Filed Under: Gaslight, Corrosion, & Hollow Apologies
Apocalypse is patient.
Prelude: The Phantom Apocalypse
I spent years imagining the end of the world as an event. A single rupture. A clean page in the history books. I thought it would come like a siren that no one could ignore: a mushroom cloud swelling above the horizon, a financial collapse swallowing screens, a broadcast declaring the emergency that would finally name itself.
But no such moment came.
Instead, the world began ending slowly. Not in cataclysm, but in corrosion. Not through spectacle, but through repetition. Every headline a hairline crack. Every betrayal of trust another fracture in the pane.
And this thought haunts me: maybe the end is not one event at all. Maybe it is the careful choreography of endless small traumas, deniable on their own, devastating together. Maybe the apocalypse was never meant to roar—it was meant to drip.
I. The Architecture of Abuse
I once loved a man who never struck me, never raised his voice in public, never gave the world a bruise to see. But he betrayed me constantly, clumsily, and without shame. Lies stumbled over, loyalty fractured, excuses rehearsed. None of it large enough to call abuse. All of it corrosive enough to warp my sense of self.
This is what governance has become.
The narcissist and the State share the same blueprint. Not one grand betrayal, but countless small ones. Not the spectacular collapse, but the steady erosion. The genius of this architecture is its deniability. Each cut is survivable. Each betrayal “not so bad.” Each injury small enough to dismiss—until the accumulation becomes unbearable.
But “unbearable” never announces itself. It creeps. It normalizes. It whispers: this is just life.
II. The Adrenaline Trap
Here is the cruel genius: every betrayal is also a rush.
The human body is designed for rupture. A crisis releases adrenaline, cortisol, endorphins—chemicals that sharpen the senses and flood the blood. The fight-or-flight mechanism was made for predators in the brush, floods breaking the riverbank, fires devouring the horizon.
But when the crises never end—when every betrayal is followed by another—the body learns to live in survival mode. Anxiety becomes atmosphere. Hypervigilance becomes habit.
And here is where abuse becomes addiction: the cycle of stress creates its own craving. You begin to need the adrenaline spike. You begin to expect it. You begin to wait for it.
This is why people stay in toxic relationships long after they should have run. They keep waiting for the “big thing”—the unmistakable blow that will justify leaving. But the blow never comes. Instead, they endure the constant sting of “small” betrayals, each one paired with just enough adrenaline to keep them hooked.
The abuser knows this. The State knows this. They don’t need the apocalypse. They only need your body on drip-feed panic, addicted to the very harm you despise.
III. History’s False Punctuation
Rome did not fall in a day. The Reich did not rise in a week. Empires never burst like supernovas; they decay like bone.
But the history books lie with their clean punctuation marks. They prefer single dates, decisive battles, tidy endings. That is not how collapse feels when you are inside it. Collapse feels like routine. It feels like the news ticker at the bottom of the screen. It feels like “another day” in a system designed to dissolve itself slowly.
The textbook will one day circle a date. But in lived experience, the end is already here. It is the corrosion you have been told to ignore. It is the drip you have taught yourself to tune out.
IV. Camus, Baldwin, and the Weight of Memory
Albert Camus once wrote that the most important question is whether life is worth living. He framed it as a philosophical riddle about suicide. But in an age of slow apocalypse, the question mutates: can a society survive if it convinces itself that survival is normalcy?
James Baldwin gave the answer: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
The oppressor thrives on amnesia. To remember is itself rebellion. To archive is defiance. To say “this is happening, and it has been happening” is to rip the mask off power’s performance. Memory breaks the spell.
V. The Blueprint of Resistance
If oppression rules by repetition, then resistance must answer in repetition too.
1. Pattern Recognition.
Do not interpret each wound as isolated. Place them side by side until the scar reveals its true size. The narcissist repeats. The State repeats. The pattern is the proof.
2. Collective Memory.
Journal. Post. Archive. Speak. Name. Tell your neighbor. Sing it into the street. The official narrative will always try to fragment; the task is to weave. The fragments only become truth when they are stitched into continuity.
3. Micro-Defiance.
If they corrode by small increments, then we resist by small refusals. Refuse to normalize. Refuse to stay silent. Refuse to scroll past. Every refusal compounds. Every act accumulates.
Resistance is not one explosion, but a rhythm.
VI. A Poem for the Drip
They told us the end would roar.
Instead, it dripped.
Not fire raining from the sky,
but a faucet leaking through the night
until the sound became silence.
We are told each wound is paper-thin.
But paper cuts, multiplied,
will drain a body all the same.
The thousand cuts are the war.
The thousand refusals are the cure.
VII. The Seductive Myth of “The Big One”
This is the most dangerous illusion: the fantasy of “the big one.”
The abused partner waits for the unmistakable strike that will justify leaving. It never comes. The system waits for the unmistakable event that will justify revolt. It never comes.
Because clarity is mercy. And mercy is what power will never give you.
Instead, collapse is dispersed. Small enough to survive. Small enough to deny. Each insult survivable, each theft bearable, until one day you realize you are already living in ruins.
The big one is not coming.
It has already come, in pieces.
You are inside it.
VIII. Sacred Geometry of Revolt
T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends “not with a bang but a whimper.” He was half-right. The world ends with a drip. The drip becomes a rhythm. The rhythm becomes a system. And the system becomes your life—unless you name it.
Hannah Arendt warned of the banality of evil: how oppression is carried out not by monsters but by clerks, laws, procedures, headlines, “small” things repeated endlessly.
The sacred geometry of revolt is the same. Small refusals, repeated endlessly, accumulate into revolution. A whisper is not enough, but a thousand whispers can topple a wall.
IX. Epilogue: Breaking the Glass
The sign on the wall reads: In case of emergency, break the glass.
Look closely. The glass is already crackling. Every headline another fissure. Every betrayal another fracture. The pane is spider-webbed with stress.
We do not wait for permission to act.
We do not wait for the hammer.
We are the hammer.
The emergency is now.
The glass is ready.
Break it.
For those who’ve mistaken corrosion for stability—this is not peace. This is not love. Break the glass.
One engine, a thousand hands,
—Rebecca M. Bell
P.S. I write so you cannot say
you did not know.
Filed Under: Gaslight, Corrosion, & Hollow Apologies
Interesting Article!!