Granmommie's Death (I can't think of a better title right now)

My grandmother, Mary Earthman Weatherford, passed away at 97 years-old. I’m writing this the day before her funeral.

My grandmother, or Granmommie, as I call her, has commonly been referred to as the most gracious and ladylike of all. As a child, I thought of her as refined (not that I knew what that word meant back then), an excellent hostess, a doting grandmother, a wearer of matching skirt-suits and perfectly paired earrings, and as someone who would give extremely large tips at any type of restaurant establishment or even try to give money to an employee at a place where an employee does not typically receive tips. She was someone who always had tasty sweets in her pantry, at the ready for anyone who stopped by. And she did not like the words "nasty," "stinky," or "belly." (I disagree with her on “stinky,” but I'll give her the other two.)

I've been trying to think through my specific memories of Granmommie. Mostly fondly, I think of her in the mornings when my brother and I would spend the night at my grandparents house. She would be wearing what could be referred to as a moomoo, but that's not elegant enough. It was like a long, zip-up dress robe, usually in soft pastel colors, like being blanketed in an explosion of pillowy, Easter Sunday attire. It was chic, though. It was Granmommie. And it was always comforting to wake up and see her in it. I liked this Granmommie. The one who the rest of the world didn’t get to see. When her hair was less-coiffed, her perfectly placed lipstick was missing, and her heels were replaced with slippers that swished across the kitchen floor.  But somehow she was indeed still elegant in these moments--but a cozy, comfy elegant. 

I picture her pouring my brother and I the fancy brand of orange juice (the real stuff, not from concentrate, if you can imagine!) into thick, little green opaque juice glasses that made me feel so glamorous and adult. 

Usually, my brother and I would sit at the two-top, tall counter in her kitchen, or sometimes we’d get to eat on the screened-in porch and watch cars and peoples’ lives pass by. She would offer us anything we could possibly want, and I always remember eating cantaloupe, and feeling so luxurious because we never had cantaloupe at my parents’ home. (We were a mainly a banana and apple kind of family.)

I think of her a little bit later in life when I was still young enough not to drive, but getting older. She would pick up myself and our whole carpool at school, way out yonder in Christiana, Tennessee. On these days, the whole carpool of kids knew we were going to get to stop at a store for snacks and candies that she would buy for us. Every time.

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When someone dies, you start to think about who they really were as a person. At least I do. I've been thinking about whether I really knew my grandmother very well. She was always there for us. She constantly allowed gaggles of children, teenagers, family of all sorts, strangers off the street or someone she just met at the grocery store into her home, providing them beverages and snacks–just making them feel noticed and cared for. 

My grandmother would help anyone who needed help, asked for help or maybe didn't even ask but she thought they needed it. I always wonder and question sometimes when people are so consistently kind and giving… Do they really mean it? Do they really want to be this way or are they bitter because they're constantly serving others? I never asked my grandmother these questions. Maybe she was frustrated sometimes–but I really don't know that she was bitter about it. It was like an innate portion of herself–it seemed to just happen naturally. 

She had dementia for more than the last ten years of her life. I remember secretly thinking when first finding out she had dementia, that maybe we would finally see the “real, unfiltered,” Granmommie–whoever that might be. But even when she lost parts of herself, parts of her brain, somehow she maintained the kindness, the compassion and the hostess in her–the lady remained.

Most everyone who lives with intense and prolonged dementia at times have angry outbursts, frustration and sometimes malice. But somehow my grandmother remained ever-so kind and gracious. Even when she had no idea who I was, when I would arrive at her home, she would say "It’s so good to see you, dahhhhlin."  She would also usually compliment something I was wearing, even though I knew that her poor eyesight had advanced to the point where my Goodwill clothing likely appeared as a blur of colors. And, of course, she would also offer me some sort of refreshment.  (To note: “dahhhlin” is the Southern Belle pronunciation of "darling," if you are unfamiliar. All my life, she said “Hiiii, dahhhlin” or “Hey, huuuuney” and it made you feel like you were the only honey and darling she knew. I can hear it now.) 

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As I was growing up, my grandmother didn't complain. I'm sure she did, or hopefully she did, to others or to her husband–my grandfather. But I didn't see it. She just served all of us. And I don't know that I really ever thanked her for it, not properly anyway. Again, she was just always there. And as an adult now, I wish I had asked her more questions. I wish I had asked what she needed and what she wanted. I feel like I took her kindness and graciousness for granted.

But I suppose there’s no use in worrying about that now. Hopefully she knows. Hopefully she sees me now as I’m typing this, crying because I wish I had known her more deeply. And maybe that’s not something you’re supposed to say when talking about someone who just passed.

As a child, I think sometimes you don’t always view your grandparents or various adults as actual human beings. That sounds odd perhaps, but I don’t think I thought much about what stresses she was experiencing. What was it that she enjoyed doing in her spare time? Was she exhausted? Was she tired of all the grandchildren, great grandchildren and neighbor kids stopping by her house at all hours of the day to grab a soft drink or popsicle from her constantly-stocked fridge? Was she tired of hosting and entertaining us all?

What did she love to do that was just for her? I love to understand what makes people tick. What gets them up in the morning, what lights them up, what destroys them. What are their sorrows and pains and regrets and traumas and desires? 

It wasn’t until I was much older that I became more comfortable asking people deeper questions about themselves. But by the time I reached this, Granmommie was already living with dementia.

