Body Heat
I went for a walk yesterday. It wasn't that hot, 81 degrees according to my weather app. After a few blocks I started feeling the heat on my back. The casual sips of my water bottle became more deliberate. We cut our walk short, pausing under the occasional patch of shade from a sidewalk tree. We got home and I immediately laid down on the couch, peeling pieces of clothes off my body. My husband brought me a damp paper towel, I put it over my face and burst into tears.
I was upset at my body's reaction. It wasn't that hot! "Only" 81, which is around the average for June in Philly but it also came on the heels of 90+ temperatures we had the previous week. Temperatures so high that schools dismissed students early because crumbling under-resourced schools don't have air conditioning.
It's only 81 degrees and my body reacted like that. How do I go on when it's only going to get hotter and hotter? And not just this summer, every summer, every season. When the medication that calms my mind and gets me out of bed every day makes my body more vulnerable to the heat? There was a headline a few days ago that the atmosphere recorded the highest levels of carbon in human history. I assume every day moving forward will hit this mark, no?
In that moment when the tears came, I felt the weight of it all. I felt the weight of what we're fighting for. The weight of the absolute trauma capitalism has inflicted on this planet, on all of us. It's hard to describe the despair and unfairness of it all that I felt in that moment which I guess is why my body reacted the way it did. It's okay to have these moments. We're only going to get through this together. In that moment it was the help of my husband that brought me powerade and a wet paper towel and calmed me down. Check in on your neighbors, on your elders, heck, check in on everybody because we're three years into a pandemic and everything is so much and we are all just expected to keep going? It's through community and care that we are going to not just survive, but thrive and build a better world for ourselves.