Member-only story
There’s no perfect way to heal. There’s no template for coping with depression.
Sometimes, doing the work requires no work at all. Rest. (Ten word story)
I write about self-preservation. My stories combat the incessant reels of to-dos that find me every day on various feeds. Even the articles recommended on Google seem to be telling me what to do with these humid, crackling, sun drenched summer days.
Some suggestions are beneficial- read more books, watch the supermoon tonight, and send care packages to your “strong friends” who may need more support than you think.
For the most part, news headlines are irritating and assumptive.
Collectively, we deserve to rest. That’s not new information. But who can get to the good, saturating parts of healing when every notification is a nudge to be more active or social. Recreation and forced socialization can cause mental health deterioration too.
The world is open (for the most part) and everybody is supposedly back outside. That’s the propaganda. That’s the marketing message.
The reality is that millions of people have agoraphobia (anxiety in situations where a person perceives their environment to be unsafe), fueled by a pandemic that isn’t over. They’re not outside.