From this granddaughter’s perspective (me), Granmommie kept some of these details about herself zipped up in her matching, tweed skirt-suits. I know some of my other cousins, aunts and family members saw her more often than I did and obviously knew her more intimately. I just wish I had asked more questions when I was able to. 

But maybe, just maybe she was showing us who she was, always. Maybe there doesn’t have to be another side to someone who expresses constant kindness, graciousness and servitude. Some people view constant niceness as a weakness. But I think it takes a certain type of extremely strong person to maintain that kindness in every aspect of life–to have made such an impact on people who only met you once or twice, but they still, decades later, talk about the warmth and gentleness they felt radiate from you. That was my Granmommie.

What’s the takeaway from all this? (Not that there has to be one.) But, I guess, if there is anyone in your life who you wish to know and understand more, don’t wait to ask. And don’t wait to thank them. 

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Bonus fun fact discovered by my Aunt Becky Cagle (my Mom’s sister):

Granmommie (my paternal grandmother, the one who just passed) was five years and nine days younger than my maternal grandmother (Granny). And fascinatingly, Granmommie passed away five years and nine days after my Granny. So they essentially lived the exact same amount of time — meaning, my Mom and Dad got to spend the same amount of years with their mothers. What a funny thing. Thanks to my Aunt Becky (the nuclear engineer) for discovering this fun fact.

I never really thought about suicide until New Years Day.

What a sensational title. Attention grabber, attention seeking, maybe.

But let’s back up.

It was 1:24 on New Years Day, my skin was burning, afire. My eyes barely open due to the swollen, red folds of skin wrapped around my eyes. My face raw, ripped and bleeding, slashes of bloody lines cascading at all angles around my mouth. Open slits under and around my eyes, sometimes dripping with blood. Moving any facial muscle involved am immediate electric shock of pain. And crying, which had been happening often, caused tears to slither into the open cuts, stinging. The clothes touching my body were too much. Getting comfortable was an impossibility. I wanted to tear and rip my itching, burning skin off. In the past, at my worst, I’ve fantasized about literally lighting myself on fire to burn my skin off because I thought it might be better than what I was experiencing in the moment. 

Suicide.

Do you remember [if you are of a certain age, perhaps a millennial or parent of a millennial] referring to a mixture of multiple soda/carbonated beverages as a “suicide?” Example: you walk your 10 year-old-self to the gas station/convenience store to get a drink from the soda fountain, and you move down the line of drink options, adding some of each beverage in your ice-filled, ginormous styrofoam cup. Poof. You have just made yourself a “suicide.”

Why was it called a “suicide?”

Anyway.

As some of you may know, my poor mental health is due to my ever-present poor physical health–my chronic health issues, my autoimmunity, my allergy to the entire world—whatever you want to call it. 

Having a body seemingly opposed to every environment and substance makes daily existence exhausting. It also just feels perplexing—like I must not be meant for this world. And if not, in which world was I meant for? Did they make a mistake placing me here? Why does my body reject almost everything it encounters? Why does my body attack itself?

I’ve tried a cacophony of diets, medicines, biologic drugs, supplements, meditation, mindfulness, chiropractics, allergists, rheumatologists, dermatologists, attempted allergy shots and a whole host of other things.

Some of you know about my health issues or maybe you know I have some sort of chronic issues but aren’t quite sure what is happening. Honestly, I’m not fully sure I know what’s happening, and maybe doctors don’t either. But I do know how it manifests in my body. 

One thing I have/or almost certainly have is red skin syndrome/topical steroid withdrawal (TSW). It can last years and does far more than affect the skin–I almost certainly do have this, but also more. Check out one of my videos on it or go watch the documentaries “Skin on Fire” or “Preventable: Protecting our largest organ” to learn more. You can also visit ITSAN.org. This iatrogenic disease has COMPLETELY altered how I live my life since early 2020, though it began affecting me a few years earlier, I just didn’t know what was happening at the time. (This piece of my health issue is almost certainly the culprit in causing my skin to burn, itch, rip, ooze and split open.)

Along with this (or perhaps because of TSW) I now have extremely severe environmental allergies. It sounds benign, doesn’t it? Allergies. Just allergies, right? But being allergic to seemingly everything, everywhere all the time makes it extremely difficult to do just about anything or be anywhere, anytime.  And, to note: I don’t just mean these allergies cause a little sneezing and sniffles. Rather, body attacks itself in a myriad of ways.

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I’ve explained the symptomalogy some before, so I’m not going to do that now—plus it’s probably boring anyway (and maybe all this is boring, but here you are. Thank you).

All that to say, I’m just going to tell you what I’m REALLY TIRED OF DEALING WITH in relation to my current health issues:

I hate that I don't know what to eat or drink without having allergic reactions. I hate that it hurts to shower. I hate that it often constantly feels like I’m covered in poison ivy and hives on a regular basis. I hate that I can't be around dogs or cats or really any animal for that matter (due to extreme allergies). I hate that I can't go to so many of my friends’ and family members’ homes because they have dogs or cats. I hate that I have to wear a hazmat suit when I clean my own home (yes, really). And even then, I still have allergic reactions.

I hate that “allergic reaction” does not explain what is happening to my body. I don't just get a runny nose and watery eyes. My entire body revolts. I want to rip my skin off. I want to claw and gouge my eyes out.

I hate that there's not a specific label—a box–that my illness, my disease can be put into. 

