Lately, I have felt more like I’m crawling than walking to get through another day of Zoom meetings. While I consider myself incredibly fortunate during this time to have a steady job, a home, a loving partner and family, I can’t help but feel the exhaustion, fatigue and anxiety that so many of us are feeling during this time. So much of living right now is just heavy.
My general mode of operandi when I’m stressed is to intentionally make myself busier – actually as busy as humanly possible. In college I perfected it to a T; I kept myself as busy as possible to try to fill the void of loneliness and depression. Every time this year I start to feel it again, too. The gnawing, aching sense of the summer, the world as we have known it to be waning, and darkness, both literally and metaphorically speaking, setting in.
This fall does feel differently than those before. I’ve spoken with many people where we both find ourselves asking “Did we even have a summer this year?” Time feels warped, out of the context of the usual trips and events that mark the change of the seasons. Time has stood still and stretched out long; and at the same time, it’s sped by at lightning speed.
Can both things be true at once?
When I think about the world right now, on the weekly Skype chat with my family or on the phone with friends, I always find these days there’s a pause, a moment after bringing up the state of our climate, or our country, or our world that leaves no room for words – just uncertainty.
Uncertainty is no stranger to those who live in the upper Midwest. As someone living in Minnesota, we always find ourselves speculating “How bad will the winter be this year?” or “Will it be a snowy one or an unusually cold one?”. What we are really asking ourselves though is: “How are we going the make it through?”. How do we do it year after year, as we lose 30 minutes of sunlight by the day now? There’s a sense of drowning, or being baptized, into something you aren’t certain you asked for. As the anticipation of winter arises, questions flood my thoughts like “What did I do to deserve this?” and “When will this be over?” and “Why the hell do I still live here?!”.
As a person who battles Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) every year during the winter months, it can be hard to look forward to the shortening days, bitter cold weather, and decrease in sunlight when you know depression is coming at you in full force.
Although it is easy for me to feel consumed by the darkness of winter closing in, I recognize the small acts I make daily can make a big difference. Remembering to sit by my SAD light every morning, attempting to exercise, eating healthy, journaling before the day starts, and taking medication are all tools that help me ‘make do’ with those long, long winter months here in Minnesota . There are days where I’m just not okay and can’t go out with friends (let’s be honest, this isn’t much of an issue this winter!), but I do the best I can with what I’ve got. All the while realizing that the winter and my mental health won’t be perfect, but I’ll make it through, and maybe be able to navigate a bit more easily than the last year.
Maybe that’s all we can do these next few months, as winter approaches, as 2020 hurtles us forward into god knows what.
Take it one day at a time.
Find one thing each day that brings you joy, makes you laugh, or ushers in gratitude for those around you.
Sit next to a window filled with sunlight and do nothing for a little while.
Reach out to those you haven’t talked to or seen in a while and just listen.
Sarah Kay, one of the poets that really inspired me when I first stared writing more as a young adult, writes in her poem “Hiroshima”:
“Impossible is trying to connect in this world; trying to hold on to others when things are blowing up around you; knowing that while you are speaking, they aren’t just waiting for their turn to talk. They hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It’s what I strive for each time I open my mouth: That impossible connection.”
Feeling heard and understood by friends, loved ones, and even perfect strangers, is one of the things that has been making me feel less alone right now. Just knowing that someone else is feeling weary and exhausted and anxious in these times is that ‘impossible connection’ that heals. Maybe, it has been for you, too.
Here’s some other words (songs, poems) that have resonated with me recently:
“Making Do” by Lake Street Dive
“Autumn” by Holly Arrowsmith
“Lines Written In the Days of Growing Darkness” by Mary Oliver
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
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Despite the lack of control we face right now, there is a degree of power we each hold, especially if you are white, cisgender, or a U.S. citizen. Voting is a choice each of us who are U.S. citizens can make; and the results could alter how much we have to ‘make do’ with in the next few years, or decades. Reread Congressman John Lewis’s words if you need some encouragement on this: “Together, you can redeem the soul of the nation”, and for everyone’s sake, please vote.
Keep making do and taking good care of yourself and those around you, friends.
Seeds of Hope 