I Am Not Okay (and that’s okay)

I am not okay. 

I could stop writing with that simple sentence and it would be enough. 

It’s really that simple. 

But I feel like there’s something more there. My desire to always dig deeper. Always do the extra research. I can’t just not be okay, I have to pull it out and analyze it. 

There’s something deep in that hollow pit I feel cascading through my chest. I just want to scream. 

And I have. 

I have screamed and it isn’t even out of anger. It’s from this uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. This knowing that there’s so much wrong and even with so much right, there’s so much wrong. 

And I can’t control it, or even help it most of the time. 

But I want to dissect it. 

Parenting is hard.

Grieving is hard. 

Parenting during a pandemic is hard. Parenting during a pandemic while grieving is so fucking hard. 

And some days, my heart just hurts. My chest burns. My breathing is heavy.

And it’s trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma and those are the very things you don’t want to pass on to your kids, but at times it’s so in front of you. It’s so close to you that you end up on your kitchen floor crying. And you can’t point to a reason why. You can’t pinpoint the breaking point that made you slide down your wall and sit on the floor and cry. 

All the reasons.

All the reasons are spinning around you. 

How have you not cried on your kitchen floor every single day? How have you kept it together for so long without a complete and utter breakdown? 

And you can’t even begin to pick one reason why. And you laugh. And you cry. And you just know: All the reasons. 

And they’re spinning around you. And some days they send chills down that hollow pit and other days they have waves crashing within it. 

There’s so much back and forth and round and rounds that it literally makes me dizzy and I have to slide to the ground. 

Why is it that we always cry on the floor? That we fall to our lowest level and release tears more freely than other areas? I could easily sit on my couch or a chair, or fall in my bed that I love. But when the waves start acting up and the tsunami of emotions comes straight for you, that hollow pit pulls us down to the floor. 

And after I’ve collected myself I always think of that. I always wonder: Why did I just cry on my floor?

(Hold up, let me analyze this.)  

I’m wiping tears and thinking: What the actual fuck?

And I wonder if it’s some way of being grounded. Some way of wanting to untangle the roots. A way to get closer to the bare minimum and have no distractions. To just FEEL for a moment. It’s not in a “will she be okay” sort of way. It’s in a realization that this is life, and these waves are strong and they really fucking hurt sort of way.

I know I will be okay. I understand that I will live a good life and provide my kids with one as best as I can. And most days I take comfort in that. I can imagine a beautifully moving ocean and not get taken over by the waves.

But when those waves hit, everything buried comes back to the surface. Everything you’ve been leaving behind gets swept up to shore. Everything except that one thing. 

That one person. 

The one person who could kill you and rescue you by walking through the door. They’re not swept up to shore.
But no worries, because much of what they’ve buried is now lying at your feet, so be sure to roll up your sleeves. There is so much work to do. Always.

Widowing. Grieving. Whatever you want to call it—it sucks. Your person is gone. Your home is gone. Your world disappeared. You can wake up in the same bed between the same walls you shared with them, but you’re in a totally different house. Your bones are different. Your creaks are tired and loud. The aches hurt. You can clean it up as often as you like, but it’s unfamiliar while also beginning to feel like all you’ve known. Before is getting so distant. And, yet, we can lay our head down. And we can see them there. And we just close our eyes and escape this world for awhile.

I really, really believe it’s important for people to know that even if you know you have the strength to get through what it is you’re going through and even if you do really well at maintaining balance and expressing your feelings and doing inner work and empowering yourself and others and being kind in the face of ugliness, you can be NOT okay in this moment and that’s allowed. It’s not possible to be okay all the time. It’s not possible to never have a flashback that brings you to tears or a song that makes you tense. And even when you recognize it, and 90% of the time you do just that—you recognize it—and you move right through it, you can still have days when you can’t help but have tears stream down your face. You can’t help but communicate with others as little as possible because you have no words and a lot of tears. 

And there’s nothing anyone can say, because you already know. 

You’ll get through it. You’ll move with it. This wave will pass and the tide will roll out and you’ll be okay. 

And then repeat. 

But you don’t tell them the repeat part. No need to be dramatic, right? You just agree. 

You’ll be okay. 

But damn. 

Right now.

Right now, I am simply not okay. 

I am the only one who can rescue me. 

And I am tired. 

So, please, let me be.