Life is chaos, and it sucks. When I was constantly complaining three months ago that I wanted more time to myself, this isn’t what I meant. At all.
Everyone has come up with their own unique ways of describing all of this. None of them are really useful, and I have yet to find one that is all encompassing of everything going on. I have said before, I will say it again, and I will continue to say it until it is no longer true.
No one gets it. No one understands me, my life and my reality. But what else should expect, because no one is really trying.
I don’t want to be “home”. This isn’t my home and this never will be my home. My birth certificate, all it be in comic sans, carries the seal of the great state of Washington. That is home. I have never fit in or belonged in New Mexico. My only ties here are family, otherwise I would have left without looking back two years ago.
I hate that everyone keeps saying “Well, at least your at home!”. No, no I am not because this isn’t home. This is where my family lives, not home. Those are two entirely different concepts. I don’t like New Mexico, I don’t want to live in New Mexico, New Mexico never has been and never will be “home”.
I thought that was pretty obvious but I guess not. I constantly get asked questions about whether or not I am moving back after I am done with college. People keep pushing this narrative that at least I am home, when I am not.
When I told people that I was making the decision to leave, I was told to “Flee, flee while you can!” If I could have stayed, I would have. I proudly would have stayed and stood my ground. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to.
The reality of the situation is I am asthmatic, which lumps me into the underlying condition group.
I also have sporadically struggled and dealt with passive suicidal thoughts for the past five years. When I am at my lowest points all I want is a fleck of evidence that someone cares about me and that someone would actually notice and be upset if I was gone.
When all of this hit the fan I was just getting over one of my worst episodes to date. You don’t need a doctorate degree in psychology to realize that it wouldn’t be a smart idea to let me be alone and isolated. But even with that being said not being by myself doesn’t magically change everything. I have felt anxious and on edge more days than not. Low-level anxiety attacks are common place in a way that I thought was behind me.
People always say like clam down, it all be fine, it all work out, and it will be alright. And that has never been helpful and or useful. For the majority of my life I have had extremely legitimate things to be anxious, nervous, on edge, emotional and worked up over. Not that you need a “legitimate reason” to feel any of those things, but the only way I know how to put it is I have seen some shit.
But now that we are all collectively going through trauma, its magically okay to be feeling these things. Yet, we still aren’t having productive conversations about any of this. The narrative surrounding self-care still are pushing a consumerist root that is unsustainable solution for a lot of people currently. The coping ideas that are flooding my feeds are still so surface level, and as usual they fail to account for the fact that people have commitments, and families, and things and people they have to tend to. For numerous reasons, while taking ” a nice long walk or drive” sounds like great advice it’s not. If you, like me, have anxiety around deadlines, and that list on you phone everything that has to be done, ignoring everything even for a hour sounds as pleasurable as getting a root canal without pain meds. And really that’s just the beginning.
The point I am trying get at here is that not everything has been cancelled because of this virus. Anxiety, depression, trauma, the conflict in the Middle East, thoughts of self-harm and suicide, are still a very real reality.
The take away? I am not going to tell you that now is the opportunity to reach out to people. As the puerperal black-sheep, the outcast, the glossed over one. (For context, I have relatives that I get concerned about when the remember my birthday, and they aren’t my third cousin twice removed)
People know when you are reaching out because you want to check-in and make sure they are okay. People know when you are actually paying attention to what they are saying, and when you are just waiting to reply.
People love to talk about themselves. When reaching to someone, don’t talk about yourself until someone asks. Yes, people like talking about themselves and they may not ask you about yourself. There are two reasons for that, either the person you are talking to doesn’t care (that could be about you or the conversation, but that’s a whole can of worms) or the person you are talking to in someway and for some reason is using this conversation as a way to process the topic at hand.
Don’t look at this as an opportunity to reach out to people, take this an opportunity to learn how to open-mindedly listen to people and their experiences. Take this as an opportunity to learn about people, to collect information about things you previously hadn’t been exposed to. Take this as an opportunity to expand your world and your circle, during a time when no one is going to invite you to do something you have no interest in.
