Everything Fell Apart

It was a Monday. It was early in the day. There was plenty of time to complete everything on her weekly to do list.

She tried to concentrate on that list. To accomplish anything she would need to start by prioritizing, planning and then actually working on those chores.
But for some reason she couldn’t seem to concentrate that morning. Her mind refused to focus. There she sat, staring at her list, her mind quickly wandering into a sea of nothingness.

Just then the phone rang and jolted her from her spaced out state.
“Are we being invaded?” her husband asked.

What in the world was he talking about, she thought?
“What?” she said out loud.

“Turn on the TV!” he shouted through the phone. “I can’t get any info here at work but rumors are flying.”

She picked up the remote and turned on the television. There was chaos in the streets. Reporters were shouting. She turned up the volume but there was so much background noise it was next to impossible to hear them. The station was switching from one location in the country to another but every locale looked the same. Protestors, police and foreign soldiers were all running around and after each other. People were falling down wounded and dying. Soldiers and police were stepping over bodies right and left, sometimes tripping over them and falling themselves.

She stood there staring in shock. She couldn’t move. Her mind could not accept what she was seeing.
She couldn’t hear her husband shouting through the phone. She could only stare blankly at the television watching law and order fall apart.

The lock-downs. The loss of livelihoods. The loss of freedoms. The suicides. The murders. The protests.
Everything was falling apart. The country’s law and order. The country itself.

Everything.

It was a Monday and everything fell apart.

kathykmcclellan (1)