It’s a term I’ve heard more recently in the last few years to refer to ways people neatly package up their intense feelings or emotions away from the world in order to focus on tasks at hand and function somewhat “normally.” I heard it even more recently, today, in a discussion where it was brought up how we, as black women, have to compartmentalize during these incredibly stressful times in order to keep functioning. At first I felt proud of what that meant. It meant I was able to channel my emotions in a way that wouldn’t interfere with work and let them out when I had time and space to do so, be it on the weekends or taking time off. Then I thought about it deeper and it made me furious to think that is something to be proud of and even more so to be acceptable in society. Humans should NOT be compartmentalizing shit to keep working. It’s not healthy to bottle up your emotions for any reason let alone on purpose to get through a week, a month, several months, or entire years. It reminded me of that “strong black women” trope that is so detrimental to the totality of black womanhood and makes us seem like this emotionless monolith. Absolutely black woman are strong, but we are not robots and we are not infallible or impervious to the usual spectrum of emotions that courses through humankind.

Then I started thinking about how hard people are struggling now who are working, who are not working, who are looking for work, who have given up on work, who are creating, who are trying to create, who are figuring out what they’re doing, who have no idea what they’re doing, who have taken to throwing themselves in the news, who have taken to steadily disconnecting from everyone and everything, who are wondering when this is going to end, who are trying to figure out how it all began, who are unsure where to begin examining their privilege, who are tired of dealing with privilege, who are just plain tired. I started thinking about all these people who are on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. People oversharing, under-sharing, opinionated, dejected, despondent. All the people who don’t have social channels at all. Everyone is dealing with the pandemic and mass exposure of racial injustices in so many different ways. Sometimes compartmentalizing is the only way some people can deal with it to keep from losing their minds. That’s not a bad thing. I just don’t think it’s anything to celebrate. It’s survival. There is nothing glamorous or commendable about having to ignore your stomach churning at the thought of not being able to see your loved ones for however many more months or having to continuously hear the painful stories of your black peers in various forms of media. Hearing the exhaustion and frustration in their voices as they explain why their lives matter and how this country has refused to see their humanity. It’s so overwhelming. So very overwhelming.

It’s been hitting me more heavily these past few weeks that on top of integral civil unrest we’re still dealing with the global pandemic. Though scientists have said countless times that it was just the beginning months ago, I never fully grasped what that meant. In March it was a shock to the system. It was a surreal sequence of events that got increasingly scarier and made a fun adventure of working from home a necessary compliance to avoid the death of yourself and/or others. Astronomical numbers of people dying flashed on the TV screen and Cuomo spoke every single day to keep the people of the state updated but this also stirred great deals of anxiety. In the beginning of April we knew this was very much a serious illness but didn’t yet understand the magnitude. By May we were hearing the different ways it was tearing through communities and tormenting the body in ways we never imagined. Young people were sharing stories of not being able to breathe and then George Floyd cried out for his mother because he couldn’t breathe for entirely different reasons. By June the country was reeling and spiraling over another black man’s death at the hands of the police. The Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum all across the globe and we said their names and screamed for their justice. Breonna Taylor’s senseless, tragic story made its rounds dumbfounding us all as to how her killers still walk free. We all wept for the sweet kid who played violin whose last words were a stab to the heart. Gentle Elijah McClain. We continue to hear of black trans men and women being subjected to brutality and being taken from this planet at such tender young ages, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, Layla Pelaez Sánchez, Brayla Stone. We will never stop saying your names and working towards a world in which you should have flourished.

In June we felt the resistance to the movement, which turned into a resistance of the seriousness of the virus then devolved into an outright shit show. Wearing a mask became a political statement. People swearing face coverings were killing them and the mandates to wear them a result of the nefarious shadow government. Yes, the very entity that may have been behind fireworks incessantly going off in neighborhoods all around the country. Speculation that this was a military tactic, that police were giving them out, that they were prepping us for bombs dropping. After the beginning of July, the fireworks and conspiracy theories subsided, which brings us to now. Still no justice and no peace. An influx of cases around the country with no end in sight. We’re by no means back to normal. “Normal.” What does that even mean anymore? File it away under time, a construct that isn’t serving us anymore. Sure, NYC may be in the clear but for how long? Remember, winter is coming…

On a personal note, at the end of July, there were layoffs at my company that dealt a devastating blow to the entire team’s morale in a time of crisis and some people I really enjoyed were let go. It’s never an easy decision to make and it was done with as much grace as possible, but you can’t ignore the elephant in the room. The residual sadness of losing people who were truly wonderful lingers on and is still felt in meetings, in brief conversation, and even on Slack. It’s another complex string of emotions to unravel in time.

In all of these months of sheltering in place I got to steal moments here and there upstate or downstate or a different state altogether. Those moments feeling like mini vacations from the reality that feels chaotic and unrelenting. It was all so necessary to better navigate these landmine days where you just didn’t know if you were going to step onto grenade in the form of a Trumpism or traverse the battlefield in one piece and make it to the end of the day and your favorite Netflix show. Everything just feels like it’s constantly in flux. There is nothing to pinpoint and no one thing to extrapolate on explaining wtf is going on right now. There are too many things, and on top of it all it’s a gd election year. On the tippity top of it all we have a president who has done an alarming amount of nothing and shamelessly continues to stoke fear and doubt.

I honestly don’t know how we all collectively haven’t just had a complete and utter meltdown. With everything weighing so heavily in the air and so rife with tension, it feels almost inevitable. It’s a miracle the country hasn’t completely given up and started regressing. Let’s bring back the barter system and end capitalism?With everything going on it’s tempting. I’m still holding it together, but it really feels like something’s gotta give. I honestly don’t even know what it is that would make me feel not anxious right now. It is not helping my overactive imagination to not know any semblance of what the future will look like. I take solace in knowing I’m not the only one with these feelings, but I can’t shake this unknown Unknown.