It had felt recently like I was having all these realizations about my life, like I had broken through something. There are moments like that, when you feel like suddenly achieve clarity and nothing that used to matter matters so much anymore. I was trying to write about some of it and then I went back and reread my old essays and saw that I had realized all of it before. I had just forgotten. There might be a therapeutic term for this. In lieu of that, I will call it delusion. That’s what it feels like. You know what’s good for you, you understand why things have hurt you, you can see your life for what it is. And then you backslide into wishful thinking, or self-doubt. Suddenly you are confused again.
It feels sometimes on a broader scale like the whole world is doing this. Like there are cycles of amnesia, a violent redux towards a worse state of being. Although abortion, which was until recently decriminalized, has been criminalized in much of the US now, it feels almost gauche to…