Just for Now/Standing at The End of the American Empire
How Do You/We Survive the Unfurling Trauma's?
Hi Friends,
Well, it’s been a week. Tragedies continue to unfold. This one hit me deep.
I wrote a whole post about the last two years of covid, and it’s “end,” and what I’ve learned about myself, and so on, but I don’t think anyone wants to read about covid anymore and cases are also going back up again (so it doesn’t really feel like a time for closure?) I was going to ask you, in this post, like, has anything good come out of these last two years? How has your life changed? What has changed? How are you surviving?! Help me out! We need each other! (Feel free to still answer in the comments). But it just feels like we’re not out of anything yet and the world continues to spiral.
The camp counselor in me that would love to hear everyone’s two positives and one negative about the last year or two; and yet, on top of a war causing rising gas prices, inflation, and mass school shootings, I am feeling quite bleak. I have to keep reaching down deep to find that inner peace and mindfulness that is necessary to survive these times.
That’s really what covid living and kids has done to me—destroyed the usefulness of my vices. All my usual coping mechanisms have proved futile— future plans, travel, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, busying myself with a career or writing). Everything ground to a halt these last two years and I found myself, naked, no filters, with nothing to do but try to be at peace with the banal moment or chaos at hand in whatever way I could. I realized that I’d spent most of my life in “survival” or “escapist” mode, just trying to escape my feelings of darkness and sadness for the world through entertainment or substances or else fantasizing about something in the future that would come along and “change” me—a new job, new place to live, new wife and kids (jk), you know, something to look forward to and get me out of the slump. I kept telling myself I would improve once the world improved, but what do you do with yourself when the world keeps coming at you? Instead, there’s been nothing but the raising of my two young daughters—which is beautiful and fulfilling and also exhausting.
“Why not embrace the slump?” my therapist once asked me. “Why not embrace the pit?”
“Why? Because it sucks is why!”
“It’s hard for you to sit with things isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“You would rather spend energy trying to make things better than to be with yourself in those moments?”
“Yes! Doesn’t everyone?”
It’s true though. I have a hard time just sitting with grief or boredom and not trying to do something to make the pain of living go away or plan something to escape it. We as a culture have a hard time Lamenting I think.
Now I can only find relief in exercise, a full nights sleep, a probiotic diet, and Just for Now meditations from Andrew “Dreadful” Bird. In his short Tik Tok videos (link to Youtube for those not on the Tok) he asks you to drop the tongue from the roof of your mouth, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath and just be, just for now. He always ends the video by asking one thing you’re grateful for. It’s helped me quite a bit: “Some days are good, some days are bad, some days are just days.”
What helps you these days?
Thankfully, mentally I feel quite well. I’ve been more social in the last month of May that I have in the last year. I’m an introvert but I’ve never craved community and getting together with people more than I have these last two months. I went to two shows—The Mountain Goats and Mewithoutyou—and hung out with some old friends and family and met some new people at birthday parties and new preschool get togethers and reconnected with old friends and it feels like this part of life I desperately wanted to be involved in for the past two years is finally coming back—i.e. community.
I’ve also been hiking a bunch and training to get in shape to climb some mountains this spring. My first attempt at climbing Mt. St. Helens was thwarted by the weather (it’s still raining and snowing up there!) which also spiraled me out for a day or two, but I have another chance to climb this coming Monday and the weather is looking good! My liver is especially hoping it works out.
Some light “housekeeping” as they say:
I wrote an article this month for a new health community site called Bezzy about how my depression has changed (for better and worse) since becoming a father. Bezzy is a new site from Healthline and hosts online community spaces for people living with chronic conditions. It’s actually pretty cool as each site has it’s own niche (from Rheumatoid Arthritis to Breast Cancer to Depression) where people can share their thoughts and advice on whatever their chronic condition might be and attend weekly forums or read articles by folks like yours truly (and everything is fact checked by an expert). Bezzy is not even paying me to say this! (though they did pay me to write the article).
Words I’ve been writing: 250 or so (per week) which means my next novel or memoir should be done by 2035. I don’t have much focus or mental energy these days. I’ll start a project or essay and not be able to finish it.
Music I’m listening to: The new Arcade Fire, We, (they have a lyric that goes “standing at the end of the American Empire” that keeps circulating throughout my brain, new Kendrick, and trips through the catalogs of Mewithoutyou and The Mountain Goats.
TV: Severance, NBA and NHL Playoffs.
Books: Murder House by John Darnielle, I’m halfway through War and Peace now, How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor, and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.
Take Care,
-Levi
To answer the questions in the early paragraphs-- I think what’s changed for me is a sincere appreciation for in person people.