November 1st. New month, closer to this nightmare of a year ending, closer to election season being over, and one month closer to COVID being behind us. It’s snowing like crazy here in Metro Detroit, and as I’m not a fan of winter, it was initially a blow to my mood this Sunday. Then, I repeated the phrase that’s been helping to get me through the insanity that is our current times, “This too shall pass.”
2020 has been challenging. It was a year that I was looking forward to so much. My year, I expected, like so many of us. I am turning 40 this year, 2020, seemed like a good number and a good omen. Then the pandemic hit and is still surging; the divide in our country grows stronger every day it seems. More than once this year, I’ve felt hopeless. I’ve had days where I hardly get out of bed. Nights where I cry myself to sleep. My insomnia has been back in full force. It seems every day is a new onslaught of bad news, which has led to some fantastic memes but also deep, gut-wrenching sadness and anxiety.
This too shall pass. The bad times cannot last forever, just as the good ones do not. We will move past covid. Real, reliable treatments will happen. A vaccine will happen, and hopefully, enough of us will get it quickly enough. Eventually, we will be able to socialize and be around the people we love and random strangers again, without fear of bringing home a horrible virus or passing it onto the vulnerable people in our lives. Eventually, reason and sanity has to return to the country I love. It has to. Eventually, winter will fade away into spring.
In the meantime, I’ve picked up a phrase from a book I recently devoured, Untamed by Glennon Doyle, which is, “we can do hard things.” The other phrase in the book that struck a chord with me (and maybe tattooed on my body soon) is “Feel everything.” So while this year is hard and draining, I know it will pass, I can do hard things, which currently is simply living in this world without losing myself, and I need to feel everything. I can’t hide from the hard stuff, not with alcohol or food or sleeping it away. I need to feel it, to move through it. The hard stuff makes us stronger and is the only way to appreciate the good.
New month, one step closer to some of this hard stuff passing, snow trying to ruin my mood, but I won’t let it. I’m one step closer to the good stuff.
Martinis and Meltdowns 