I haven’t sat down to write in months. Well not anything with the intent of putting it out there. This year has been one for the books and when I’m dealing with so many emotions at the same time, sometimes I just get stuck in my head just running circles, thinking, thinking, thinking, but not moving. Almost unable to move. My mantra for the past few months has been ‘all effort is valid.’ I had to keep thinking that, saying that to myself and to others because there’s no map for this shit show of a year. So all effort is valid. Sitting down and putting pen to paper just hasn’t been up there on the list. Finding ways to cope has been, and just when I think I’ve found the balance, the thing, the routine to push through, I fall down again. And sometimes I just curl up right there, grab a blanket and block out the world. The good thing about a pandemic is that it makes it easier to block out the world. The bad thing about a pandemic is that it makes it easier to block out the world.
My mind is almost always a din of worst-case scenarios, the way I’m always planning, and re-planning, and thinking through backup plans and backups to the backups is at times exhausting, it’s also my coping mechanism. If I have a multitude of scenarios at the ready then I can’t be blindsided. Or so I liked to believe until I had to add ‘be ready for anything’ to the scenario list. It makes it so that when things happen, I don’t get caught on my heels but rather on my toes, ready to react, adjust and move. Kind of, sometimes.
This space of time that we’re living in with a pandemic, heightened racial injustice and tensions, the prospect of a corrupted election and the very real likelihood that we ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to this year. That’s my preparing for anything, because the energy in the room, on the streets, on the internet, really in all the spaces we gather has had a tectonic shift. It’s like walking outside on a hot humid day where the air is so thick you feel like you’re swimming in it. This space that we’re in, it’s not a good one, yet I don’t see any other way for us to get to other side. We humans like to learn things the hard way and so the Universe is reacting accordingly.
So what do you do when all the emotions are in the room at the same time? What do you do when you feel exhaustion and despair? What do you do when you feel hope — the kind you work for not the kind you sit for? What do you do when you feel resolve and anger so extreme you’re afraid of what spark might light it? What do you do when you feel like you’re on borrowed time but you’re also determined to enjoy every damned minute of it? What do you do when the world is perfectly OK to witness your execution as their primetime entertainment while they perform concern? What the fuck do you do?
I don’t know where we go from here. But I’ve got a few scenarios running in my head, as usual. Some good, some bad, some worse. Where we go from this place and time, I don’t know. I don’t know what the other side looks like, it’s gotta be better than this. It better be better than this. But we’re still in the fall, we haven’t hit the landing yet. We’re just as capable of better as we are of worse and I don’t know which way we’ll choose. So in the meantime, I will sit and grab my blanket and find my moments, I will scream and sit in my anger, I will put pen to paper, I will continue the work, and fuck if I don’t lean in to the joy. I don’t know where we go from here, but I hope we work to do better.
