This keeps renting space in my mind.
Elmo. Sesame Street Elmo, who I used to do a terrible impression of repeatedly to make little versions of my niece and nephew laugh. Yeah, that Elmo.
The Elmo Twitter account (I don’t care, I still call it Twitter) posted something along the lines of checking in to see how people were doing. And many, many, many people responded saying that they weren’t. They were hurting. The were tired. They were overwhelmed. The were stressed, and scared, crumbling. The social media employees for Sesame Street were in turn overwhelmed with all of it, they were just not prepared for all of that.
Some time back, something similar happened when Steve from Blue’s Clues popped up on TikTok.
The corporate media condescendingly (at least to my ears, YMMV) referred to it as “trauma dumping”. Followed of course by ads full of ways you can over consume overpriced crap instead of allowing pain to matter...I’ll spare you the soapbox. This time.
But there is something important under this. Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues, etc. Shows from childhood, really young childhood. Probably some of the first memories. These shows talked directly to kids and were able to connect to them in ways that felt like the were part of the story. For a lot of them, these were their first friends.
They’re safe. Our inner littles feel safe. It makes absolute sense that they’re going to tell Elmo, or Steve, what they are REALLY feeling.
It also alludes to something else.
In a world where we’re working more and making less, everything is more expensive, we’re physically and mentally in shatters after a pandemic, that many of us are still living the effects of. How many reading this are in some kind of a shitty situation they can’t afford to escape without risking something worse?
That’s a hell of a burden to carry.
And it feels like there’s no one else to even listen. Even the people in our lives that are more empathetic and trustworthy are carrying so much on themselves that they’ve got less and less spoons to be able to listen. I find that myself, as much as I wish I could just listen and try to help all day every day, I can’t. And these days I have even fewer spoons than I used to and I have to be more careful about where that energy goes.
Therapy isn’t a possibility between availability and being able to afford it. Were hurting, we’re isolated, the answers suck if they even exist, and anyone who has the power to do anything about it would rather ignore it or use it as an excuse to punch down on those “beneath” them just a little more.
So we scroll instead, and we take our hellscapes out on some idiot on the internet, scream at the driver going too slow in front of us, melt down in the supermarket. Fight with our loved ones. Dull it out with the drug of our choice, even for a little while.
And when Elmo asks how we’re doing, finally feel safe enough to answer truthfully.