Surviving

It is hard to show up and be creative right now. It is hard to be present in ways it was not just last year. Last year, I took a bit of a hiatus from making blog posts in an effort to have more of a social media presence and tackle some of my challenges with speaking to a group of random people. I took to the task of filming videos and posting them regularly, and maintained a focus that very much fell in line with and focused on many of the issues that crop up and seem to be common with many of my clients. I got into a good rhythm of filming and posting, and other than a hiatus around the holidays where I shifted to some silly Christmas-themed content, I was still producing videos. To be fair, my videos did not require much; they were sparsely edited and took a handful of moments to set up and film for each one. They were never scripted, so it was not a monumental effort. I was out of my pattern of posting and was trying to find that rhythm again, because I had dozens of videos filmed, ready to be captioned, and posted. As time has gone on, it has become harder to post those videos. The roadblock is not one of not having subject matter, but right now, it is more about those videos feeling disingenuous to post.

For so many clients, friends, and colleagues right now, every day is another opportunity to open up our phones and look on social media, or even a news app, and find that things feel a little worse than they did just yesterday. Right now, so many people I know are actively terrified about their ability to exist. These are not criminals, these are not people who are “gaming the system”, nor are these people violating any laws, rules, or regulations. These are people who are not in the same place of privilege as I am. They may have some privilege, but they are lower on the list of privileges than I am, and they see how others are being targeted, and they are scared. That fear is not unfounded, nor is it a sign of a mental health condition. Rather, what they feel is what all the warning signs our bodies come standard with going off, because these are dangerous times.

Sure, people like me can go out in public and shop or sightsee and not feel any threat. But there are people who have done nothing wrong who are in fact being targeted, harassed, detained, or even worse, imprisoned or deported. There is no modality of therapy designed to address valid fears. There is nothing in my humanity I can say or do to assuage that feeling. I can say (and believe fully) that good will win, but not be certain when. I can promise that there are still millions of good people who disagree with these actions, but that does not address the root cause of their fear. Often, therapy is a way to normalize human experiences, and while I can normalize this experience, I don’t want to make it seem like this is okay, or something we should ignore or accept. Rather, I want to say “yeah, everything is on fire, but it’s not just your house burning down, it is a lot of ours”. If that was something I said to you while your house and your neighbor’s house burned, you would probably punch me. So I am not going to truly normalize the experience everyone is going through.

So, if you are struggling with your ability to create, or if you are struggling to be present and engaged in the things you have normally done, know that you are not alone. But also know that this is not normal and is unacceptable. We should not be living through an experience like this simply because white-supremacy won an election. We as a country, we as a world, deserve more than this. All people deserve the ability to be safe in their homes and communities, and everyone deserves the right to exist peacefully alongside their neighbors. But when that is disrupted, when we feel like we have to sleep with one eye open, or that we can’t do the things we are accustomed to, those are red flags, those tell us things are amiss. That creates an opportunity for us to unite against the things that are disrupting our peace. We are given the ability to commit acts of rebellion in our daily lives. That can be as simple as allowing ourselves to find joy where we can, to offering mutual aid to people in our communities, to showing up and engaging in protests against attempts to disrupt the peaceful lives we are entitled to. There is no “right” way to feel or respond, and you are not wrong, or broken for feeling fucked up right now. Things are fucked, but there is still good, and there are still millions of people who do not bend the knee to authoriatian rule.   

Right now, focus on surviving.