How dare I feel joy when the world is burning

[CW: mention of suicidal ideation]

Am I a bad person if I ended 2025 the happiest I have ever been?

I worry that I am; some days I feel like I’m actually a terrible person. I’m so full of guilt that joy is even possible for me right now, in the current geopolitical hellscape amid so much pain and grief. If I can be happy, surely I could be doing more, giving more to the causes I care about? 

If I can feel any joy right now, that must mean I’m selfish. Heartless. Unwilling to sacrifice my own comfort for the values I claim to hold. 

It doesn’t matter that I worry constantly that I’m not doing enough. Berating myself doesn’t change the fact that I'm not out there protesting. For the first time in years, my disability doesn’t dominate every single moment of every single day – which surely means I no longer deserve grace when it comes to showing up and speaking up. I need to do more.

Am I being too harsh to myself? I certainly wouldn’t tell another autistic, disabled person that they should be pushing themselves to the point where they get suicidal – which does happen to me when I’m not careful. I might be more happy, more of the time than I was a year ago, but my depression, autism, OCD, and intrusive thoughts of suicide – they’re all still here. I’m better at managing my disability, but I feel like abled people don’t understand just how much energy I put into appearing even relatively functional.

I’m proud of the work I have done to learn how to take care of myself. I now let myself prioritise rest over almost everything else, because pushing myself beyond a certain point is useless. Being awarded Universal Credit in 2025 allowed me to work less and rest more, but I know how privileged I am to do that. (Do I need to be grateful that the government is doing its job and taking care of people? Maybe I do when it’s failing so many people right now.)

I am no use to the revolution if I am exhausted and burnt out and suicidal. I cannot show up for my community or the people I love if I don't take care of myself. Yet to what extent is this an excuse for me to not show up? Am I prioritising my comfort to the point where it’s at the expense of my values, the expense of people's dignity and rights and lives?

The joy I found is not because of the pain and suffering that surrounds us every day, of course. It’s from the conscious time and energy into my relationships – with friends and lovers alike – over the last year. It’s from connecting with other trans people and beginning to build community and make friends in the city I moved to. Yes, the misery and grief threatens to overwhelm me, but I have clung with bloody fingernails to the joy I've found in defiance of the world burning around me. 

Can trans joy be radical? Can meeting my needs as a disabled, autistic person be radical? Maybe, but does that really mean anything when people are dying, when people are being killed by our governments with the power we have given them? 

I feel so powerless to do anything meaningful in the face of such senseless, ceaseless cruelty – but isn’t that what those in power want me to feel? 

Maybe it will never feel like I’m doing enough. There are people putting their lives on the line in ways that I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t imagine myself doing, despite how important I know it is. And how self-indulgent is this guilt? It’s not helping anyone. The shame that I’m not doing enough keeps me stuck from getting more involved in the ways I could without burning myself out. 

This joy might not be resistance, but it might be what sustains me as I figure out how I can show up for my community. It reminds me that there is more than fear and anger and the bone-numbing exhaustion of pushing back against cisheteropatriachy, colonialism, eugenics, and white supremacy. It might be selfish, but the joy I find – despite the world burning – gives me hope.

I’m not trying to pretend that comfort is more important than the fight against fascism. But maybe joy needs to be part of how we fight it.