I’m sick of not knowing if I’ll be well enough to get coffee with you in two weeks or even in two days. I’m sick of having to tell people I can’t go. I’m sick of the unpredictability of it all. I’m sick of not being able to fully open my eyes because of constant burning and swelling. I’m sick of my eye lashes, eye brows and hair falling out. I’m sick of not sleeping at night. I’m sick of always being in pain. I’m sick of looking like I’m 30 years older than I am because I’ve lost an excessive amount of collagen due to all the skin damage.

I’m tired of never getting excited about vacations because I don’t know how my body is going to react or because I KNOW my body is going to lose its mind. I’m tired of having allergic reactions every time I’m on a plane or in a hotel (probably allergic to cleaning products). I’m tired of being the chronically ill spouse, friend, sister, daughter, coworker. I’m tired of always having one foot out the door in all of my jobs because my body is constantly rioting, making it difficult to survive each day.

I’m tired of being the one that can’t eat whatever is being offered (or accepting it anyway knowing I’ll have wild reactions later). I’m tired of having to ask for accommodation.

I’m tired of being worried all the time. I’m tired of being stuck at home. I’m tired of feeling isolated. I’m tired of putting my life on hold. I’m tired of not doing the things I used to do. I’m tired of losing myself. I’m tired of becoming someone, something I never wanted to be. I’m tired of having to pretend like everything is okay. And I’m just tired, literally.

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I think the suicidal thoughts trickled in because my hope finally started to wane—my hope that I would get better.  I wrote a poem about my chronic health issues in 2020 that had a repeating line: “everyday I awake with hope” because I did have hope that things would get better. Back then, I never thought I would still be grappling with all of the same (and new) issues.  I look back on the Mary-Margaret of 2020, who wrote that sentimental poem, holding on to hope… she had no idea what hell she would continue to endure for years to come. And quite frankly, I’m glad she didn’t know. Sometimes it’s easier not to know.

But I need to relocate the poetic hope that Mary-Margaret of the old days held.

As for the suicidal thoughts, maybe I shouldn’t call it that–maybe that’s too extreme. I more-so had thoughts of wanting-to-be-asleep-forever, [because then I wouldn’t be excruciatingly uncomfortable every waking moment.] 

On New Years day, I was home alone, and had been alone for a couple of days. For further context, I had been in a “flare” with my health issues (extreme skin and eye issues, uncontrollable allergies to everything, and all-encompassing inflammation) for about six weeks. I hadn’t been sleeping, and when I say I wasn’t sleeping, I REALLY mean rarely and barely, just spots of sleep here and there. And let me say, sleep deprivation certainly has a knack for causing madness.

During recent weeks/months, I had hardly been able to leave my house or even step outside. I hadn’t seen people. I was just trying to get through each hour, each day. But on New Years Day, I began arriving at a point where I didn’t exactly know if I wanted to get to the next hour.

Around 2:34 pm, I started crying uncontrollably, shaking and unable to breath. Then I started screaming (clearly still able to breath). Screaming that I couldn’t stand this anymore. Yelling, yelling, YELLING, asking what I’d done wrong, what I needed to do to fix this, what did I do, what did I do, WHAT CAN I DO? I threw a glass across the room, I slammed a chair into the wall. My screams turned into shouted prayers, begging, asking, pleading for some sort of sign for what to do or some sort of relief. Then I was on the ground, on my knees, pleading still.  I curled up, hugging my legs against my body, sobbing, salty tears burning down my face. 

I starting to scare myself. I’ve had extremely horrifying and debilitating times before, crying every day, sleeping one collective hour each night, but I don’t remember having thoughts of not wanting to exist anymore. But the thoughts ever so slightly started to creep in.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever screamed-cried before, but if you are in a silent home alone and you pause to listen to the echos of your blood curdling cry—well, let me say, it is quite unsettling.

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In my current work, I serve clients diagnosed with severe mental illness. I have been trained on how to converse with people who are actively experiencing suicidal ideation, and I have, on various occasions, spoken with people while they are in the midst of contemplating suicide. I have been present as someone attempted to throw themselves from a twelve-story window and while they tried to slice their wrist with a kitchen knife. I have been told graphic ways a person plans to accomplish their suicide.

And I have spent time with individuals in the hospital after accidentally surviving their jump from a building or who lost a limb due to a their chosen method in attempting suicide.

Now it was time for me to talk myself off this metaphorical ledge.

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At some point, while on the bedroom floor, I experienced what felt like a calming thought. I need to sleep. That is the answer. I need to sleep so I’m not experiencing any of this. I want to sleep for a long time—maybe forever.  But how can I make myself sleep when I can never escape into slumber normally? Maybe if I take a handful of Benadryl? I wasn’t sure.

I decided to move to the bed.

I’m not sure what all went through my head. But I knew that I needed to tell someone what was happening.

Earlier, my husband texted me asking what I was doing, but I postponed responding since I was, well, scream-crying into the void.

As I sat in in bed staring at his text, wanting to be asleep, I considered feigning that all was well. Instead, luckily, I said, “I’m really not doing well today, Dave. I don’t know how I’m going to go to New York. I can’t stand this anymore.” And then shortly after that I said: “I’m sorry.”

(For context, he was in New York with his family, and I was supposed to meet them in a few days, because I had a work trip scheduled in New York.)

He called me immediately. I couldn’t speak once he called, as I was uncontrollably crying again, hardly able to breath. I hung up and called back shortly.

