Everything Feels Heavy
Yesterday I added a half hour to my already hour long therapy session that I schedule with my lovely therapist Esther every other week. She is sweet and has beautiful curly hair and tells me I am doing too much and need to chill tf out a lot. And she’s not wrong - that’s why I pay her.
The truth is I’ve felt so heavy recently. Like a crushing kind of weight that comes from all directions and hurts your chest and makes your eyes water at the most inconvenient times. Like can I keep the tears to a minimum at work please??
Obviously, this kind of indescribable sense of horrificness isn’t the result of just one hiccup in life - I’m freaking hacking with a crazy metaphorical wet cough that is so gross, people in public would probably side eye and move slowly away from me. Everything just feels so BIG. ALL THE TIME. All caps aren’t even enough for what is boiling inside me. I am consistently feeling like no one understands this insanely nagging heavy constant weight and I am fully convinced I am the only one that feels it, too (I’m not, more below on that!).
Here are (some of) the daily nagging coughs that won’t leave me alone…
I wake up and roll over in bed and read at least one headline that sounds like it was written by a five year old having a temper tantrum and knows about 10 words that have to do with foreign affairs (probably because that’s what’s happening).
I get the privilege of meeting people in a professional setting (to clarify: where I cannot cry) that are so incredibly self absorbed that said crushing weight doesn’t even affect them (What if I just shoved my head that far up my ass, too? Must be so nice. I hate caring [I don’t, actually it’s just exhausting]).
People I love and who love me don’t want to trade minor inconvenience (say, coming up with a synonym for a very derogatory word for a gay person… maybe just “gay”? Or like don’t use slurs? Idk just a thought) to avoid deeply hurting or completely invalidating the experiences or identity of someone (me).
People yelling slurs at those I love out of car windows (exciting way to start the day).
My friends being denied healthcare because they don’t look like the kind of person that should receive the healthcare they need (never knew doctors were so superficial!).
“So what kind of gay are you?”
“You’re making a huge deal about this”
“We’re in the car, it’s ok if I say ____!”
History is repeating itself in a really scary way that I don’t like…
Every day I feel like not only no one understands or feels this weight I do, but no one seems to CARE. As I’m writing this people are walking past me chatting and the sun is shining and that kid is annoying, but having a great time making the most noise ever. Why isn’t anyone screaming and crying and throwing up? No one wants to get off their ass and have a mental breakdown in public these days.
Disclaimer: I don’t even live in a place where REALLY bad things are happening. I have a stable job and I’m straight passing and I’m white and there’s no war at my doorstep and if I had a medical crisis I have people that I could lean on. And I STILL feel this way.
Anyway, Esther told me to calm tf down. Not because I was making a bigger deal of this than I needed to. No, that’s totally warranted and no one better be upset at me about that. But because this is actually an important step of change… but it’s just one of the first (damn). It’s like the steps of grief that I’ve been taught time and time again and I can never remember. You have to feel the discomfort to know something needs to change. Well, I’m REALLY uncomfortable.
The next step requires a lot of support and community and more than just one person, which in a lot of ways is actually beautiful and nice despite the reasons why we are coming together in the first place (trauma bonding and such).
“If I were You-Know-Who, I'd want you to feel cut off from everyone else, because if it's just you alone you're not as much of a threat.” Bars, Luna Lovegood.
So, yeah. Right now I just want to curl up in a dark corner and eat Trader Joe’s Takis and watch the world through the filter of Kurtis Conner commentaries… but (thanks to Esther and also knowing this way deep down but not wanting to do it) I have been continuing to feed and strengthen my community of people who support me for being myself because that feeling of mutual exhaustion from this incredibly unique, complicated, systemic weight is what drives us to do something about it together.
I’ve also learned resistance doesn’t have to be actually DOING something. I’ve taken a lot of comfort in resistance like staying educated. Reading and listening and absorbing. Learning the reasons why people believe what they do and finding common threads between ideas and fears. A genuine curiosity about the world could save humanity, to be honest. Knowledge, I’ve found, is one of the main ways to combat division because it’s hard to hate someone when you know all the horrific reasons and factors and systems that have failed them (crazy take, I know). It sort of makes you hate those systems instead of them…
Anyway. There is not a bow to wrap up the end of this post, unfortunately. Maybe to check in on your friends. To read a book. Take it slow and IT’S OKAY TO CRY IN PUBLIC. I literally just did writing this post. To know that whatever weight you are feeling right now, at least one other person (me) feels like that too in some way.
And I promise I’m resisting with you.
Okay. Bye!