mostly bleak

🎀 with no hopeful bow 🎀

It feels hard to figure out the right way to open a substack that says “things feel mostly bad and I’m definitely doing badly” even though that is what feels most honest. I like to be positive and optimistic and to have real perspective and thoughtfulness about my privilege and to be overflowing with gratitude because look how much good is all around and look how I can function on through it. But also some guy walked up my street the other day when barrels were out for trash day and one after another knocked them all over one at a time and it feels tempting to find out if knocking a bunch of stuff over might make anything feel better.

It already seems boring and insensitive to everyone else’s hellscapes to be oversaturated in my own, but I’m really struggling. and it feels like if i’m going to let this channel be a space for connecting big dots and finding meaning in the world, that maybe it can also be a space for when meaning feels really really far away.

I keep cultivating presence by putting my stupid phone away or being sober more often or journaling or getting enough sleep and what i’m finding in my effortfully cultivated presence is a ton of sadness. shitty ass deal.

people (I read? idk?) are either more oriented towards action or more oriented towards inaction. how much does internal inertia push you towards always trying to change your life? how much does internal gravity keep you from what you want?

I am the most oriented towards action you can be, I think. It’s really good for making plans, for self-improvement, for fixing stuff that isn’t working, for trying the things your therapist recommends.

It’s really bad for self-acceptance, for sitting in feelings that are hard, for grieving realities you cannot change, for being sad when things are just bad, for giving yourself a break when doing your best can’t include action takes your pain away.

It has been a big focus of my last bunch of years to build a softer relationship to sadness. To feel her coming and not run. To sit in things that don’t feel good and do nothing right away. It’s working, and there are a few ways I can tell:

• I am sad more often (jfc)

• I turn to blame less often

• I can see how uncomfortable inaction helps me move through the sadness more honestly

I used to really bop around with a lot of cranky itchy feelings that I met with a lot of BLAME “well if [person] only did [thing], then I would feel better” or HOPE “as long as I do [master plan], this will go away.” Nothing was ever enough as is. Certainly not moi. So it is cool to be able to observe a different relationship to difficult stuff, but also it blows, tbh!

Without blame or hope, there is more honesty (!) but also there is only proper noun, capital S, Sad. I’m spending a lot of time there. I feel very deeply during this moment in my life the layers of grief that are global, that are local, and that are personal. I feel like it’s been really hard to catch my breath before something hard or heavy comes up again.

I miss how my life used to feel, and it can’t feel that way again right now. It wasn’t awesome all the time, and there were major issues I had to address that led to this big ole move, but what my life feels like now is so much harder than the one that I feel like I was vibing with for a long time. If you have to have a major devastating and traumatic loss, I wouldn’t recommend having it right after leaving home, right after your parents move away, right as you’re trying to build new life in a new place. I’m not saying you should feel bad for me but I wouldn’t mind if you did. In all seriousness, everyone around me is going through fucking hell, so no part of me thinks mine is more significant. But it is way more than I have held before and I’m barely holding it.

Specifically, I am observing that repetitive connection with my community is really important to having a happy rhythm to my life. I’d like to go to 2-4 workout classes taught by Maggi a week, and eat pancakes with Chris, and go to coffee on my block with Jessie and the pup between meetings, and walk to therapy and back, and lift weights and flirt with the teacher with Keaves and then ask what she’s making for dinner, and sit at shybird with reeves and kaileigh and alexa sort of doing our jobs and sort of online shopping, and take a $25 uber in kind of annoying south bay center traffic to be back in Milton in 20-40 minutes to have 2 cosmos with my mom and dad and aunts and whichever cousins appeared and then probably a concert or a red sox game or a fancy dinner where maybe brendan is the chef and maybe a bunch of stuff is sent out for free.

Every week basically looked like that. that’s a lot of stuff. Here there are plenty of sprinkles of wonder and a bunch of my faves, but it does not (yet! duh!) feel like the big compilation that used to be normal, every day life. And I know that things take time to build, and I know that the context of boston was not working for my soul despite the community that exists there. the hungry parts of my soul (queer, creative, child-free, out n about) feel much more fueled by the landscape of new york, but my little heart really really craves and needs more familiarity and ease and connection with my own people right now, and it feels shitty to have stepped away from that.

I know that feelings are like weather and seasons go ahead and change and it will of course feel different again. I don’t think anyone’s doing anything wrong. Grief, and trauma, and cancer, and all the other big bads are really having their moment right now all around me and I think that’s supposed to feel bad.

I’m gonna keep trying sleep and planning trips and writing stuff and sleep again and walk walk walkin around outside and asking for help and little treats and yoga and not being at 100% and knowing that’s 100% of what I can offer right now.

I hope you do whatever is relentlessly in service of your own wellbeing bc you’re all needed here, freaks.

I love you! Definitely and without a doubt.