Somehow, speaking to another human brought the reality of what was happening to the forefront.

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I won’t get into all the details, but I ended up going to Urgent Care on the afternoon of New Years Day, and received a steroid injection and a steroid pack (in hopes to alleviate all my inflammation). For those of you who know what has been going on with my body, you may know that I have been very intentionally avoiding all corticosteroids in an effort to heal (but the healing–or whatever is happening—involves complete hell before reaching the end). I knew if I took steroids, I would experience some relief, even for a short bit. And since I had gotten to the point of not wanting to be awake anymore–well, I chose the solution that would at least give me some hope or relief temporarily.

So I did it, and I was better physically because of the steroids for about nine days. I was able to go on my New York work trip (which I had absolutely been dreading and agonizing about for weeks because of my poor health). I had a few days at home where I was able to go on walks, the grocery store and coffee shops. But this reprieve didn’t last. Symptoms rapidly emerged and progressed. And I’m hiding again. Skin searing red, eyes swollen half shut.

But I don’t want to lose hope. I have to find some reinvigoration to work toward healing. I have to believe that healing is possible. Or at least that balance is possible.

I have to believe it’s going to get better. I have to. I have to. I have to find some way to accept this reality, to live with these arduous times. I have to find joy somewhere. Not to say that I don’t ever find joy. I do, I have. I will. I just… this has been going on for so long.

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To be whimsical… I do have days where I can see the tiny flickering lights ahead, like a city far away in the night, when you’re on a long hike or drive, and once you see the tiny glimmering lights in the distance, you know you're on your way, you know you're getting closer to home and to safety.

But then I have days where the lights seem to be moving farther away. I question myself, whether I'm walking in the right direction. I turn around, this way and that. And then I turn back, and the lights are gone. I'm in total darkness. And I don't feel like I'm going to make it. And I don’t have the energy to keep going, to keep searching.

Those are the days I want to sleep. Just sleep it all away. I just want to wake up when I know it's going to be okay. But I don't know when that will be, and it's crushing me. It's crushing me.

I don't want to lose myself. I like myself. I'm pretty odd and awkward and I say the wrong thing and overthink and worry and daydream, and sometimes I don't like my nose or my slightly crooked eyes or the freckles covering my skin. And sometimes I wish I had a different body—one that was more womanly or thin or tanned. But most days, I just want this exquisitely weird and singular body to be healthy, back to the way it used to be when I took it for granted. Back when I looked in the mirror at 16 or 25 and hated myself and worried about what this guy or that fellow thought. But I had my health. I was healthy. I just want to wake up without my skin burning and literally falling off my face.

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Somedays I feel elated by my body, believing that one day it will heal. I will heal—that I am healing—and my body is working so, so hard for me. I do believe that. I do, I do. I have to.

And then other days I berate and curse my body for not working faster, for ever getting to this state. Why, why why have you done this to yourself? Why did you allow this? What did you do to deserve this? Why can't I fix myself? What's wrong with me?  And then I berate myself for not “thinking positively” and “getting my mind right”

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I don’t really know how to end this piece of writing. I don’t want to be disingenuously positive but I also don’t want to be overly negative because that would also be insincere. And I don’t want anyone to worry about me. Or maybe I do. Probably I do. Clearly, this is a cry for help. [Insert awkward laughter here.]

But also… I know I’m not the only one going through something. And I, of course, know there are masses of people going through atrocities that I could never imagine. I am not comparing my experience to theirs. And maybe you’re going through something too. Yes?

Maybe you are struggling with a chronic health issue yourself—with an extreme health issue. Maybe you lost your job or relationship or you feel lonely. Maybe you’re just feeling lost and unsatisfied with life in general. Maybe you live far away from your family or your significant other and it’s just plain hard. Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you are struggling with money. Maybe you’re tired of being strong for everyone else and want someone to be strong for you for once. Or maybe you just got a really bad haircut that makes you feel less like yourself. (The last one can be really upsetting too.)

With whatever you’re going through—I guess it doesn’t necessarily make it easier knowing that others are going through hell as well, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to know that you’re not alone in struggle. It helps to talk about it sometimes too. Maybe you don’t need to write about it publicly (or maybe you do). But don’t sit with it all alone, all the time.

Sexual Assault.

I’ve been replaying certain scenes from my life in my head lately. Some of them I don’t know that I’ll ever write about, or at least not for anyone to see. But here’s a tale I will tell, at least in part.

By the end, you will know why I can’t stand to smell or look at a bottle of Jagermeister and that I can be triggered by seeing a man in a dirty white apron. And also, I don’t like Jello shots.

I worked at a restaurant shortly after graduating college, as one does when you decide not to pursue work in the degree you achieved. I shall not name this restaurant to protect everyone’s identity. This will be a story about sexual assault, or rather, almost-sexual assault, depending on how you look at it. So if any reference to sexual assault is triggering, that’s certainly understandable if you choose not to keep reading. But this is a low-level of sexual assault, I suppose. Whatever that means. It’s unfortunately likely something SO many of us have dealt with, but we’ve just written it off, over and over and over again, as I did. As I do.

This story is about myself and a manger from this restaurant. I will be calling him Manager Man.

