We can feel a lot of feelings at one time
(Right now that's lots of love, and lots of sadness.)
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday. It felt familiar.
“How are you really doing?” I asked.
“Honestly, it’s been a rough time. I’m lonely. I miss my old routine and my old life. I even miss my commute, which I never thought I’d say. It was me time, a chance to listen to podcasts and people watch and tune out. Having somewhere to go, something to get ready for at the beginning of the day, was so helpful. I miss the gym. I miss hanging out with friends. My eczema is flaring up and I’m not feeling great. There is a cloud hanging over everything. I’ve been so down.
“But I feel horrible saying any of this. I am healthy! My family is healthy! I am employed! I am in zero position to grumble.”
In other words:
“I’m scared/sad/frustrated/furious/exhausted/burnt out…
“But! I shouldn’t feel that way. I am profoundly lucky. So many people have things a million times worse. I am supposed to be GRATEFUL.”
I’ve heard this over and over again from friends, and thought the same thing more times than I can count. Always, but especially these days during the pandemic when many people are facing objectively harrowing situations. The world is an especially difficult place right now. Who am I to complain?
Thank God for therapy!
It’s been a sort of theme for me, and still feels like a revelation:
I can be anxious AND grateful.
I can be angry AND thankful.
I can be drained AND appreciative.
I can be overwhelmed AND aware of my privilege.
I can be heartbroken AND full of love.
In other words, we can feel more than one way at one time.
We are complex people with big hearts and brains, capable feeling a whole rainbow of emotions simultaneously.
Gratitude is well and good, but it can be a sort of blunt tool for bludgeoning ourselves out of our actual feelings...”I’m supposed to be grateful, damnit.”
By all means be grateful! But please consider this your permission slip to feel your other feelings, too, the messier, peskier, less hashtag-able ones. We can’t move through them if we don’t even let ourselves acknowledge their existence. We can’t fully experience the happy ones if we don’t also make room for the full spectrum of blah and argggg. If there’s a word for it, you’re not the first person to feel that way. These uncomfortable moods are part of our humanity.
Simone has a board book called “Happy Hippo, Angry Duck” by Sandra Boynton. (10/10, highly recommend.) The cute animals have different, big feelings. Wonderful ones and challenging ones. “And a difficult mood is not here to stay. Everyone’s moods will change day to day,” the book says.
As for me, for today: my heart is going to explode, I’m so full of love for my little family. I am immensely happy that my daughter Simone got to meet her cousins and her grandparents after eight long months. She smiled all the way through her first Christmas. Highlights included eating wrapping paper and playing with her cousin’s new drums. After what felt like a long quarantine and a negative covid test, we got to be in a house full of family, Champagne, delicious food, and happy chaos.
I’m also frustratingly down. Like my friend, I feel like there’s a dark cartoon cloud of grumpiness hanging directly over my head. Some days, simply taking care of my baby and working feels punishingly relentless and almost impossible. I miss my old life, big things like travel and friends and little things like riding the subway (who would have thought I’d miss riding the subway), browsing bookstores, working in coffee shops and popping by somewhere for drinks with friends without much thought.
There is plenty of hope, but I don’t want to wrap this up with a neat little bow. I am swimming in so much joy and so much grief. We contain mega-messy multitudes.
PS My husband Tony pointed out that Simone is a star when it comes to this: we’ve watched her literally laugh while she cries. Impressive!