Clubbing

The hangover always hurts

I sit with my knees tucked under my chin

arms wrapped around my shins

like a child 

alone and unsure

as the wind whips by

and the world spins on

I don’t know if it’s the chapter of life I’m in, but lately I have felt more vulnerable than I can remember feeling since I was a kid trying to make sense of the world, second-guessing myself constantly and feeling utterly alone in my experience. When you grow up in an alcoholic household you learn to be on the lookout for danger. It becomes habitual, there’s some part of your brain that is always on high alert, trying to determine where the threat is coming from and how to disarm it. It’s not a great feeling and not a fun way to move through the day, the week, the year, or years on end. I don’t live in an alcoholic household anymore, I haven’t for a long time, but I feel that once mostly-dormant part of my brain springing into action again. Everything feels fragile, the environment is heated and unstable, and the threats seem to be everywhere.

I know part of it is that my son is going to college in September, and though I will always be his mother, he won’t live here under this roof with me for the first time in seventeen years. I feel loss and sadness even though I’m excited for him in every way. I just miss the days of chubby arms around my neck, long afternoons at the playground, the beach, the pier. I used to read to my kids for an hour each night, sometimes more, all curled up in my bed or one of theirs, tangled, cozy, safe. I know part of it is losing both my parents in the last few years, my mother due to the horror and trauma ALS brings with it, and my father due to old age. I’ve also had a couple of health scares myself, though I am fine. My dog is getting old, I know that’s part of it, too. He’s okay for now but I’ve been through this before and I can feel it. He’s slowing down, he needs more recovery time, he doesn’t hear as well. I held my last dog and watched the light go out in his eyes while I sobbed and told him he was the best dog ever, and I can’t even finish the sentence without tears streaming down my face. I don’t know how to go through that heartbreak again, but I know it’s coming. There is also, of course, the state of the world, and the state of the people I’m interacting with each day. Most people I know are not okay, or they’re okay on the surface, but living with a constant state of anxiety and despair just underneath. 

The days when I could make everything okay.

I remember being three years old, stuck at the top of the ferris wheel at the amusement park blocks from my Nanny’s beach house at the Jersey Shore. Cancer cells must have been forming inside her already. She was up there with me when the blackout happened, just the two of us, swinging back and forth in the wind. Blackouts weren’t unusual, but being at the top of the ferris wheel during a blackout was. I wasn’t scared because she was next to me telling me everything was okay, we were fine, and the ride would start again soon. She put her arm around me and squeezed me right up against her body. She directed my attention to the ocean and the white caps, she said the waves were being moved by the wind just like we were. She pointed to the seagulls flying with the wind, to the long stretch of beach that went further than I could see, and how the wind made ripples in the sand, too. She pointed to the people on the boardwalk, and to her boyfriend Lou who was way, way down below us. He had a fear of heights, so he never came on the ferris wheel, but he’d do the spinning cups with me when no one else would, even though they made him sick. The people below us looked like ants. I don’t know if she was nervous about being up there or worried about how long we might be stuck. I just know that her focus was making sure I felt safe. I miss her every day. Every small child should have someone to make them feel safe.

Photo credit: Sherbak Volodymyr, Getty Images

Monday I got up, read the news and promptly burst into tears because there are too many children in the world who don’t have anyone to make them feel safe. We have too many children in the world who are, in fact, not safe at all. My dog came and nosed me right away, head-butting my hands so I’d pet him, shoving his head into my lap. It’s hard to be in a world where people are so cruel to one another, and probably worse when you get so used to it you can go about your day like it’s normal. A friend, someone I care about deeply, texted to ask why I wasn’t using my social media platforms to speak out more about world events. I’ve given that a lot of thought and wanted to have a conversation so we could hear each other’s voices, but she wanted to text. I told her I had a whole community to take care of, people with different cultural backgrounds and heartaches, people dealing with outrage and nervous-system burnout, so I was opting to have one-on-one conversations as much as possible. I’ve had a lot of them over the last few months, hours and hours of them. It felt terrible to be questioned by someone I love, though, and I spent most of the day reconsidering my approach. In the end, I came out where I was before, where I have been. When people post on social media, what I see is an unleashing of unfiltered rage in the comments. Rage from all sides. As far as I can tell, people screaming at each other on the internet doesn’t save lives. It doesn’t help a single soul, but it does add to everyone’s feelings of hopelessness and despair. When people on the internet attack me, I feel exhausted and sad and like there isn’t any hope for humanity. I want to go back to bed. It’s the same way I feel when I’m trying to merge on the freeway and no one will let me in, or when someone talks loudly on their phone in a crowded, shared space. I’ve always been a big believer in the “one person at a time” approach to making the world a better place. It doesn’t get the job done fast enough, but it’s the only thing I know that actually helps. I’ve made myself available to anyone who wants to talk, wants to know what I think or how I feel or what I’m doing with all those feelings. I’m using whatever reach I have to see if I can get people to breathe, and come back to some sanity and compassion so that they remember who they are. So that they feel compelled to at least try to move the needle toward peace.

