Silence is Choking Me

 I had plans, last year, to try and write a post a week and publish a chapter of my finished trilogy a week.

That hasn’t exactly happened, but I’m trying to break through the feelings that have kept me silent and frozen, and well, that starts with a few words on a page, so here goes.

Oh, and this post comes with songs that inspired and fit its vibe. Let me know if you like that, because I might start including more song embeds and soundtracks to posts.

Never mind the whole “parenting takes time” thing – the real problems I’ve been struggling with are two primary issues.

1)       Everything is unbelievably hard and absurd

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zz4UG7nA3Q&si=6MoXUbaqbskegi3B – this song keeps playing over and over in my head periodically.

It’s not exactly revelatory to mention that, you know, the world order has been upended and norms have been disrupted further than we thought possible. Nor is it particularly shocking to hear a millennial lamenting, but hey, that’s what I’m gonna do – reflect on how I feel about where We, as a society and maybe as a species, are at right now.

So obviously, this comes with the caveat and blinders of being a white North American from Canada, but the fact that we’ve all just kind of gotten used to what ecologists and scientists are referring to as “ecocide” [citation] is um, a trifle fucked up? Just a little bit. One of my cousins, whom I love dearly, posted about this recently.

Ecological issues are deeply important to me, but I’m often unable to focus on them because of the sheer existential dread and grief that comes with trying to think about them. I’m certainly not alone there, but I want to remind people who are trying desperately not to think about the climate crisis and water issues and plastic pollution and methane levels and deforestation – you are not alone in being scared as fuck, and upset, and angry.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=v2e6nVHfXa0&si=XyY1DlX9hN9FFt8B

But there is an upside to this. Doomerism is the weapon of the elites against us, and it’s also a vast, inaccurate scientific oversimplification. Have things gotten worse? Well, yeah. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But a hundred small things make a difference, and there is no point at which we should just throw in the towel. Yes, things can get worse, but they can always get better, too. Every inch we fight for counts. Every tenth of a degree centigrade that we keep from advancing matters. Every species we protect and give a chance to rebound, matters.

Nature is more resilient than we think. This is not a video game, where we fail at a number of conditions and the game is just fucking irreparably over and lost. It’s not even that we still have “a chance,” it’s that we have thousands of chances. And we should not, and cannot, squander them.

This entire screed also applies entirely and completely to the political situation we’re dealing with. Democracy is not fucking dead, and billionaires and the elites are not invincible. And yes, it’s hard not to give up sometimes, and yes we need to take breaks and focus on joy to survive – but friends, there is so much more fight left in us than we realise. We just might have to try some different strategies. I’ll be talking more about politics in a post soon.

2)       Oh hey, apparently I’m more disabled than I realised

So another fun thing I’ve been grappling with is a number of health issues that – I haven’t been ignoring, I’ve just been unaware/haven’t realised how much I was struggling with them. Reader, I recently went and applied for some specific programs and initiatives, government things. Without getting into the precious and specific details of my diagnoses, it wa truly humbling, shocking, and in every way upsetting to realise just how much I’ve been dealing with, without…really realising or understanding the extent of my own problems.

It’s so easy to fall into default expectations of physical ability, especially if any or most of your disabilities present invisibly. I kind of thought the whole mental illness and autism things were bad enough, but hey, apparently there’s more I’ve been struggling with, and having to describe it for bureaucratic purposes really put it in ugly, ugly perspective.

So honestly, I’m grieving right now; over what I thought I could do and time I’ve lost, and I’m trying to adjust my expectations of my future. I don’t have any conditions that are immediately life-threatening or degenerative – to my knowledge, and so far – so in some ways, I do count myself as very lucky. But it’s still not what I envisioned and what I expected, and adjusting to that is goddamn hard.

So that’s where I’m at, but I have too many long-form thoughts and poems and stories percolating to be silent for long. But hey, I don’t want this post to be entirely either a) a bummer or b) kind of toxic, hopeless complaining, so I’m gonna close with a list of some things that are bringing me joy right now.

3)       The comforts and remedies

I’m lucky to have really good friends and relationships in my life, and I haven’t really had any friction from the people who care about me or socialise with me over my struggles. I’m really grateful for that. I recently finished an absolutely epic-length play-by-post roleplay game based on the Monsterhearts 2 roleplaying game system, a Powered by the Apocalypse build, and it was very fulfilling and deeply satisfying. We’re doing a few little epilogue-y things, but the actual game and a bunch of emotional stuff is pretty wrapped up.

That said, many of the same people and a couple of new faces are also involved in a second play-by-post game with a different system and storyline, involving Triangle Agency (which is a really cool system and game in terms of its design; strongly recommended!) and that’s been a blast. These games have been absolutely essential to my sanity and morale over the past couple of years, and I’m so grateful to have made some excellent friendships and deep bonds with my tablemates.

In terms of my other creative pursuits outside of writing, I’ve had a pretty good time with my knitting and jewelry-making; my wife and husband got me a chasing hammer and a new set of flush cutters for wire for Mother’s Day, and my god, having the right tools can make such a huge difference. I’m also pushing myself a bit with some market appearances this summer, like the local South Country Fair, and that’s pretty exciting.

Here’s a couple of pieces I’ve made (May 15^th, 2026, hot off the bench) and some in-progress knits.

  (This was a progress shot, but the bolero is now finished, and extremely soft and fluffy, btw)

I’m also enjoying parenthood a lot more than I feared; my son is absolutely wonderful, and a very kind, sweet, bright little creature, full of spirit and curiosity, but also immensely helpful. I couldn’t be a parent without the support structures of my spouses, and I’m so grateful that I get the chance to have this, and to have such a fantastic kid. I was so terrified that I’d hate parenthood, especially this toddler stage – and sure, sometimes it’s very hard work and tiring, but I’m inexpressibly happy and relieved that my greatest fears have been proven utterly wrong.

So that’s all for this post, but expect some political posts and a musing on the ends of, among others, Good Omens Season 3 and some other media properties coming soon, plus some more poetry.

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A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Amazon * Substack * Patreon * Ko-fi * Instagram * Bluesky * Mastodon * Tumblr * Medium * OG Blog * Facebook