Let me preface with this tale about Manager Man (before I knew him). Shortly after starting this job, my friend who helped me get this job told me a story about Manager Man. The story goes… Manager Man started watching porn on his computer or phone at work in his office at the restaurant. Manager Man remembered to close and lock the door to the office, but he did not disconnect his device from the speakers that typically blast music throughout the restaurant lobby. Yes, you guessed it folks. While he watched his special adult films, all the sounds could be heard emanating throughout the lobby full of patrons. I’m not really sure how all this turned out, but I just wanted to paint a little picture of Manager Man.

At this job, I was quickly promoted to a supervisor role and transferred to a Nashville location. I was actually being paid rather handsomely for this job, some of which was paid “under the table.” Yes, this should have been a sign that something was a little questionable. I’d get paid an exorbitant amount in cash, but not much on my paycheck. This is, of course, terrible for my taxes, but I digress.

I don’t know what all to include. Manager Man certainly quite liked me. I could tell. Some of it was probably genuine and innocent. I was an extremely hard worker and the customers loved me. And let’s face it, I’m just so lovable. I kid, I kid. Who knows why. Manager Man would also talk about wanting to start various businesses with me, which was a little odd in hindsight.

There was one particular night that the staff was having a get-together after work. I was assigned the important task of picking up alcohol (while on the clock at work). I was told specifically told to include Jagermeister. Why—I don’t know, because even if you are an alcohol drinker, that stuff is ROUGH. But I did it. Manager Man gave me cash, and I went to a nearby liquor store. Why did I agree to participate in this? Why did I contribute alcohol to this equation? I don’t know. My leader told me to do something, and I have always been good at following rules, and I don’t like to disappoint authority figures, so I did it. (Some of this does not track with how I am now, but this is how I was then.)

The restaurant closed, and we had our get together. Everyone was drinking. Manager Man was particularly imbibing. I had to drive back to Murfreesboro, so I couldn’t have much, but I did partake. I know. Eventually it was just Manager Man and I left. I don’t even remember how it happened. Somehow he ended up on my side of the booth, and he was moving closer and closer and his hands were everywhere, all at once. And for whatever reason I played it off like it was funny and oh haha, he’s just being classic Manager Man. He was trying to kiss me, trying to do things. I somehow I managed to get out of the booth. I remember him being against me, the pressure, the uncomfortable warmth, the sweat, the smell of Jagermeister and his dirty white apron. I remember the apron. It was all confusing and uncomfortable, but it was almost as if I wasn’t actually experiencing it—like I was just watching it unfold. And for whatever reason, I didn’t want to make HIM uncomfortable or embarrass him for what HE was doing to me. So I kept playing it off like it was no big deal.

Even though it is a big deal. Because he had a wife who had just given birth to twins, and I had a boyfriend. And I didn’t want any part of this. Even if he didn’t have a wife, kids and I didn’t have a boyfriend, none of this should have been happening.

I ended up outside. I don’t really know how, but he was out there too. And I was pushing him away and he must have finally gotten the point, because he started apologizing. I don’t remember if I was crying or getting upset or what. I just know I left. I don’t remember the long drive home. I don’t remember getting home.

The next day was Mother’s Day. I remember being at my grandparents’ house for the celebration, and Manager Man was texting me, apologizing. I don’t know if I responded, but I specifically remember peering under the table at the text while sitting at my grandparents’ long dinner table, then I looked outside the window and stared.

Monday arrived. I began my drive to work. I was about 30 minutes into my 40 minute drive when I burst into tears. I pulled over at a gas station. I can picture it exactly. I know which gas station. I can take you there. I start hyperventilating. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see him. HIM. I couldn’t get myself to stop crying, and I don’t think I really understood why I was crying. This wasn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve had my personal space, my boundaries violated many times before. It’s normal. This is normal. This is what (some) men do. This is what women deal with. This is my fault, probably.

I’m sure I was having some version of a panic attack parked outside this gas station, but I didn’t realize that at the time. I could hardly breath. I called my boyfriend at the time. I think that’s who I called. I called someone, but I couldn’t seem to articulate what was really happening or what I was feeling.

Somehow I calmed down, and I went into work, because I didn’t want to call out and let the team down.

At some point at work, Manager Man pulled me outside and gave me a “gift.” He’s from another country, and he said in his country, this is how people apologize—a gift. He gave me perfume. Some sort of expensive one, at that. I know because there was a receipt inside. I don’t remember what I said to him after this. I know I brushed it all off. And now, I felt like some hooker he was paying in extravagant perfumes. I didn’t know what to think of it. I just knew it all felt wrong, like I was being paid off to stay quiet or something.

Eventually, I returned the perfume to the store since I had the receipt, and I took the cash. Yes, now I really felt like a hooker. I wish I had done something special with the money, like donate it to a women’s shelter, but I don’t think I did. I just needed to pay rent, and I knew I didn’t want to smell like Manager Man perfume for years to come.

I ended up quitting this job a few weeks later, without having another job lined up.

Have you noticed on certain job applications, they sometimes ask your reason for leaving a job? Answer: “Because I was sexually assaulted.” Maybe that would be a better than: “I just needed a change.”

BONUS STORY (not of sexual assault but of men saying things that men sometimes say):

As a student, I worked for the Middle Tennessee State University’s Blue Raider Athletic Association. BRAA for short. Yes, what a fun acronym. I was probably freshly twenty at the time of this story. At football games, I was assigned to check in on the folks in the luxury boxes. Typically, it was a horde of drunk middle-aged and older men. Sometimes they would try to get me to stay and have a drink with them. One particular time, I was in a luxury box where I knew a few of the men. Some of them knew my parents and grandparents. Some of them didn’t know who I was, but I knew who they were, and I knew they knew my family. One of them was the father of someone I had gone to middle school with, and he also attended my church at the time. He knew who I was.

