It has been one hundred and eighty-six days since the city of Boston shut down, and our lives became this strange existence. 186 days since we stopped living, and started counting. Counting days, airline points from cancelled flights, the number of people we've encountered, the friends that we miss.
One hundred and fifteen days ago, we started counting more. Seconds with a knee on your neck, lives lost due to police brutality, dollars donated to fundraisers, attendants at protests, days until November 3rd.
And we keep counting: acres burned in California, speeds of a hurricane in Alabama, days without arrest in Kentucky.
It's exhausting.
And for the past nine days, I have been back at work. And as happy as I am - I love my job - it feels hollow. With everything occurring in our world, how dare I go back to business as usual? By returning to my Monday-Friday lifestyle, am I turning my back on the things I have focused on for these past 186 days?
Shouldn't I be doing more?
And I know that so many people are feeling similar feelings, of guilt mixed with relief, mixed with a lingering shame that perhaps I'm not doing enough.
Unfortunately, "Everyone is going through the same thing" is a sentence that no longer brings me comfort. I lost that about three months ago. I no longer find solace in the idea of misery loves company. I find frustration - anger, even.
I think I'm doing my best. I really do. But with the world literally and symbolically on fire, and half of our nation seemingly unphased, that does not feel like something I can hang my hat on. I feel no pride in "doing my best" right now. So for these past nine days, I have felt sad.
The last time I felt this way this strongly was one hundred and fifty-nine days ago, when I started writing. A pandemic was ripping through our world and all I could do was think, and I was really stewing. And this helped. I felt connected to peers I had never been close to, I expressed thoughts I had never said aloud, and I inspired myself, to learn more, and to do more. So I kept writing, and things felt a little better. I started to "adjust to a new normal" (another phrase that no longer brings me joy), and told myself that things would eventually get better.
And now, I am struggling with this: how long will the expression "things will eventually get better" last before it becomes another stale and useless expression? I don't imagine it'll take very long.
By telling myself that this will be over soon, am I stopping myself from making progress? By pretending life is okay, am I preventing myself from feeling all of the things that make me human? Am I pushing back the progress that I have made? It sure seems like it.
159 days ago, I wrote that life had been kicking my ass. A time in my life when I had felt comfortable and grateful had become disheartening and disconnected.
And yet somehow, by expressing that, people that I had previously considered peers became friends, and even advisors. And some truly beautiful souls reached out and said "Me too," and "same here." I got some of my gratitude back. And my soul felt a few little fuzzies again. And after that, I began to do the work.
159 days ago I wrote that I wanted to be a better person coming out of this than I was coming in. So today, six months later, and what feels like a million lessons older, I am writing again to say the same.
Life is kicking my ass right now.
And my soul is still desperate for those warm and fuzzies.
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