All I Do is Keep the Beat, and Bad Company

A Lovestruck Romeo contemplates the apocolypse

Over the last weekend, my mental health has collapsed. I’m now so exhausted and racked with anxiety that it’s a struggle doing anything at all. This has happened before and I know exactly what I ought to do about it. I should get the hell off social media. Yes, even Substack. I quit X and Facebook long ago.

For a while, Substack was my safe space. Over the last few months, it has opened up my world in all kinds of wonderful ways - emotionally, socially and intellectually. It has stimulated my creativity and filled me with interesting and exciting ideas. However, I have to be careful and limit my exposure to this kind of rocket fuel or my grip on reality begins to wobble a bit. I’m one of these people who starts beating myself up very quickly if I’m not falling into line and doing whatever my influencers of choice are telling me will improve my life. Or even keeping up with the material they are putting out, much of which is life-enhancing and interesting enough to be well worth a paid subscription.

I am used to maintaining this equilibrium, however. For decades I have more or less self-regulated my neurodiversity and mental health by investing time in the activities that nourish me - meditation, grounding work like gardening, creative stimulation, exercise, and rather more sleep than a lot of people need. I am married to someone driven and high-achieving who constantly pushes the boundaries of what I’m able to handle, and I have to be very firm with myself and say no when I realise he’s asking a bit too much, because I don’t want to disappoint anybody, least of all people I care about. I have the occasional blip but 90% I feel balanced and content with my life.

That’s where I was until about a month ago, and we all know what happened then.

Of course, I could carry on as if Trump and Musk weren’t happening. I could stick my fingers in my digital ears and sing LA LA LA, I could censor my feed, keeping all the lovely writing groups and slow living advice, and people managing ADHD, autism, and chronic fatigue. I could stay with the Jungian and literary groups that fascinate me. And probably then I’d be just fine, at least until World War Three breaks out and God knows what horrors unfold on the streets of Washington. I know I’m not well, I’m not resilient, and right now life seems marginally safer over here in Europe, though in my darkest moments I wonder how it would feel if my daughter in Sweden and her family ended up as refugees from a Russian invasion. I know it helps nobody to be going there right now, but my feed is stuffed with people telling me Better Get Ready, because even in your limited remaining lifetime, the risk of total civilizational collapse is growing exponentially.

People slow down to look at car crashes on the motorway. Sometimes they end up as part of the wreckage. At the very least they are being ghoulish. Trouble is, disaster is incredibly tempting to follow from what is, for now, a safe distance.

And a very large part of me feels that I have no right to turn away. I care very deeply about what happens in America, about the world situation generally, about the scary rise of AI and accelerating civil disorder and climate collapse. Yes, I also know that if you read enough doomsday scenarios you will come across nuggets of golden hope and optimism. But right now the doomsday stuff is outnumbering them about 10 to 1, at least on my feed.

I lie awake at night wondering what I’d do if the secret police were knocking on my door, if the shelves of supermarkets emptied and the power went off. I hope I would find untapped reserves of resilience. But if I’m honest, suicide seems like a more realistic option. I have friends, but a lot of them were struggling with their own issues even before all this shit went down. Some are more vulnerable than me. I try very hard to be there for them. Sometimes I come home and feel so exhausted I just want to block out everything, because if I’m brutally honest I’m probably not in a fit state to be carrying anyone else’s load right now.

What are my drugs of choice when I want to do said blocking out? They are things that really aren’t doing me a lot of good - mostly chocolate and excessive doomscrolling.

Substack as it used to be just months ago was actually the most healthy way I’d found for ages for me to regulate my mental stability without withdrawing from life completely. Yes, I do other stuff. I knit, I’m learning French on Duolingo. But right now I just feel too bloody tired to stop doing the stuff that is bad for me. And I feel terribly privileged and self-centred even saying that. What right do I have to pull up the drawbridge and live in a walled garden when so many are suffering so terribly?

I do miss you, though, Substack:

• And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be
  All I do is keep the beat, the bad company
  All I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme
  Julie, I'd do the stars with you any time

  "Juliet, when we made love you used to cry
  You said 'I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die'
  There's a place for us you know the movie song
  When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"

Mark Knopfler, Romeo and Juliet