Well, anyway, they had Jello shots, and they kept trying to get me to take some of the shots. I’m supposed to keep these people happy, make them feel special and keep them donating money to the BRAA, so I finally grabbed one, held it in my hand and stared at it. I must have been staring too long because one of the men suddenly yelled: “Suck it like your boyfriend wants you to!” And everyone laughed and cheered and started telling me to Suck it and Lick it, etc, etc. I looked up at the man from my church hoping for some support or help or something, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me.

I understand this is not really a “big deal,” and it’s certainly not out of the ordinary. Just your run-of-the-mill sexual innuendo of sorts, right? But it felt demeaning and derogatory, and quite frankly just gross. Like they were getting some sort of satisfaction by taunting me and watching me. These men were well-over twice my age, some three times my age. I knew one of their daughters. I wanted to ask if that’s something he would yell and chant to his daughter.

For whatever reason, whenever something like happens, I feel a violent rage bubbling and want to punch someone’s face. “How about you suck on this, John!” PUNCH! But of course I didn’t. And I don’t. Usually.

This may be 'normal’ banter, especially to a female serving males in a drunken sports setting, but should it be?

Should it??

And why did I share these stories? I’m not really sure yet. I’ll probably write more about it later. But for now, there you go. These things shouldn’t be normal and acceptable. I’m sorry if they’ve happened to you, and undoubtedly, I’m sure they have.

Now at 33-years-old, I able liable to punch someone, so watch out.

Today I got mad.

Today I got mad. I became enraged at how everything felt out of my control. I’m infuriated as I type this, so here we go.

[Inserting calm Mary-Margaret to note that I am well aware that life in general is just out of our control, and there will always be things we want to change but can’t change. All we can control is how we react, but sometimes it’s refreshing and exhilarating to act out. So, back to other Mary-Margaret…]

I feel like I haven’t been in control of my body for years with all the compounding chronic health issues. It has seemed like no matter what I do, things go wrong. I have to do this a certain way, and that. And I can’t eat that, can’t drink this. CAN’T HAVE COFFEE. You can’t run Mary-Margaret. You can’t be around animals that you love, Mary-Margaret. You can’t go outside. You can’t visit family because you’ll be exposed to a myriad of allergens. You can’t have a good time on trips because you’re allergic to everything and secretly uncomfortable the entire time. But just to remind everyone: NO CAFFEINATED COFFEE. I had this confirmed at my doc appointment this week.

So I felt like being defiant. I bought AND drank a turmeric chai spiced latte. This coffee shop named this latte: “A Sweet Boy.” I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere, but anyway. Just what the body needs. A sweet boy. One latte for Mary-Margaret, please and thank you.

Then I found out this “Sweet Boy” doesn’t actually have espresso in it. Not very sweet, are we now, boy. So to fulfill my defiance I exclaimed: “Add espresso to that Sweet Boy, please!” The gal at the register was understandably wary of my particularly enthusiastic demeanor and didn’t make much eye contact. But alas, I drank my caffeinated latte in fiery defiance. And I relished it. I savored it. It was the best latte I’ve had in my life. I guess there are still some sweet boys in the world.

As I sat in the coffee shop consuming my audacious latte, I went on to write an absurd, improper and blatantly honest cover letter to a job that I did not technically, on-paper qualify for because I am so STINKING sick of being defined by the basic, cliche words on a resume. I’m so tired of the business lingo, and that it ‘better be sent in a PDF’ because we’ve apparently all collectively decided that if you send it as a PDF then you show “attention to detail.” Why, why is that? Is the PDF really that much better than a word document? Is it? Is it? Maybe it is, it probably is, but if you’re so concerned with an ability to convert it to a PDF, which is really easy, might I note, then you can do it yourself. Here, I’m sending you a word document to test YOUR attention to STINKING detail. This is my first test for you, to see whether I want to work for you. The interview goes both ways, my friend.

[An off-topic side note: you are welcome to insert an alternate word where “STINKING” has been placed, as I assure you my brain came up with a different one. But I’m in a phase where I’m not sure cursing suits my personality. What do you think? I might change my mind by the end of the week though, or perhaps at the end of this sentence.]

At my recent doc appointment, I was told that all the healing I had achieved BEFORE my very recent vacation has all been reversed, REVERSED. So we’re starting from scratch, doing treatments I had already done… again, again, again. “Healing is not linear,” they say. And I know this, I do, I really do. But it SUCKS. It does. It just does. And it’s okay for me to tell myself that “healing isn’t linear and it’s all part of the journey and la la blah blah blah,” but sometimes I don’t want to hear that from someone else. Sometimes I don’t want to be “comforted.” I just want to be angry, I just want to feel, I just want to let it out. OUT!

I’ve been meditating more lately. Can’t you tell?? Can’t you? I’m clearly perfectly zen and calm, and I’ve reached the realm of master of monk maidens. Which isn’t even thing, but I wanted some alliteration here. My defiance continues! At this same appointment where I was told my healing had reversed, I was told that my hip pain and issues are: “very likely in my head,” and that “there is nothing structurally wrong.” This was after my session was over, and we were walking out in front of all the other folks in the waiting area. So I didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth to ask: does this mean all the MRIs and various scans I’ve had done over and over to make sure they were correct… are wrong? I don’t have all kinds of rips and tears in my hip labrum? I don’t have cartilage loss and cysts and other messes in my knees?? Also, just to note: labrum tears do not heal on their own. You either deal with it, have arthroscopic surgery and/or get a hip replacement, which is what I was told I will likely have to do.

