Worry

by Alexandra Tanner

I can see the end of art and culture and sometimes even human life if I’ve been scrolling through the right pages for long enough. Sometimes I feel like my own ancestor. Sometimes I feel like a Tamagotchi.

“What do you guys think my level of energetic sovereignty is,”

The call drops—she’s hung up again. We try her one more time, but she rejects it on the second ring. We text our mother that we love her. She gives the text a thumbs-down.

You never listen to the stories I tell you about my kids. You can keep up with a thousand things on Instagram, but you can’t, like, bother to listen to actual stories about actual fucking human beings in my life.”

Both chess and real estate inspire violence in her.

“This is clearly the decision of an insane person,”

Nothing gets me going like when a certain kind of person pretends to care about ableism. I stoop over him and make a scary face. “I’m medically psychotic,” I shout.

It’s miserable to be on my mother’s good side, miserable to be on her bad one;

“I didn’t do anything that bad.” “I think calling someone a Nazi at dinner isn’t great.” “It isn’t great, sure, but I can come back from it, right?”

This morning I followed lots of little shops and cafés on Instagram. I want to smell whatever candles they have burning, touch clothes I can’t afford, pick out something I only half want to take home as a souvenir. All the things I already do almost every weekend in Brooklyn, except I’ll be doing it somewhere nicer than Brooklyn.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really doom-pilled right now. I don’t like myself. I don’t like anything. I don’t like my body, I don’t like what I eat, I don’t like buying things, I don’t like reading things, I don’t like working, I don’t like writing, I don’t like New York, I don’t like it here—”