It sounds like an oxygen mask

I am not okay

I don’t want to admit this, but I am not okay.

Outwardly, I’m doing great. I’m keeping up with everything. Well, most of it, anyway. More of it than not, I think, except for the dropped balls and the growing to-do list that always seems to wait another week. I’m not crashing and burning, at least not yet.

This isn’t a 9-1-1 call. This is plantar warts, those nasty, contagious viruses that take root on the soles of your feet. What shows up on the outside isn’t a good gauge of what’s growing within. On the exterior, the problem looks small and manageable. Underneath, there’s a cone of funk expanding exponentially.

As long as I can avoid applying pressure, it doesn’t cause much pain. Days might pass without me needing to take notice, and once in a while I even forget it’s there. But then something happens, and I’m forced to put my weight down.

A week ago, in Maine, 18 people lost their lives and 13 were wounded. This weekend, another 12 lives were taken and dozens more people were injured in cities across the country. All fell to gun violence, and all were classified as victims of mass shootings.

Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, siblings, cousins, friends, co-workers. Human beings who held places in the hearts of others.

Much of America’s government is dysfunctional. For the first time in history, a former president is facing criminal charges, with four indictments and a total of 91 felony counts. Our current president is undergoing an impeachment inquiry. An ousted house speaker has been replaced by a little-known representative who backed the denial of the 2020 election results and has expressed views opposing rights for abortion and same-sex marriage. No matter how much it may be needed, there’s no way we’re getting gun reform through this mess.

And, it gets worse.

Ukraine and Russia, the Israel-Gaza crisis. Across the globe, there are more than 110 armed conflicts, some of which have been raging for half a century.

The human and non-human inhabitants of earth are facing incalculable levels of humanitarian and environmental chaos brought on, largely, by greed.

I am not okay.

I’m still having bright conversations, finding humor in the weirdest ways, making food, watching the full moon rise, daydreaming.

But, I’m not okay, because nothing is okay.

I don’t think anyone who is putting weight on their painful parts, their heart of hearts, isn’t feeling like it’s getting harder to keep going, like the misery is growing, like there’s no point in hoping anything will ever get better.

I’ve read that, for all its promise, hope can also be viewed as a veiled attempt at control, one that keeps us tethered to expectations and outcomes. Starting from places of angst or ambition, we hold fast to the idea that we can (we must!) alter the future, with little sense of how we might make that happen. This, in turn, results in a kind of desperate flailing, as we cast about for ways to make an impact on (::waves arms::) anything, on everything.

The alternative, they say, is to take stock of what is, to see it, acknowledge it, face the overwhelm, feel the pain, admit the fear, all while resisting the immediate impulse to change it. Gradually, with practice, we find our way. We learn to trust that a path will make itself clear. We gain the capacity to step forward again with more balance, less distress.

It sounds like hocus-pocus. It sounds like giving up. It sounds exactly like it did the last time I felt myself falling out of the sky, searching in vain for a parachute while the air left my lungs.

It sounds like an oxygen mask.

Soles. Souls. Millions of souls. Some already gone. Some, like me, still learning to let go.

~Elizabeth