This has been a hard week. As if you didn’t already know that.
First of all, I’ve been sick, which in these days and times comes with a whole new level of concern. Am I sick or am I SICK? I usually ignore being sick, continue on with my life and power through, which is how I approach most things actually, now that I think about it—head down and forward motion. But I couldn’t do that this week because it is not responsible or appropriate to ignore being sick in the era of a pandemic. So this was one more thing that I couldn’t do my normal way, and I gotta tell you, doing one more thing in a new way was just about too much for me. More than that, being unsure of how to proceed with one more thing pretty much defeated me this week.
Plus, the world fell apart. Again. Or still. More than before.
Hopelessness settled around me this week, which I hate, hate, hate, because it is so far from who I try to be. I’ve cried and coughed for days because I haven’t had the energy for anything else…because I’m sick and because my heart is sick.
If I wasn’t sick (and afraid of getting SICK, if I wasn’t already), I would be out there protesting along with everyone else. But I am, so I’m not. Instead, I sit on the couch worried about all those people out there protesting. Worried that they’ll get SICK, that they’ll get shot by overzealous police or National Guard or whatever armed forces our evil, unbalanced president decides to send out against our own citizens expressing their rights to free speech and assembly. Worried about the world my boys have inherited, in which they will try and build a life.
I haven’t written a blog in several weeks because I was waiting to have something besides COVID to write about. I thought I’d wait until I had something cute or chipper or fun to say. I didn’t want to be depressing, but here we are, in rather depressing days, so this is the blog that feels appropriate.
For the record, I got a COVID test this week and it turns out I’m sick but not SICK (and starting to feel better, so there is progress there).
Progress. That’s the crux of it. I want to feel like I am making progress. That we are making progress. At getting this pandemic under control. At racial justice. At peace. I understand that progress is slow. Believe me, as a therapist, I witness on a daily basis that change is almost always slow. But this week makes it hard to believe there is any progress at all. Watching a man get killed in cold blood by a police officer, in front of other police officers, side by side with other police officers…makes it clear that if there has been any progress at all in the last 20, 30, 50 years, it has been too small, too slow, too pitiful to count.
I want to feel better. I want to do better. I want the world to be better. And I want to have hope that things will get better and not continue to get worse. I am trying.