Hi there. I’m so much quieter than I used to be. Sometimes, I join in the chatter when I feel a bit better. I twitter sometimes. I twittered on Saturday with the joy of Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s election. What a fucking relief.
Some part of me believed all my symptoms would go away if it happened, but I lie here to attest that isn’t true. Damage has been done.
I keep wanting to get better but I can’t wish it to be so.
Our culture is a wish-it-better culture.
I used to have a lot of friends. No more. Yet, when I begin to count my true friends, they are enough. These are people who sent me silly cat videos, who wrote snarky or sweet letters, who actually asked how I was doing, who didn’t negate me when I said how hard it was or what was happening. Yes, even family members told me it wasn’t happening.
I used to be active and involved. I’ve quit almost everything. I still work about half the time I normally would. I’m in a tiny but vibrant book club. We just finished discussing ‘So You Want to Talk About Race.’ And I still try to meet with my writer friend even though I’m barely writing. I try to walk with another friend, but I can’t usually make it.
I’m only half in and half out of the church I used to be dedicated to. The minister never called to ask how I was doing. I believed I was dying and my friend told him and he didn’t call. So I don’t know what to do. I didn’t make it to the prayers list. Were the prayers a popularity contest anyway? Churches are only human after all. I still haven’t decided about church. It’s been hard to feel joy in my soul. Do you have to feel joyful to be a good Christian? Do you have to be a cheerful worker bee? I was a worker bee for twenty years there. Maybe I wasn’t cheerful enough.
I quit my quilting group that I’d been in for twenty years too. They would have asked how I was sometime in seven months if they’d cared, right? I was the comic relief. It’s not a real relationship if all you’re doing is entertaining, right?
I quit my open-mic group. I didn’t mind that I was the comic relief there, but the guy who led it really didn’t want to hear alternate ideas, didn’t want to talk about diversity. After I read from my almost-finished book, he told me I wrote the wrong book. Seriously, I was on the way out before the awkwardness of zoom meetings.
I’m cleaning house. Simplifying. I just wish I had the strength to get rid of physical junk too. It seems like those parts would go together. Alas, my house is still full of junk. At least I have plenty of books.
Thank you for listening, jules