all.