This week a guy on the internet told me I lacked basic empathy because I expressed heartache for the family of a young man who took his life in the most horrific way. Maybe you read about it. My comment wasn’t about anything more - or less - than feeling utterly devastated as a mother to think of what it’s going to be like to live with that forever. This guy on the internet was enraged that I mentioned the man’s family at all because he said I was missing the larger point, and clearly I’m part of the problem. If we have arrived at a place where we can’t express enormous grief about loss of life in every and all contexts without people attacking us (and we have) I am out of words. My heart is broken for all the mothers everywhere, all people everywhere, whose children are suffering. My heartbreak is not limited by race, borders, religions, or anything else. From the top of the ferris wheel everyone looks the same - like they’re tiny and vulnerable and trying to figure out how to survive. Bashing each other over the head doesn’t help. I don’t know what to do with eighty percent of what I see these days. Sometimes it’s so crushing I have to grab my dog and go outside to feel the sun on my face or watch the wind whip through the trees. Anything to remind myself the world will keep spinning long after we’re gone, but while we’re here there’s value in feeling things - it matters, it makes a difference. A woman on the internet who lives here in the United States told me she’d waited six years to get a mammogram because she had crappy health insurance and not enough money, and when she finally went a few months ago, they found stage 3 aggressive cancer cells in her breast and she’s starting chemo next week. We have mass shootings every day and no matter how loudly you scream into the abyss THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANT FOR OUR CHILDREN, nothing changes. How do you exist in a world where children are slaughtered and no one does anything? I don’t know, I figure it out one day at a time, but I’d still rather feel outrage than nothing.

The Pledge of Allegiance is America’s Tinder profile. It’s a statement about who we say we are, or who we wish we were, but it is certainly not who we’ve ever been or who we’re being right now - just spend some quality time here if you don’t believe me. Or read the news. Taking a knee in the hope that maybe we will try to become more like the country we say we are is incredibly sane to me. Getting closer to the ground so you aren’t knocked over by the cognitive dissonance required to say words you know are not true is probably a good idea.

I know a lot of this isn’t new. We’ve been bashing each other over the head with clubs since homo erectus first stood up. Human beings can be shockingly violent. Historically we’ve taken what we wanted, when we wanted it, repercussions be damned. Sometimes people get violent even if it goes against their nature because they’re backed into a corner. I remember being in a fight with an ex years ago, and he just kept coming after me. He was cruel and relentless when he fought, he was the kind that goes for your jugular while twisting another knife in your back, and finally I’d had it. I picked up what I knew was an empty vitamin bottle and threw it at him. It bounced off his arm and didn’t hurt him one bit, but it was everything he’d wanted. He’d won, he’d gotten the worst out of me. “Ohhhhh, look at the yoga teacher,” he laughed, gloating. 

I don’t think violence is our truest nature though, I really don’t. I think it’s a choice people make when they feel desperate or entitled, or when they’ve lost sight of everything but winning. Violence is an outward expression of inward pain. My ex kept coming, and he won the fight but lost me. You don’t win with cruelty, just look around if you have any doubt. This is not what winning looks like. We fund wars and destruction on the other side of the globe but don’t take care of people here, don’t stop the violence of poverty, don't protect our children at school. Children are dying all over the world and if you can have a coffee and go about your day like it’s just another day, then I suppose that’s one way to use your hundred years, your blink of time, but I don’t think it’s the best way or the way that’s going to make life feel like something incredible and precious. 

When my grandmother died the year after the blackout on the ferris wheel, Mr. Rogers became the grownup I turned to when I was scared or confused. He said feeling afraid, sad or overwhelmed was normal sometimes, it was part of being human and made sense in a world that could be really hard to understand. He talked about kindness and being a good neighbor. He talked about how confusing it can be when people are cruel, and how a lot of the time, it was just their own pain or fear that was driving them. He also said when you feel afraid, look for the helpers. When I grew up, I realized the best thing you can be is a helper. Even the helpers are overwhelmed and heartbroken right now. And I don’t know if my approach to all this is right, I only know that it feels right to me.

What my dog does when I’m not okay.

The wind blows on us all. From a thousand feet up, all human beings look like ants. If you feel despair, congratulations, you’re still alive, you’re awake, you’re paying attention. Maybe you burst into tears a lot like I do. Maybe you’re feeling everything very intensely these days, but your dog sees that sooner than some of the people in your life. I don’t want to give up on human beings. There’s so much art and beauty in us, and it feels so much better to be kind than cruel. Obviously if I could snap my fingers and make the world a gentler place, even a remotely sane place, I would. You would, too. Then we could spend our time creating art and reading and slowing down. We could savor long conversations and travel and understand this world we get to be a part of, this spinning planet that’s going to keep on spinning long after we’re gone. I feel so sad at the world we’re creating when we could have made something so much better. But I guess I haven’t given up thinking we still can. I hope no one bashes me over the head for that.

If you want to meet me in real time to talk about any of this, I’ll be here 3/1/24 at 11:15am PST or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version. If it’s in the realm of possibility for you this year, I’m going to Portugal in June and it’s going to be amazing. Maybe you’d like to join me, I’d love that.