the thunder to come
when anxious dread's so bad, you have to mix metaphors
My dog Ripley is afraid of thunder and fireworks. So afraid that, if my boyfriend or I see dark clouds in the forecast, we immediately go into overdrive: we give him a CBD treat, anti-anxiety meds, AND blast a YouTube playlist of blissed-out spa music to help mask the big scary sounds.
As a fan of thunderstorms myself, my relationship to them has changed: what was once a dramatic weather pattern has evolved into something I now dread.
I don’t need to tell you what thunder is—it follows lightning. The flash of light out the window is the event, but its the reverberation later that’s what scares Ripley. There’s very little warning in relation to what exactly will get hit by lightning, but the thunder to come is a guarantee, even if its timing is not.
What Rip feels during a thunderstorm is perhaps a form of the anxiety I feel watching COVID-19 numbers rise yet again as the Delta variant rages on. Yes, I know it’s the pandemic of the unvaccinated and those who are vaccinated are statistically unlikely to be hospitalized or die. But still. Every morning when I check my New York Times coronavirus tracker, I see the numbers creeping up. I feel as though I’m seeing the lightning and bracing myself for the boom of thunder so that it might rattle me less later. Add in the smoke blown in from the west coast a few weeks ago and it is hard not to think of the signs of the apocalypse.
When I was younger, I saw thunderstorms as the perfect metaphor for my panic attacks: humidity builds and builds and builds until the atmosphere simply cannot hold anymore and it all comes bursting out in a big, violent, messy storm. They are only predictable to a certain degree. I have learned to read for the signs and worked on myself enough to anticipate it to a certain degree, but like a weatherperson on TV, there are limits to what I can know for sure.
Perhaps there’s no better example of anxiety and its oftentimes unseen build-up right now than Simone Biles, gymnastics GOAT extraordinaire. Her courageous and moving choice to not compete in the Tokyo Olympics due to “the twisties” and her mental health struggles is something we could all learn from. As we’ve learned from Biles, you can do the work physically and emotionally, you can survive the trauma of sexual assault and familial strife, you can be the best in the world, you can even prepare in anticipation of the “the twisties” (as I’m sure she and her team did), but that doesn’t necessarily stop anxiety or struggles from happening. She knew the thunderstorm was coming, and instead of endangering herself, she stepped back as a means to protect herself. We can mask the thunder and reverberation of our own thoughts, but we can’t silence them entirely. Trying to is, frankly, a fool’s errand.
Back to COVID-19 and the Delta variation numbers for a second though. We can anticipate the spikes. In fact, we already did. None of this was news. It was forecasted for months. And still, here we are, rattled. Here I am, shaken by it all, looking ahead towards a fall where I’m supposed to be teaching and commuting, trying to pretend as if I don’t see the massive thunderhead blowing in on the horizon.
My loved ones and I are, thankfully, fully vaccinated. I’m grateful that the places where I will be working are enforcing vaccine mandates. I’m not in danger and rationally speaking those who will feel the brunt of this next wave of cases are the unvaccinated. But still, I can sense myself bracing for impact.
In conclusion, to further finally mix all these metaphors into a nice sticky mess: the storm is approaching and we already know we didn’t stick the landing, and that we likely can’t when the going gets tough again. Yes, that sounds ridiculous. Bad writing, Sarah. But this is the only way I can think of right now to describe the specific kind of dread that’s building, a kind of physical and psychological bracing for what will almost certainly be another fall and winter filled with fear.
My forecast for fall: cooler weather, more wildfires, climbing numbers, more ennui, and, well, more bullshit.