Were the multiple orthopedists and physical therapists I’ve seen all wrong?? Should I report them for malpractice?? This was just all in my head, you say. Well, here we fucking go. (And here, folks, is apparently where I decided curses can occasionally be part of my persona.)

I do not take kindly when someone questions my experience, my feelings, my health. I questioned my feelings—the pain and discomfort—for years, ignored it all, tried to push it away, and then my body revolted.

[Let me insert calmer Mary-Margaret here. I realize there is more explanation as to why my doc said this, and I will ask at my next appointment. I am also not angry at this doctor, but rather just extraordinarily frustrated at the lack of control in my body that I have felt for so long. And also, let me note that I am well aware there are millions and billions of people with far, far worse health issues, and there are horrifying events taking place in other countries… and all around our nation and world. These pieces could have, or rather, very likely did add to my general feeling of anger and overwhelm.]

Anyway.

When I was first diagnosed with all my hip and knee injuries, I kept asking if I was allowed to run, and when I wouldn’t be quiet about it, the orthopedist finally said, “You should NEVER run unless you’re being chased and fear for your life!”

Well today, folks, I was being chased by confinement, conformity and a seemingly uncontrollable chronic illness. So I ran.

I ran out of the house. I ran down the street. I ran into the park. (I also walked, because, let’s face it, this body and my lung capacity aren’t in running shape). I walked some more because I kept tripping over walnuts strewn about the roads and pathways. I never realized how many walnuts blanket the ground this time of year in East Nashville.

And then I ran more because there are also wasps everywhere, and they can motivate one to run—erratically perhaps, but still running.

As most folks know, I also have a myriad of health issues completely unrelated to hip and knee injuries. Far more serious and debilitating health issues. Well, this run, with the heat and the allergens flared all of that, of course. And I knew it would. But I just needed to feel some sense of agency in my life. I wanted to feel like I was controlling my destiny. So I made myself really uncomfortable. I did it. It was my choice. ME!

I guess I don’t really have any spectacular ending to this story. Sometimes you just need to add a little spice of defiance to your life. Chai spiced, perhaps.

If I hear anything back from the job posting that I sent the radical cover letter to, I’ll report back. I’ll be sure to notify you in a PDF, of course.

How Not to Do Self-Care: the riveting story of when I tried to take a bath, etc.

Have you ever been laying (or is it lying?) in a tepid sea salt bath in your tiny bathroom trying to have a transcendent moment of self actualization, meditating on the meaning of life, when you notice some black mold growing underneath your sliding shower door?

On a sort-of day off, I decided that I was going to do something different. I was going to have self-care, life-improving ME-time.

First, I grabbed some of my weights that I occasionally haphazardly throw around in an effort to feel like I still work out. (But I don’t.) They are fun-size weights, like the tiny, bite-size (apparently “fun”) candy you get on Halloween that is disappointing and unhelpful because it’s so small. I grab those and bring them to the bedroom, which is where I pretend to workout sometimes. I station my washed-up pull-up bar in the bathroom door. If you have one, you know how the placement works. If you don’t, I’m not going to bore you with how to do it.

Anyway, I position it up there and realize two of the hand grips are missing. I begin crawling on the hardwood floor to find them. Ow, my knees. I find them. I wrap what’s left of the handles on the the rickety bar. I start to hold on to the bar when I realize I’m still wearing polar bear pajama pants and a sweatshirt that you only wear once you’ve given up for the day.

I want to feel worky-outy so I dig into my dresser of unfolded pant items, and I pull on some old Umbro black leggings. They fit a little tighter than I remember. Also, does the Umbro brand still exist?

So I go back to the pull-up bar. I’m ready. I look like I thought about working out once. I attempt some leg lifts whilst holding onto the bar. But then my too-tight leggings make my stomach feel all gross and huge and now I feel like I’m not worthy enough to work out.

I toss my fun-size weights into the air, around my body and then to the ground, and I decide to take a sea salt bath.

I earned it, obviously.

Why do we call it “taking” a bath? Or to “draw” a bath… Why? Hold on..

Alright so, according to www.phrases.org.uk, one would say “draw” a bath because apparently “draw” also means “to lift,” and in the olden days you would have to draw/lift water from a well, lake, river, cistern, etc. and take it to your wash tub.

Wiktionary.com’s sentence example: “Never leave a child unattended while drawing them a bath.”

Noted.

In any case, I pull out the bag of sea salt I was never able to reseal after the day I opened it years ago, as there are always salt crystals stuck in the zip-lock bit. So my salt is a little damp but also crusty simultaneously. It ain’t what it used to be, which is similar to the state of the body that will be getting into this sea salt bath, so I figure it will work out.

I turn on the water. I never know how hot or warm to make it, as there’s basically no temperature that my sensitive, needy, angry, pale skin pairs well with.

So the water is running, I plop some blobs of Dead Sea salt into the bath. Yes, these salts traveled all the way from The Dead Sea to my humble abode in East Nashville.

