The Spice Jar

Today is not the day for dignified tears,

Today is a day for visceral, ragged sobs,

choked back and violent.

Today, in mourning, I cry the tears of billions,

As though my own loss is nigh.

Truth screamed from the beginning of my life,

Ignored so easily to preserve our fragile comfortability,

Now coming to fruition and impossible to change,

Bringing forth the end long known.

We chose this end.

Finality most brutal.

Taking away the hope I once held.

Taking the future we were promised.

How does one go on?

Knowing the end will come.

Too angry to see,

Too stricken by grief to stay silent,

Too stubborn to accept it,

Too scared not to.

To see the end.

Who would have thought?

-Charlie Coriander

This freeform mess is my attempt to process the impending stoppage of the global currents that cool our planet. I learned about how quickly things are progressing this week. I've been in the eco space for most of my life but I was somehow sheltered from the most terrifying consequence of the global climate crisis. I had no idea that the oceanic currents were slowing as a result of dilution caused by the melting ice caps. There is a huge sense of finality when you find out that there is a real expiration date on the horizon. I feel like I'm grieving. I'm grieving the life that I am now leaving behind as though my innocence has been stripped away. I am grieving the future I thought I had. I am grieving for the billions of others on this planet who will also lose their golden years, their retirements, their families and their futures.

The biggest thing I'm grappling with is the one giant question: what now? In all seriousness, there's nothing that I as a single individual can do outside of what I'm already doing. I have a job, I have my family, I'm already doing all that I am able to as an activist right now. I am still going to fight. I still have a life to live even if this world is going to end. I know I want to get to a place where I can carry on living the way I did before my reality fell to pieces but I don't know how to move forward right now.

What has me so enraged that I want to throw up is knowing that we could have prevented this. So many dominos had to fall for us to get here and the experts were far from quiet about the reality of our situation. I hope that the money was worth it in the end. I feel disgusted, violated, humiliated, stupid and heartbroken. I used to hold on to hope so tightly just to have it ripped away in one afternoon. I don't know how to get it back but I desperately need to. There are still so many years left and I refuse to spend them in the state that I am in right now. Far from enough but I can't spend a decade in apathy. I just can't get away from it right now. It's been a week and I feel like who I was is gone.

I feel like I've let myself down by giving in to the despair. I'm stronger than this but I am also so exhausted that I want to sleep through the apocalypse. I have no intention of giving up or ending anything, there's still too much plot left but the ending has been spoiled.

I guess I do still have some sort of hope left. I keep wondering if by some miracle, we can somehow come together and hold the groups responsible for this catastrophe accountable for their part in this. I dream of seeing a world where I have the chance to live long enough to die of old age. A world where I can see my children grow into adults and have children of their own. We've let Creator down.