It feels weird to be okay

Beyond the Book: the world is horrible and I'm okay

I’m at the point with therapy where I’m searching for things to bring to my therapist. For the first year or two, there was a list of things we would get to eventually, maybe, if there was time. There were the emergencies first. The fires that needed putting out. If we got through those issues, and nothing else really big popped up, then we might deal with the bigger, deeper issues. The why’s.

I remember some months back thinking, “well, perhaps I’m all healed up now and it might be time to discontinue therapy.” Then the very next session my therapist was like, “well, I think we’ve gotten a good handle on getting you through crises and you’re finally at a place where we can tackle your need to always be busy and be seen as being busy.” And I knew that I had a lot more therapy in me.

But after a while of working on that, we moved from weekly sessions to once every other week. At first I would panic when shit would happen and it would still be like 10 days to my next session. Why did I think I could go two whole weeks without therapy? But then I would go the two whole weeks. I would have to do other things. I would have to go through the lists of actions my therapist and I had been practicing to get more context and grounding on a situation. I walked, a lot, to get the nervous energy out of my body. Some days I would take 5 walks a day. When all else failed I just talked to myself. I would turn on my phone camera and talk to it like I was going to send a video to someone explaining what was happening and what I was going to do about it. And then my session would roll around eventually and the problem would barely be a problem anymore.

Then I got my autism diagnosis and that kept us busy for a while. But since the diagnosis wasn’t really a surprise to me or my therapist, there has been only so much to do there that wasn’t already done. We will probably work on perimenopause stuff next.

Last session came the day after a pretty rough day. It was a lot of travel, a lot of socializing, a lot of very public work - a lot of things that really keep me out of my comfort zone. The evening of that rough day I kind of fell apart. I was a mental and physical mess. The next morning, as I prepared for my therapy session I was a little excited to have something to work on. We could analyze why I fell apart. Maybe we could figure out how to not end a day like that with a panic attack in the future.

I described the day to my therapist. Everything that had happened, and how it ended with me being a shaking, shivering mess who couldn’t stop crying and whose ears were ringing so badly I couldn’t hear anything but the cicadas in my head. I talked about how scared I would have been in the past when this happened, but when I thought about my day it made sense because I had been pushing myself past my limits the entire day without pause or rest. So I had to just ride it out for a while, and kind of give my evening over to feeling like shit and hopefully get a good night’s rest.

I told my therapist all this and expected us to jump in and find some new, great tool, and instead my therapist was all, “well, it looks like you have a good handle on it. You knew you were overstimulated, you understood the reaction your body was having, and you didn’t let it panic you.”

And that was it.

I know I have come so fucking far these last few years, and therapy (somatic therapy, to be more exact) has had a lot to do with that. In so many ways, these past few years have been brutal in ways that would have dismantled me in the past. But here I am, in the end of 2024 - a magnificently shitty year - and I’m ok.

It feels so weird.

I’m not great a lot of the time. The world is so awful in so many ways. I cry a lot. I rage a lot. I’ve had the most difficult professional year of my career. I’ve spent the last 14 months staring at genocide and trying to figure out a way to stop it. I’ve grieved so much. I’ve felt the full weight of my powerlessness more times than I can count. And yet I’m okay.

I’ve got boundaries now and they are fully mine and I don’t struggle to enforce them. I have calming practices that I use regularly and when I forget to use them I don’t beat myself up for not using them. I smile and laugh with my partner every day. I can cry for the horrors of the world and at the beauty of watching my children grow, all within the same hour. I have joy in my heart, even while it breaks.

I’ve struggled to write here lately, because so often I’ve come here to pour out pain, knowing that every experience teaches us, that I’m not alone in these feelings. But it feels so weird to come here and say that I’m well. The world is on fire and I’m okay. The world is on fire and I think I’ll get through it - I mean, I might not. I might not actually make it through, that isn’t guaranteed. But right now I’m here, and as long as I’m alive, I have a good chance at living.

I know that a lot of my ability to say this comes from privilege. Therapy isn’t accessible to all, and it isn’t cheap. And I’ve been so fortunate to have a great therapist, as well as perhaps the world’s most supportive and loving partner. I also know that I’ve worked so hard to get here. I feel it in every tough day when I can pull myself away from a meltdown, and even when I can’t and I wake up the next morning and I’m still here and whole.

I don’t know what the future will bring. I’m absolutely not canceling therapy anytime soon. I have a Black, queer therapist in Seattle and we are entering another Trump presidency. I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of the upcoming years will suck in a lot of very big ways. We are living in very hard times. I’ve been trying to make peace with that reality even while I work hard to protect us from it in whatever way I can. I’ve been working every day for a few months now on a collective liberation project that I will be launching in January. But even in that I’m recognizing when I’m doing too much, when I’m over-working for a sense of control or for distraction. I’m backing down when I need to, resting for a an evening when needed.

And so while I prepare and strategize in my work, I’m recognizing my own personal care as an important part of this work. I’m hoping it will be enough. I’m hoping that strategy, education, organization, community care, and self care can get us through. I have to believe that it can. I want us all to be okay.

I might not always be okay. But today I am. And I’m grateful for that.