RIP America
I don’t know when it happened. That’s the part that bothers me the most. But I do know why. There wasn’t a single moment where something snapped. No alarm bell. No headline that said, “Hey, things are about to feel very different from now on.” It just…changed? And I guess I changed too? or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
At one point, I used to think the political divide in this country was exaggerated. People on TV, people online, but regular life felt mostly normal. People argued, sure, but it felt like there were still shared assumptions underneath it all. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.
Now it feels like people aren’t even in the same reality anymore.
I catch myself reading news stories and realizing I don’t recognize the tone of the country I grew up in. Conversations feel sharper. Less curious. More… absolute. Every issue feels like it has to be existential. Every action I see taken by the administration is beating on the drum of war.
And maybe that was always there. Maybe I was just insulated from it. That’s the thought that sticks with me the most, that this isn’t a sudden collapse, maybe just me finally noticing something that’s been building for years.
I think what unsettles me isn’t even specific policies or politicians. It’s the feeling that trust evaporated in the last ten years. Trust in institutions, trust in elections, trust in media, trust in each other. It feels like everyone is carrying their own version of reality now, built from completely different sources, completely different fears, completely different definitions of what “America” is supposed to be.
I grew up thinking America was loud, messy, argumentative, but you could at least feel it was connected. Now it’s been invaded by ideas that expired a century ago.
I look around and I see people who seem very certain. Certain that everything is falling apart. Certain that everything is finally being fixed. Certain that the other side is the greatest threat the country has ever faced. And I sit here realizing I don’t feel certain other than I fear for my life.
Maybe this is what every generation feels at some point? Maybe this is just what history feels like when you’re living inside it rather than reading about it in a textbook. But it’s strange to suddenly feel like a place you thought you understood has become unfamiliar, without it ever physically changing location.
Is America is gone? I think it’s still here. I just don’t know if the version I thought I knew ever really existed the way I imagined it. Maybe it was always a negotiation. Maybe it still is. Maybe it always will be.
I just wish it didn’t feel so much like everyone forgot how to talk to each other. When we weren’t so fixated on where someone was born.
I don’t want America to go back to some imaginary perfect past. That never existed.
I guess I’m just late to realizing how fragile that feeling actually was.
So, I cried today.
I miss this nation I used to love.