Today is the last day of July. Last Saturday was my 41st birthday. It’s been a tumultuous year so far. We’re more than halfway through 2019. Soon to be: 2020.
My bandwidth is off. I’m irritated by requests from people who don’t clearly state their business first, or who ask the labor of guessing from me. I’m feeling disconnected from individuals I’ve loved a long time. I’m suspicious of people I’d usually accept with open arms. I’ve been struggling with my health, physical and emotional. I am not my best self right now.
This year was supposed to be a year of building. Well, it is a year of building, however it’s also been a year of tearing down. Not all of the tearing has been constructive. Necessary dismantlement of that which had been built up over time is coming apart under the examination and direction of tireless fingers and an older, wisened heart. Unnecessary stings to my flesh and mind have been rampant from the political front for a time. This country is becoming more overtly racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, and transphobic. Even liberal politics are seemingly headed closer to the conservative side of town in the name of a centrism which doesn’t exist anywhere near an actual middle ground. Reacting to Trump’s country/bad behavior by dulling our feathers and dreams cannot be the way we save ourselves from horrific repeats of history. The many-faceted fight for equality cannot be abandoned as bigots and Nazis scream ever louder and more publicly. That is not how one ends a fight with bullies.
Yes this is about poverty, about bigotry, about longtime excesses of privilege leading to a willful defiance and pettiness/greed in humanity. Yes this is about everything going on in the news, and yes it is very intimately also about me. I exist on this planet, a pion of meaninglessness except within my own story, yet I also am pushed (to the limit too frequently as of late) by all that surrounds me. My feelings of meaninglessness are only as honest as the connections I strive to keep.
There is a melancholy settled in the far corners of my internal body, and a slowness governing the pace and rhythm of my heart. These bits of darkness are presided over by an unfit Judge daring to speak out in some small central location of my brain. He’s stronger these days than he’s been since my high school and college years (which catalogued an onslaught of very dark days and nights). So, it’s been a long while since the negative voices resounded so loudly inside.
This judge tells me I’m a terrible person and better off released from the grind of having a day to day. He recounts each mistake I fear I’ve made, and rants at length about how those I count as loved ones care nothing for me in return.
I can’t remember the last time I struggled with my health so completely—physically, reproductively, emotionally, and mentally. I’ve been a wreck for longer than I care to admit.
In the end, admitting might be my worst weakness. Synonymous with the ideal of strength (a vision of togetherness), I don’t know how to face friends who are struggling and ask them if I can tell them my struggles too. I hold on to a longtime belief that there’s no room in the world for my needs. I help those who come to me, I don’t need their help in return. My use is to hold up and support, not require soothing hands for my own heart. My place is in serving others, not asking for luxuries myself… I know this is wrong. I look at the page as I type and call bullshit. Yet the persistent story remains, rooted in the grey matter of my brain. I want it out, this poison from my psyche.
I’m grateful for friends who come sit with me, call for a chat, or check-in with some regularity; those I work with, especially my regulars and sweet devoted trainee; my cat keeps me whole and grounded day to day; my family is there, especially when I’m very dark and can’t seem to see anyone close to me. I’m grateful for acts of kindness. I’m grateful for those who tell me I’ve touched them, helped them, inspired them on their own journeys. I’m grateful for lunch and drinks and dates to go swimming… I’m grateful knowing I’m not alone in my struggles to remain breathing.
These days it’s dawning that I require more casual connections. I need adventure partners, to find and participate in local communities in order to be healthy. I’ve been hunkered down alone, attending to my inner world out of necessity in the midst of real changes and growth for too long. I jab at myself, enunciating for a chuckle that I’m antisocial, but it isn’t honest. These are behaviors born of fear. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be right now. Like my clothing, nothing seems to fit right. I’ve lost delight in little things. My mind wanders to oblivion more frequently than it should.
Beautiful visions remain in my mind, but when I chuck them at a wall nothing seems to stick. Perhaps it’s just this oppressive Summer humidity, though the chill of Winter’s cold does it too, so perhaps it really is just me… I can’t continue to fail and fail and fail, day in and day out. Responding to that statement, I check in—am I failing? Really? It does feel that way, as though I’m slipping away.
There’s no time or money for learning. I find myself at the bottom of creative mountains I’m not sure I’m equipped to handle. My brain brings me to the impossible places I haven’t figured out yet. My mind does not dwell nearly as often in space I know well or find comfort in.
This will pass. I must remember that it always has. I will place one foot in front of the other. I will prevail in time. It will take longer than I want, but succeed at something I must, in order to survive.
Perhaps this is the burden of being alive: imagination and reality so often collide. Perhaps instead, it’s that too often they don’t seem to meet where they might.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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