When the Sky Keeps Falling, and You’ve Already Lived Through the Storm

The sky has been falling since 2020.

Every day there seems to be something new—another crisis, another outrage, another urgent demand for attention and reaction. Timelines flood with fear, anger, calls to protest, calls to panic, calls to choose a side right now.

Around the same time all of this began, my own world quietly stopped.

My lockdown didn’t look like sourdough bread or zoom calls. It became internal. Deeply internal. What others were encountering for the first time—uncertainty, instability, disillusionment—I had already lived through in earlier chapters of my life.

So when things surface now, I don’t feel shocked.

I don’t feel activated.

I don’t feel compelled to react.

More often, I feel something closer to: yes… I’ve been here before.

Been there. Done that. Reported on it.

No one cared.

That realization stirred something uncomfortable in me recently—especially after a conversation that forced me to look more honestly at how I’ve been feeling in some of my personal relationships. I noticed resentment bubbling up, and instead of ignoring it, I decided to examine it.

I realized how much of my life was spent trying to prove my worth after being told—explicitly and implicitly—that I didn’t have any.

And when I did show my worth, I learned something devastating:

“You can show us all you want, but I don’t have to look. I can just turn away.”

That moment lodged itself deep inside me. Not because I believed it was true—but because I wasn’t allowed to respond to it. I wasn’t allowed to speak back. Over time, that silencing didn’t disappear; it hardened into resentment.

Resentment doesn’t always look like rage.

Sometimes it looks like exhaustion.

Sometimes it looks like indifference.

Sometimes it looks like stepping away.

Now, I check only one social media platform. And when I do, I see fear everywhere—manufactured urgency, moral panic, endless declarations of collapse. I don’t engage, and for a while I questioned why. Was I detached? Was I numb? Was something wrong with me?

After sitting with it, I realized the answer is simpler and more honest.

I don’t engage because I’ve already done the inner work that this moment is demanding of many people now. I don’t need to scream to feel alive. I don’t need hysteria to validate my perception. I don’t need to participate in the narrative that everything is suddenly falling apart—because for some of us, instability was never new.

What is new is my refusal to keep bleeding in public to prove I’m paying attention.

I’m not cruel.

I’m not superior.

And I’m not apathetic.

I’m discerning.

I’m learning to recognize extraction—when conversations, relationships, or movements take more than they give, when they demand emotional labor without accountability or reflection. I’m no longer willing to be the place where unprocessed fear gets dumped.

This doesn’t mean I’ve closed my heart. In fact, it’s the opposite.

I’m choosing beauty now. I’m choosing art. I’m choosing moments that feel alive and honest and quiet enough to hear myself think. I’m choosing to enjoy my time here instead of living in a constant state of alarm over warnings I already tried to give.

I don’t wish harm on anyone.

I don’t want to watch the ship go down.

I simply know what it’s like to survive with nothing but a safe, dry bed and your own inner resources—and I won’t let resentment turn me into someone hardened or bitter. I’ve seen what that does to people.

So if I’m stepping back, it’s not because I don’t care.

It’s because I care enough about my own well-being to stop participating in games, lies, and intrusions that no longer align with who I am.

Some of the last remaining tethers are revealing themselves now. I’m letting them loosen without drama. Without rage. Without needing to be understood by everyone.

Not everything needs my reaction.

Not everything needs my voice.

And not every truth needs to be shouted to still be real.

Sometimes, the most honest response is to live well, create something beautiful, and let the noise pass without taking up residence inside you.

Sometimes, the most honest response is to live well, and create something beautiful.