January does as January does, and transforms me into a desiccated, misanthropic husk. Body and brain are torn between usual hormonal Hulk rage and something deeper, a throbbing growl against everyone I look at. My body is under enormous muscular tension as I continually hold back from screaming into the face of anyone foolish enough to try to talk to me; unfollowing people on Instagram helps; watching a lot of TV helps too, for a while, and then I am struck by the fact that I will never write anything this good, even when I’m watching the worst thing on Netflix, and that the only thing I have ever wanted to do is not something I’ll ever do well. 

I sit in the car in a school car park with two children in the back, waiting for a third, and try to cry, until one of the passengers asks what a kazoo is and my startlingly accurate impression halts my momentum. Another moment later, though, and I soundlessly succeed, and it is briefly satisfying.

Porridge has got into my brain, or reality, or both — my usual unearned confidence and optimism about my ability to develop as a writer has evaporated. I think of the writers I love, and realise that my writing is sludge, mediocre and thin-soup readable at best, boring and self-indulgent at worst. (The concept of #selfcare is making my blood fucking boil at the moment, in a larger-picture-way, but I have the creeping horrors that my writing is the literary equivalent of a Instagram make-sure-you’re-looking-after-you post.) I am jealous, but still happy, for those brilliant writers in my life who have found success; the fellow-mediocre — and worse — writers who have found the same just make me endlessly, crushingly sad. I miss the friends and family I do not see enough, and am having a teen-like grieving period for the fact that everything comes to an end. All of this is written horribly, clumsily. Even the dog has moved her regular lapdog position to the hot air vent in the floor, just to get away from my mood.  

But one of the children asks me how much it costs to get one’s ears pierced, and when I guess twenty pounds they say, ‘Twenty pounds! You should get an ear pierce and a hair cut and a sarcasm removal for that!’; and one child gives me a huge hug when they see me crying in the kitchen; and it is so nice when my roommate comes home at the end of the day; and I have some nice work on; and my mother is back from a six-week trip tomorrow; and even if I can’t write a good book, I have so very many to read. Some seed of optimism remains for the start of Spring. 

“You have to do what’s best for your kids, don’t you?”

Even J has said I’ve been almost continually grumpy since the referendum. Take action, people say. Be the change, they say. Optimism is a weapon, they say. 

I think: I haven’t felt this boiling-lava bad since my father was diagnosed with several forms of cancer and an aggressive degenerative neurological condition at the same time as I had moved away from all our friends, seen my sister move to the other side of the planet, birthed a third baby and realised I was over a year late to my publisher with my next book.

Even with my barrels and bowls and mounds of privilege, I am miserable in this world at the moment. In the UK and US, the tone of political discourse leads to racist abuse in the street, leads to the murder of citizens by their own police. Far-right groups grow in popularity across Europe. Homelessness, child poverty and foodbank use is sky-high here. Our planet is slowly shutting down around us. Everything seems like shit. 

A machiavellian bumblefuck who has used many and varied racist and misogynistic terms in print and person has been appointed Foreign Secretary. A greasy silken handpuppet who dedicates his life to fucking over the NHS has been allowed to continue his demolition job. A woman whose breathy emphasis of children in an interview with the Sunday Times that she denied ever happened reminded us that the entire Tory ideology is utterly at odds with the concept of helping someone who didn’t come out of your own/your wife’s womb; a dead cat dropper; a disgraced former defence secretary. These are the people in charge of the country.

I can’t separate out my anger any more. I can’t distinguish between the fury I feel at a child hitting my child so much in a school assembly that mine ends up sobbing, and the fury I feel at the news that David Cameron is currently shacked up in a £17m London townhouse. I can’t pull apart the red-rage threads joining soaring rates of anxiety and depression among my friends, and having to haggle with my phone company for over an hour for an upgrade I don’t even really care about. I can’t unloop my wrath of the truth of this heartbreaking, uplifting speech, from my burning, shaking fury at a friend’s manager not only failing to support her in the face of bullying, but repeatedly taking credit for her work; or my anger against climate change deniers, or men’s rights activists, or all lives matter-ers, or anyone who didn’t vote Remain, or adults who don’t say thank you to service staff, or people who organise events on Facebook, or the continuing career of Woody Allen, or school fetes that charge too much for a coconut shy, or people that stop in busy doorways to fold up massive golf umbrellas, or adverts that serve ice cream in brushed-metal bowls. 

I feel crushed by hopelessness. We are so hungry for a leader to lift us up from this mess that we’re terrifyingly vulnerable to any half-friendly face and some rousing words. While Labour slowly disintegrates amongst rape threats and bricks through windows, the only legitimate government opposition seems to be Nicola Sturgeon, peeling her country away from England, waving goodbye in joyful slow-motion. But what leader in Westminster would ever stand a chance under the arc-light glare of social media? That terrible thing she said when she was 17. That t-shirt he wore in his twenties. That vote she made early in her career. That questionable friendship he maintains. Who could ever be pure enough to offer us anything but another meme opportunity? Everyone’s garbage now. What fucking hope is there. 

In a time when it feels horribly like we’re teetering into civil war, I don’t know how to be kind to my enemy anymore. I barely know how to bite down on the scream I feel all the time, all the time. If I briefly escape this feeling through fun, through a drink with friends, through laughter with colleagues, I feel guilty. There is too much burning chaos at the moment to dare use the luxury of turning away. 

But I want to be positive. I want to make things better. I want to make other people, vulnerable people, feel less frightened or worried or ignored. I think of the inspiring people I know, and of Osborne and Gove and Letwin and Morgan and Whittingdale losing their cabinet positions. I think of the Snickers ice cream in my freezer. 

But I am still continually grumpy.