it took me about a week to notice it.
to notice the language everyone decided to use. these uncertain and unprecedented times. the new normal. the quarantine. the stay-at-home order. the shelter-in-place. the lock-down. the great pause. to notice the advice everyone decided to give. how to take care of yourself in this great experiment of 2020. how to stock your pantry for essentials. how to map out a calendar chart for when your local grocery stores will get toilet paper restocked. why 2020 is the perfect time to start your dream project. how to keep your side hustle strong in 2020. how to do nothing in 2020. how to do everything in 2020.
it took me about a week to notice it.
to notice the pain, the deep losses, the trauma, the isolation. to notice the separation. to notice the suffering. to notice everyone wanting to be somewhere they weren't, everyone wanting to be someone they weren't, everyone wanting things to keep going as they weren't. to notice the avoidance of the suffering. to notice the turning away from the pain.
it took me about a week to notice it.
to notice my own pain, my own suffering, my own isolation. to notice my own new way of doing things in this new normal. to notice my moods, my sensations, my feelings. like a teapot set to medium, the rolling boil of my anxiety rising up every so often to scream at my attention. like a finished cup of chamomile tea, my depression lulling me back into sleep into my third shower of the day and another nap.
the aches and pains in my body after spending a week sitting awkwardly trapped to a screen with dimensions much smaller than my eyes are made to take in the world. shoulders hunched over, searching for the right words to type and the right words to say to prove that I too, am, well, essential. to prove that I, too, can help save humanity.
at the end of my day, wrestling through the urge to keep making progress towards a hobby, to feel the aches in my fingers as I tried to plug myself in to yet another screen to edit photos. to feel the aches and pains in my lungs as I tried to meet another panic attack with mindful self-compassion. to feel the aches and pains in the back of my legs as I wrapped up another hike and finally settled in for the night.
to notice the release in my body as I treated it with tenderness and kindness and acceptance.
to notice the feeling of releasing and letting go.
it took me about a week to notice it. to notice the way some things kept going on exactly as they have always kept going on. to notice the pulls on our collective attention span, the pulls on our collective time, the pulls on our collective thinking. to notice the world has always been a place of struggle and suffering. to notice the divisions in how to treat our collective trauma contribute to that struggle and suffering. to notice books on my bookshelf written by survivors. to notice our dna is built from survivors. to notice my body has led me through this before and will lead the way again. to notice poetry and art and music have taught me how to find love in the beauty of being a human in a physical body.
it took me about a week to notice it. to notice healing takes place in person. to notice healing takes place in the present moment.
to notice the the strength and the courage to reach out to someone I cared about. to notice the strength and the courage to share our feelings. to notice the strength and the courage to put my phone into do not disturb mode just one hour earlier to take care of my body and mind. to notice the strength and the courage to revisit books whose authors had previously taught me about courage and strength and meaning and surviving. to notice the strength and the courage to get up every day and write. to notice the strength and the courage every time I found myself breaking into a late night acrobatic-yoga-dance routine on our kitchen floors. to notice the strength and the courage to lay on the kitchen floor for an hour straight because I knew that is exactly what my body needed in that exact time and place in its third panic attack of the week. to take walks. with no purpose, with no agenda, with no selfies to run through an instagram filter. to make art, with no purpose, with no agenda, with no concern over who would see it or how I would present it, with no intention of importing into my Lightroom collection, with no intention of blurring and distorting what I see with Photoshop.
it took me about a week to notice it.
to notice that love takes place in person. to notice that love takes place in deep presence. to notice that love takes place in deep listening.
in deep anchoring, in deep grounding, in deep tending. in deep caring. in deep noticing. in deep forgiving. in going offline in order to fall in love all over again.
it took me about a week to notice it. to notice that I'm processing. to notice that I'm coping.
to notice I'm doing some things differently.
to notice my feelings.
to notice my creativity.
to notice that I'm still coping. to notice that I'm still processing.
to notice my art, being with me. to notice my art, processing with me.
