Being Ok With Not Being OK
Real talk. I’ve not been ok. Most of us have not been ok for a while now. But things feel especially volatile lately. My kid is starting his second round of quarantine from a potential Covid exposure at school, creating (yet another) remote learning situation that usually results in all of us in tears and laying on the floor eating Fritos. Someone very close to me is recovering from a life-threatening (non-Covid) health situation. I haven’t been able to spend meaningful time with most of my family and friends in months. It gets dark out really f*$@ing early. I’m tired of cooking - so much so that the first thought that entered my mind when I got the email that my son is in quarantine for 2 weeks is, “Great. Now I have to make lunch for him every day.”
And then the guilt starts, “Oh, but Danya, you are not seriously ill and neither is anyone in your household. Your husband has a great career that is not being hindered by the pandemic. Your kid gets most of his pee in the toilet.”
During another dark period of my life, a friend (who in my opinion was going through a MUCH darker time) told me that not feeling bad because someone has it worse than you is like not feeling happy because someone has it better than you. So I am sitting with my darkness and trying to embrace it. It’s a pretty messy embrace - akin to a couple of 14-year olds with braces and acne trying to make out. But pretending like the sadness isn’t there is not an option. It’s there for all of us. Making us edgy. Making us want to walk in the rain and listen to Radiohead.
Back in March, the week that the pandemic really started to alter our lives, I had a session with my therapist. I was telling her how scared I was and that I was struggling with the uncertainty of the next several months. She told me that she’d had a call that morning with several of her counterparts, and this was the message being discussed: For the first time in modern history, every single person on Earth is experiencing collective trauma from the same event.
Whoa. That hit me hard. I come back to it a lot when I start to spiral. There’s a comfort in knowing we are not alone. But there is also a danger in all of us reaching our threshold for repetitive shit storms at every turn. We are less patient, less kind, less humane. At least I am.
I read an article over the summer that referred to this time as “The Great Pause.” I think it was in The Atlantic. But as the months have worn on, it feels far less like a pause and more like a slow-motion reel of an awkward sex scene while watching a movie with your parents - JUST MAKE IT STOP!
As we approach Thanksgiving, and all the toxically-positive people who insist that you only focus on what you are grateful for remind you that other generations had it worse or someone they know is suffering more, remember that it’s ok to not be ok. Are better days ahead? Absolutely. But you are allowed to experience the uncertainty and process your feelings in any way that makes sense to you. So what if some families have a gratitude tree branch where they write all the things that they are thankful for and hang it from paper tags? If that works for them, terrific! If you need to scream into your pillow or cry in the shower for 20 minutes, terrific! Congratulations on making it through another day! I celebrate YOU!
There. I have just saved you a boatload of money in therapy by imparting my wisdom to you. (Seriously, though. I think I have financed vacation homes for at least three different therapists.) Stay safe. Stay sane. And do whatever you need to achieve those two things.
