Ope! And Now I’m Sad
At risk of sounding like someone that goes to therapy, I fully identify as someone that is:
- Highly sensitive
- Deeply empathetic
A combination that results in what I would describe as being “perpetually touched”.
I cry a lot. I get angry in the most bone deep way. I absorb peoples moods, usually only the bad ones, like a sponge. Feeling loved and witnessing love makes me weep.
I think you get it.
But to circle back to the part about absorbing people’s bad moods, I’ve also found that I do this with my environment too. As much as I try to carefully mind my corner of the earth, it is impossible for me not to think about everything that is wrong/bad/unjust/evil, that is happening literally all the time.
After finishing an episode of Code Switch, one of my favorite NPR podcasts, about the efforts being made to demolish all signs of life when it comes to DEI and DEIA and how doing so is already causing ripples of awful things to happen, it occurred to me that I haven’t been doing a very good job at separating myself from the constant drip of bad and disparaging news that seems to be leaking out of every orifice of the media.
I’m not up to date on the day to day happenings. I can’t recite the headline of the day(unless someone brings it up in conversation. Which happens and I hate it, thanks). But I am very current on all the effects the aforementioned wrong/bad/unjust/evil things are having. So when someone says something along the lines of: “It’s whatever. It’s not affecting me directly so I’m not going to stress about it” I want to grab them and scream: “But it does!”
While I agree you shouldn’t be continually stressed about things that are not in your direct control, you should be well aware of the fact that there is a trickle down of consequences that is affecting you even if it doesn’t feel “direct”.
If you have ever cared for, loved, or interacted in any meaningful way with someone whose basic freedoms and liberties are under siege by this administration and/or the atrocities of war and failing government bodies, then it should affect you.
In this time where I am thinking about what I want from my life, how I spend my time, and the future of a child that I pray I’ll have the honor to bring in to this world one day soon, I am more inclined to take in and worry about the things I cannot do anything about.
So I’m deciding to manage what I can and let go what I can’t. That starts with limiting how much access I have to knowledge about how the current going’s on is resulting in massive levels of uncertainty about and fear of the future.
I’m labeling it as a very planned period of sticking my head in the sand. While I’m there I intend to expand my mind in other ways. Like writing for this blog and doing more creative writing(write the first draft of a novel?). I’ll also be spending time focusing on things I can look forward to on the calendar, like more lazy weekends with my mom, a bachelorette party with my closets friends, and getting married to my best friend in just 3 short months(!!). And most of all, I want to focus on healing.
I have grieved endlessly for the last 5 years and I am weary. But I’m also grateful for surviving it so now I want to see how life feels when I’m not weighed down with the heaviness of sorrow;I’m choosing a different door
Every single day I make a choice to get up and do the hard work of living even though there are some days where changing out of my pajamas feels like a Herculean feat. But as I am writing this, I am made aware, once again, that change is catalyzed by progress. To make progress, I need to be sane. So if remaining sane means not knowing things for a little while, then I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.
How it is sometimes:
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