I just re-read my last blog post, from mid-April, and wow-wee am I struck by how much has changed since then. I’m also a little annoyed by my slightly Zen, imploring tone to focus on taking care of yourself through these times and going slow as you can. But I’ll elaborate on that in a bit. . .
I wrote that blog post the day before Cash (the cat) showed up in my life. I wrote it a month and a half before Jeff died. I wrote it during a time when there was still hope I’d have holiday craft fairs to look forward to. Before money was starting to get tight. Before over 200,000 people had died. And before the BLM protests becoming omnipresent in the SF bay area and in other major urban cities.
Where am I now? Where was I then?
Something I tell my friends a lot these days when they ask how I’m doing: I’m okay with not being okay and within that I am okay. It’s an ouroboros of feelings. I am now so abundantly aware of how much I always clung to the idea that one day the shit would stop hitting the fan, bad things would stop happening to myself and my loved ones, and overall life would be like skipping down the yellow brick road. Eventually. And fuck if modern day society doesn’t implore us that if we just work hard enough and fast enough THIS WILL ALL ONE DAY BE TRUE.
That is so far from the truth it makes me cackle. I cackle a lot these days. I think of a cackle as being true laughter but one tinged by the darkness of real life. An edge to it, some added harshness.
I almost want to stop and apologize for the tone of this blog post, but I know you don’t need me to. Wherever you are I am sure you are juggling your own array of challenges sprinkled through with moments of grace.
Because that’s the thing I’m realizing through these times - and by “these times” I do mean in part the pandemic, but I mostly mean the loss of my partner of 12 and a half years - is that immense beauty exists right alongside immense pain. I’m not always capable of seeing both at once, but some days are like a layer cake of feelings. One minute deep sorrow, one minute profound gratitude, the next a taste of joy almost so fleeting I wouldn’t see it if I wasn’t paying attention. This whole of life is begging us to pay attention. Pay attention and slow down (there I go again with imploring everyone to slow down - which I know how obnoxious that can sound when you’re juggling multiple jobs just to pay the bills). These two things are what’s gonna save the planet, if we’re honest with ourselves as a species.
And circling back to the opening of this post: when I talk about slowing down I’m in large part talking about questioning the many things we are all taught to want in life - the very things that keep us running a marathon we don’t remember entering our name in. That is a very different thing than feeling like you can never stop working otherwise the bills won’t be paid, and I want to be sensitive to that.
Voting day is around the corner. As I post this I am painfully aware of once again how strange it may be to read this post in just a few short day’s time. We are living through these huge stratospheric shifts in perspective and WAYS OF LIVING.
I’m going to be back in this space more often again. I have so much more to say and share with all of you. I’d love to hear how you are doing in the comments below. I’m especially curious to hear how things may have changed for you since mid-March, when shelter in place orders were first given in the SF bay area. Or if things shifted for you at a different point these last few months, when was it and how are you feeling?
Take care of yourselves, friends. And thank you for being here.
warmly,
Jeannine