Distancing thoughts

My mother tried wiping the window as our plane descended, and I said, Mom, it’s not fog, it’s just how Delhi looks. Past the gates the city doesn’t feel like a habitat, it feels like a junkyard on fire, gray fumes hazing every view, soot drying the walls of my throat, and car horns raping my ears. Delhi is only where it shows most, but this experience is representative of all of urban India. Lately every step here leaves a new disappointment in me, each one finding its own way to enrage me, the anger latching onto my head like a leech, and when it comes from a person acting like a moron, which is honestly a lot of people, I get the urge to headbutt their nose. It blocks everything, my writing halts, I can’t read, I can’t observe anything except the thing that disappointed me, and I want out of this state, out of thinking all day about this country coming apart and all of us standing in the debris of its falling bridges and gutkha wrappers, knowing full well how dismal our fate is, unable to enjoy the little time and freedom I have here. I read about a technique from CBT called thought distancing, where you watch a thought from a step back instead of being tormented by it, and I hope I can use it to at least clear the fog I made.