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1 day agoNo one should feel like this.
Yes. So bear witness. Write. Make art. Document what you’re going through.
Do it for yourself, at least.
I say this with experience: you will forget the intensity, the gravity of what you’re feeling. The coping mechanisms you’ve developed and mindset you’ve cultivated will stay, like muscle memory (so better cultivate healthy ones!). But when you go back to the stuff you made back then, you will be overwhelmed - both by how much worse it was than you remember, and how much stronger you are than you thought to have survived it.
(Also - writing can be really helpful for sorting through feelings and working things out.)
Sigh… yeah, that’s relatable. I am trying to train myself to accept the world as it is, without overemphasizing my own (and other people’s) emotional reactions to them - keeping things in perspective, basically.
The best way I’ve found do this is, unfortunately, meditation (I know, they were right, god fucking damn it). But seriously, I’ve found it really helpful. Moreover, consider that meditation is a coping mechanism developed by people who lived in much shittier times than ours; Gautama Buddha is traditionally presented as having developed his teachings in response to suddenly becoming aware of horrific things, which is the exact thing that many of us have been going through for the past few years.
Here are some resources that have helped me:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/bd811e54438e39c709895c8a85a99e32
https://www.mctb.org/
In this vein, there’s a poem I want to share, from Kyle Tran Myhre’s latest book. He doesn’t seem to have posted it anywhere online, so I will just paste it, in a collapsible, below (pls don’t sue me Kyle :3):
Hen March Fights On
In those wild early days, Hen March found herself surrounded by doubt. Some of that doubt was her own: bright blue lightning coursing through the larger cloud of other people’s doubt—their cynicism, their fatalism, their valid critique. The cloud, gray and formless, hung in the air outside Hen March’s always-open window. Sometimes that cloud spoke.
Sometimes, its voice was a hissing whisper like acid melting through glass. You’re never going to make it, you know. You never belonged here in the first place.
Other times, its voice was a soft murmur like rain. It’s okay that you’re going to fail. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters.
Still other times, its voice was clear, confident and enunciative, an inspiring roar. Let’s think about this rationally: what you aim to do simply won’t work. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a hundred other things you could do. Why don’t you just go ahead and do those things!
Hen March listens to all the voices, because “just don’t listen to them” isn’t any kind of serious advice. She decides that if they were going to yap away at her anyway, she may as well get to know them.
The hissing whisper is afraid, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for something undefined—but bad—to happen. Hen March holds her hand, waits with her, and says this is also happening.
The soft murmur is tired, just so very tired. Hen March lets her nap on her shoulder, and says, it is okay to rest.
The inspiring roar is also afraid, underneath her bluster. She is bursting with ideas and possibilities but doesn’t know how to hold them. Hen March stays up late laughing and arguing with her. At one point, she says, we have time.
By taking the time to get to know her doubts, Hen March makes friends of them. Many years later, asked by a storyteller how she was able to keep fighting against such overwhelming odds, she remembers:
My doubts were always with me. When I got to know them, I was able to understand them as pieces of myself.
And the thing about me is I’m just a person. So no matter how cynical I felt, I was always able to remind myself that to surrender to cynicism is really to surrender to arrogance.
“Oh, I feel pessimistic, and I’m such a genius that I must be right!” Bah. Our fears, our doubts—they’re valid. But you don’t fight them; you don’t “beat” them. You try to understand them.
You try to be humble enough to remember that our personal doubts aren’t bigger than our collective power. They’re louder, sometimes, sure. But not bigger.
Finally, just a personal note before I log off and get back to the grind - I feel you, I really do. I remember being at the absolute end of my rope before; it was exhausting, and it hurts to know that you’re there. I sincerely hope you feel better <3