living
The stories running through me are peppered with trauma and absurdity. It seems I’m being followed by both. Running after me all the same is a humming low-level surrender riding along on a stream of insidious depression. I know, it sounds like a good time. I’m guessing so many of you can relate.
Anxiety is bubbling under all of it, under a layer of the earth’s crust below my feet, with lava minefields to walk through. The anxiety always makes it up through my bones and out my nervous system. Sneaky bastard.
I’m veering a little to the right and then back to center and then a little to the left, at least in my mind, look out. I’m trying not to trip another trigger. I’m trying not to make a move toward more pain. Then sometimes I can’t move, I’m frozen with fear. Or I run. I stay in motion to avoid the overwhelming feeling of fear or despair.
Then I remember that’s not working and it will backfire.
I take a long deep breath, maybe two, and I let myself cry and feel. Sometimes I think of what the trees know about standing still. It’s not that bad of an idea after all, so I stand there a while longer, or sit down with great relief. Just be, like a tree.
Slow down.
I wondered today if all of the crisis and strain over the past several years and still today and still today and still today, is simply preparing me for where we are all headed. Into more fear and heat and discension and loss. Into more strife and unaffordable housing and gas and food. Illness. Grief. I guess I’m ready.
That’s depressing.
Maybe “that’s depression talking” but it also feels realistic, true. Sometimes this song plays through my head while I stand still: Hold on. Hold on to yourself, for this is gonna hurt like hell… (Yes, Sarah Maclachlan) It’s like I’m getting ready for the next crisis or more bad news, all the time.
Some say this is a season and some say we go through awful stuff in every century, but is that accepting life on life’s terms? Isn’t it more like denial? Like we should just watch it all happen and hope it passes like we think other hard times passed? Because I feel like that kid Will on Stranger Things, something evil crawling up my neck, letting me know the worst is yet to come and some of the bad is straight from those times of old, when not much was reconciled after all.
That’s really depressing, but I’m just bad at denial. (Thank God?)
It doesn’t make any sense but I’m somehow okay even when I’m not okay. My friend asked how I do it and I said I have no choice. But there a thousand choices a day and I’m going to keep choosing love and to not always do the dishes. That’s all I know anymore. I don’t always act out love all that well, just ask my family. I get impatient and cranky and reactionary. We all do. But I try, I try so damn hard. Most of us are trying.
We keep going because we must. Sometimes there is little opportunity for stopping, but let’s stop when we can, okay? Let’s get in bed with a glass of water and take deep breaths when we can. Even if it’s just for ten minutes. Let’s do that.
What a ride this is, our lives and our deaths. What sustains me, what keeps me from not giving up is that my husband once told me I’m not made of the stuff of giving up. And I think that’s because I am paying so much attention. I am allowing my heart to get smacked with one of my oldest friend’s laughs. I am making room every single day for noticing. Sometimes it’s the softness of Elsie Jane’s eleven-year-old face. Or the song of a bird, a poem, a weed that pulled out so easily, with its roots! It’s the dog’s weird tooth that sticks up over his lip, just that one, and the smell of my favorite hand soap. It’s especially humor and a well-told story. It’s a thirty minute Minnesota goodbye and a well-timed ridiculous nonsensical text. It’s the cooling air at the end of a too hot day, the way the breeze lifts something up and away.
