Dealing With It
Panic. Stress. Fear. Uncertainty. Anger. Sadness.
All of those words describe feelings that will occur during and after the SHTF. They all make sense when you think about it and no one will be immune to any of those emotions. I can safely say that I’d likely be experiencing all of them at once along with a crazy need to run around in circles while flailing my arms about and screaming in a very high-pitched tone. Don’t believe me? Wait and see, my friend. Wait and see.
There’s one emotion that we’re forgetting, though. It’s often tackled at around the halfway point in most movies and novels, but I would put a lot of money on the idea that it will be more like a constant companion in your mind, perhaps even your soul.
Loss.
Yep. That’s it. Not even a fifty cent word on this one. Loss will be constant in your mind and mine. The loss of loved ones. The loss of comforts and luxuries. Loss of routines. Possibly even the loss of the civilized world.
You might even call this an enabler of all those other feelings I listed. What causes sadness and anger more than the loss of something important to you? How easy is it to put your brave face on when you’ve spent a short amount of time losing everything that you’ve ever loved or worked for? That takes care of panic and stress, adds to uncertainty, raps around fear like a woolen and incredibly itchy blanket.
Tough one to deal with, isn’t it?
So, how can the creature who’s lived for so long in such comfort and familiarity deal with the loss of so many things? As usual, I have a couple of ideas. Stop me if you’ve heard it, though you probably can’t. This is kind of a one-sided conversation.
In Way Home and The Dark Roads, my two Post Apocalyptic novels that I’ve been droning on about, all of my characters have a habit of clinging to the world that was while living in the one they now inhabit. There are often conversations based wholy on the things they all miss, the things they’ve lost, but none of the survivors really dwell on those things.
Gabe Dunnit and his fellow travelers actually take a totally different tact than I’ve seen before by playing a game similar to one read about in a thousand other books. Everyone sits around a fire or some other gathering place and lists the things they miss about the world. Food. Shopping. Sex that wasn’t kind of smelly and icky due to lack of decent bathing. The difference between this game and the one Gabe plays with his friends is that they don’t list what they’ve lost. They talk about what they won’t miss at all.
Traffic.
Bad blind dates.
Bill collectors.
Children’s live action television shows.
I added that last one just now. I hate those things. Wait. There’s a point I was making.
Getting by after major loss will be no different once SHTF happens isn’t too different from the way we get by now. Think forward instead of back. Cherish the can of beans you found rather than missing steak dinners at expensive restaurants. Enjoy the strange guy that took up with your group, the one with that weird wandering eye and the drooling habit, instead of missing creepy Uncle Larry who died while visiting the reptile house at the zoo.
Look forward. Never back. Those who constantly dwell on the past are doomed to miss the awesome thing about to happen in front of them. Live, dear survivor, because to do any less would be insane in a world gone mad.
