You’re Not Alone
After a day of prepping for online school, helping my kids come up with a fun project that will keep them from watching Cartoon Network 12 hours a day, and then hearing it cavalierly announced at a press conference that this could go on until August, I SOBBED MY HEAD OFF.
Like not a gentle tear. Not even what I hear the internet call an “ugly cry.” Like an explosive, anxiety charged down-the-rabbit-hole amount of crying.
And I felt my brain say, “Katy! This is like, DAY 3. You are in your comfortable home with the things you need! You are not homeless, or sick. You are not elderly. You do not live with someone who is hurting you. This is not that bad.”
And usually, at that point, I listen to the logic of my brain and pull it together.
Instead, I asked my logic to shut the hell up so I could shed the anxiety I’d been carrying with me for a while.
And you know what? I went to bed, slept all night for the first time in a week, and woke up feeling a hell of a lot better.
Let’s just agree to not play the “listing out all of the people who have it worse” game with ourselves or each other right now. Let’s just give ourselves, and one another, the grace and the space to have our feelings.
Because that way, we aren’t full of fake cheer and useless optimism. We are full of real. And real is what will lead us through.