I Was in a Funk Last Week
I was in a funk last week. I binge-watched three seasons of Scandal. I didn't go outside. I was overwhelmed by the EVERYTHING of it all.
I let shit slide. I didn't text back. I didn't follow up. I didn't shower.
I let the kids watch all the TV they wanted, all day long. On my nights to cook, dinner was cereal.
This isn’t a brag, by the way. I know it totally looks like one of those “I’m so cool IDGAF about my life situation because my big feelings make up for living in squalor and not getting anything done ever” brags.
No, I felt like shit about it. There was this army of icks I’d been keeping at bay - anxiety, despair, fear, petty rage, righteous rage, hungry rage, slappy rage, all the rages really - and suddenly I felt defeated. Not even defeated - I didn’t fall in battle. I just woke up one morning last week and lay down my weapons. “Come on in, fellas. There’s Pirate’s Booty in the snack drawer.”
Remember back in March when stores and restaurants closed and everyone was told to stay in their homes, and the stock market cratered?
This was a season when I, like all of us, was rapidly reorganizing what "a normal day" looked like, and witnessing the straight-up assassination of the systems, routines, and structures that held up my life and the lives of my kids.
This was a season when I didn't know what was going to happen in the next hour, and the daily news was a devastating reminder that in the scheme of things, the implosion of my faith in the stability of the near future was a tiny price to pay. A fucking bargain, really.
And during that season, while I mourned and worried along with friends and loved ones who were laid off, essential workers, single parents, I watched the stock market fall, and I thought...
at least that makes sense.
It was terrifying to watch those numbers tick lower and lower. Heartbreaking to think about the families who would be destabilized by their descent.
But can you imagine how terrifying it would have been if they hadn't fallen? In the face of a global economic shutdown? In the aftermath-well, I suppose I should say duringmath-of the greatest public health crisis in recent history? What if the DOW had... risen? THAT would have scared the shit out of me. Because it would have meant that something fundamental was deeply, deeeeeeeply broken.
That's how I had to feel about my mood last week.
It cratered. And you know what?
That makes sense.
We are living in the duringmath of extreme chaos, unprecedented lack of faith in institutions and government, another year of kids at home struggling to learn through a screen while women make the impossible choice between their jobs, their families, and their sleep, because they can only have two. We are living with the uncertainty of an economy that's trembling on the precipice, and the very real threat of a second Trump term and all the horrors that has in store for so many people....
Fucking yes, I am in a FUNK. To put it LIGHTLY.
Go easy on yourselves. Drink lots of water and try to make a good breakfast.
When your emotional DOW crashes, remind yourself THAT MAKES SENSE, and be comforted by the knowledge that of all the things that are broken, your connection to the world and the category-5 shitstorm out there is not one of them.
Let yourself be fucked up by fucked up shit for exactly as long as you need to be fucked up about it.
And not one second longer.
That's what humans do.
Someone stitch that on a pillow.
And when you don’t need to be fucked up about it anymore, you turn off Scandal and take a freaking shower, lady. Tomorrow’s coming and it needs you.
xoxo
Katie
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