Today — Unwilling Tears
I don’t seem to be able to find things today. And if I find them, it isn’t easy. I can’t find the speaker I was using to listen to my audio book last night. I couldn’t find my computer (or motivation to write) for a while. I lost my will to breathe deeply. And the tears, well they too have been unwilling.
I woke up feeling again like I have water in my right ear. Like I was swimming all day in the ocean yesterday. Except I wasn’t. I lie in bed for a bit thinking about what could be causing it. My sinuses. My unwillingness to hear the sadness and division in the world. Perhaps I am astral travelling to the ocean floor in my sleep. Any and all feel like plausible explanations. I eventually surrender to the reality that I don’t know and swing my legs out of bed. Feeling my bare feet on the floor boards for a while.
I go into the space I have nicknamed my Zen Den to read. It is my first attempt to escape the heaviness weighing my heart. I give up not long after, when hubby obliterates any hope of serenity by putting on the stereo in the adjacent room. It is his favourite music. Not mine. I don’t mind, I understand he too is trying to lift his spirits any way he can. I come out of my Zen Den to find him and my daughter dancing some crazy moves. The laughter I would normally feel bubbling up inside me, is missing in action. I don’t seem to be able to find it today.
After refusing to give in to ‘not feeling like breakfast’ I make myself something to nourish my body, and hopefully my soul. To feed my gut. To help it be healthy. To lift my immunity. To lift my mood. My thinking. I know it won’t work instantly but with every spoonful I anticipate a shift. It does not come. And so I do what makes absolutely no sense to me in the moment, but give in to it. I read the news.
Scrolling through story after story, I read about the carnage of our lives right now. The violence and conflict in Afghanistan. The potential division in status and freedoms between those vaccinated and those not vaccinated. A school mandating vaccinations as a duty of care. Discussions in international media about the benefits and risks of vaccinations on young children. That there is no evidence of vaccinations harming fertility. Of a young mother snorting cocaine on a cheap plate. No big deal made of the fact that she was doing this at a party during lockdown. She is white and blonde. A footballers ex wife. Outside of being a single mum, she isn’t part of a marginalised group. So instead the media stories focus around the $3 plate. It wasn’t long ago an entire community was subject to abhorrent hatred and slurs for having an engagement party during lockdown. Perhaps if they had some white powder or were connected to the worshipped sport of football less would have been made of it. Other stories included the real estate in WA expecting to boom. A boy in a bubble forgotten due to an overwrought health system trying to fight a pandemic. Stories about long COVID and about a shift in strategy to ‘live with the virus’ whatever that means.
It is midday and getting out of my dressing gown seems like an insurmountable task, and so instead, I look up some houses by the surf in WA. It looks beautiful, serene and hot. I picture myself living there.
I feel the puppeteer strings of the media pulling my thoughts and emotions this way and that. Achieving what I imagine is their desire. For us to be so damn confused we don’t know which way to turn. What to believe. I feel numb. Lost. And I almost give in to the pull of the strings. I almost give in to the manipulation. I almost give up on hope. Instead I put my phone down and go have a shower.
Reminding myself to breathe, I plan a blog post about breathing and how it can help during these times. A piece called ‘Lamaze for Life’. About breathing through the ‘pain of life’. And instead, I am writing this. Perhaps my breath post will be tomorrow’s. In the shower tears begin to surface. I feel them in my chest. In the sensation of my throat. In my clenched jaw. Behind my eyes. And then, just as unexpectedly and as quickly as they started to surface, they disappear, the sensation to cry dissolving. The tears unwilling.
As I dry myself with a towel and dress, I think about spiritual bypassing. About meditation. I decide it isn’t bypassing but simply relief. Something we all need right now. And so I go outside. Sit on the damp grass. Close my eyes. Feel the sun on my eyelids. And breathe. Deeply and slowly. Until I can’t hear the words of hatred people are spitting at each other in the news, anymore. I sit until I can only hear the melody of cordial conversations between birds. I sit until the tears run down my cheeks. I sit until my heart fills with joy. Until hope settles in my bones. Until I feel a sense of deep relief and gratefulness to be alive.
Published 4 September at www.kristinagarla.com
