Elizabeth Bradshaw

a post-election existential crisis

6:15 pm in January. It’s chilly and the sunset is gorgeous. I’m smoking pot like I do most nights when I come home from school. I’ve taken to brewing a cup of tea and running up to the roof of the parking garage with a joint and sometimes a notebook. I watch the sunsets with urgency now. Something tells me that time is short. Maybe that “something” is anxiety; maybe I’m wrong and our generation is no different and the world isn’t coming to a grand finale hallmarked by chaos that whispers: the fall of the empire is upon us. 

Surely the internet will tell me later as I scroll through it like I’m looking for something that’s on the tip of my tongue. I swear I’m one hot take away from enlightenment – one prescription medication, one paycheck, one new pair of pants, one new playlist, one self-help book, one anti-aging serum, one evening spent laughing with someone I love while we watch the sunset.

I tell myself that I’m looking for answers when everyone knows I’d be terrified if I found one. My exes know. My parents know. I’m looking for ice cream in the freezer when I know full well there’s just half a pack of frozen peas, frostbitten and useless, much like me on this rooftop watching this sunset.

The future is a black hole I could fall down forever.

I’ve taken comfort in the mundane like it’s an antidote to the poison I sip through a straw Monday through Friday from 8am-5pm. The sunset, the crossword, a jacket with a pocket inside, a walk after dinner. Spiritually, I am an old man on his front porch in a rocking chair, a little irritable but overall content. 

What goes around comes around. If this is the backend of a legacy of slavery, genocide, colonization, and greed, then what can I do but welcome the karmic hurricane with open arms and try my best to shelter those around me from suffering. If this is the end of everything, I may as well be brave. If this is the beginning of something new, maybe I can get my shit together and be a better ancestor to the hypotheticals who will, as the Bible says, “inherit the earth.”

So excuse me if I watch the sunset with urgency. I swear it’s not some kind of morbid or grandiose notion that I don’t know which one will be my last. (That’s always been true anyway.) The sunset is as far into the future as I can think to function as of January 23, 2025. That’s a lie. Sometimes I think about Saturday night, but that’s a secret just for me. One day soon the sunset will laugh when the rooftop and I are gone and it’s just the battery of my iPhone 14 decomposing slowly on the scorched earth. 

Until then, I’ll be around.