I was always told that sirens are a warning sign, but never was I told that sometimes you wouldn’t be able to hear them.

I remember that time I was staring at the roof of my room, the day had passed and the night had turn the world somber and in that moment, everything was fine. My bed was comfortable and my curtains bled enough of that sodium yellow streetlight for me to be able to make out a tiny sliver of texture on that roof. 

It’s hard to believe that otherwise harmonically pleasant sounds can be so chilling. It’s like a switch, one second everything is fine until it isn’t and your body is jolted upright filled with a sense of tension and desperately trying to find a way to release it, flight, fight, or freeze. 

It only took us about five minutes to get to shelter and by that time the energy we spent was drained, being in that hyper aware state is like living with credit, you’re moving on borrowed energy and once that energy is gone, you pay the price.

The interesting part about being human is that your brain does a lot of things without you being aware, once something is established as normal, it becomes normal and becomes invisible. Your nose is always visible at any given moment but you hardly ever notice it, your heart is always pumping but you hardly ever feel it, your mouth is full of leftover tastes but they don’t really taste like much. The sirens always ring but that’s just background noise.

Adaptability is a double edge sword, it allows us to tolerate the intolerable, but perhaps somethings shouldn’t just be tolerated. At the same time, how are we supposed to live off of debt, this world that spirals and frightens and shocks us is intolerable yet we live. These decision of what to pay attention to and what to ignore, they get tiring and miserable and our bodies running on borrowed time and sooner or later, we pay that price and collapse.

If you’d had asked me, if I saw myself collapsing, I’d say no; I would have told you that there’s no reason for me to collapse any time soon since I don’t hear any sirens. I think I just never learned that no matter how loud they are, sometimes you wouldn’t be able to hear them.