While it’s filling, I decide to make myself a homemade face scrub to exfoliate my regrets and sorrows away. I grab a Kroger-brand bag of light brown sugar from the kitchen, and I begin trying to mix it with Manuka honey. (Google it. It’s a natural face scrub recipe. I didn’t make this up.) I try harder to mix, but it’s mostly just an uncooperative ball of brown. Well, I try to smear the brown ball onto my face, but blobs of it just fall into the sink, and my sink is too dirty to try to recover these blobs, so I have to write them off as a loss.

Lots of blobs in this section of the story.

Eventually, I pour some jojoba oil into the mix, and it sort of starts to rub onto my face. I might also be able to use this as an adhesive.

Really, this whole bit is uneventful. It’s on my face, and I realize I don’t want to leave it on my face while I’m in the bath because it will just start rolling down my face, plopping into the water. And nobody wants little brown blobs floating in their bath water, generally speaking. So I wash it off, harshly, because that’s the only way I know how to address a problem I created.

The bath has been drawn. And I didn’t even have to trot down to the well in my petticoat for this.

When I finally lower my ghostly white body into the lukewarm water (clearly, I did not choose the correct faucet position/temperature again), I let myself settle into the quiet. I try to think profound thoughts, send a prayer or some positive energy to myself and others, but I can’t keep my eyes closed comfortably because I still have some brown sugar paste in my eye lashes.

Then suddenly...

Out of nowhere…

I look down and realize I can see my entire body through the glassy sea salt haze.

I know. Horrifying. This is not what I want to be reminded of while trying to transcend reality and reorganize my priorities and feel good about the human I am.

Nevertheless.

I scrunch my face in disgust and close my eyes again... while realizing they may never open again due to the sugar glue still on my eyes. And that’s okay.

During this time, I’m also trying to find a pleasant position. The tub is too short for me to stretch out, and my stupid, godforsaken knobby knees keep bobbing out of the water like apples floating in a bacteria-laden bucket from a carnival in the 1920s. My feet can’t land a proper position and my neck and head can’t figure out where to be without sliding into the water. (Perhaps my body is subconsciously trying to drown itself). Not really though. That’s not funny.

Anyway.

I love the word: “anyway” or any variations of the adverb. (I think it’s an adverb.) “Anyway” can get you out of a mess, it can move the conversation along when Randy won’t stop talking about his new Peloton, or when Jessica keeps telling you about her new business that involves a face cream and pre-workout all-in-one, it can sweep right over that regrettable relationship, that job you were fired from or that night out that you don’t really remember but someone brings up.

Anyway, how about them apples, Randy.

I start to ponder how rather unnerving it is to lay naked in a small vessel of warm water by yourself. Not that I want anyone else with me. But I am steeping myself. I have created human tea. Or perhaps soup. Or broth, you might say, rather unsettlingly. I’ve created human broth. And the human is me. But I’m sure you’ve created your own broth at some point in your life as well. Perhaps you were a wee lad and you may have added some wee to the broth.

I’ll be selling this grass-fed broth (because I’m sort of vegan) for the low cost of $50 per ounce.

This is one of the grossest things I’ve ever typed.

Anywhos (similar to ‘anyway’ but more whimsical), while growing increasingly disturbed by the presence of myself, sliding further into the water, I spot a disconcerting amount of black mold along the undercarriage of my sliding glass door. I suppose any amount of mold is disconcerting though. And to note, I’m not sure of the anatomical parts of a glass door, so undercarriage may or may not be correct.

More importantly, what is the difference between REAL black mold, which is scary and dangerous (that I once obtained a doctors note for so that I could move out of black-mold-laden dorm room at Tennessee Tech University to another dorm room that surely had some other infestation) versus mold that’s just dark-colored but more casual and less detrimental to the health of my lungs?

Then I began to think of what a disgusting piece of human flesh I am. I can’t even bother to keep my poor shower door’s undercarriage in ship shape.

It was at this point I realized I’m not good at self care. I’m just not. I didn’t grow up that way. You ignore yourself and your needs until you are so broken, shattered, overwhelmed and perhaps deranged that there is nothing you can do but address yourself. Because no one else is going to address you at this point.

Anyway.

I hope your self-care is going as well as mine.

See you at the farmer’s market. I’ll be at the grass-fed stand.

Should I Stop Faking It? The chronic illness edition.

(I wrote this haphazardly and on different days, so my apologies for any nonsensicalness. I just wanted to get something out.)

I was in the ER last Thursday at Vanderbilt at the suggestion of a nurse, and that led to another appointment at Vanderbilt this week.

I’ve been wanting to write lately, to write about all the frustrations with my chronic illness, and how I hate the phrasing ‘chronic illness,’ as it sounds like some amorphous, ambiguous, possibly fictitious, imagined thing. I call it chronic illness or autoimmune disease because it’s a great many things, and there are a great many things it is not.

I’ve seen a multitude of doctors over the past couple of years, and I gave up on trying to fix myself about six months ago, or I decided I was feeling “good enough” to just deal with it. But then things became worse again.

The average time it takes to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease is 4.5 years. And usually with one autoimmune disease, you likely have more coming your way (yay). You spend years going from doctor to doctor, having countless vials of blood extracted from your body with a smattering of tests performed on the viscous burgundy samples. Throw in a gallons worth of urine samples, and some biopsies, mammograms (why not), MRIs and a boat load of other tests. Sometimes nothing shows, sometimes confusing results form, and nobody really knows what to tell you, but it seems like doctors often want to tell you something, so they might say it’s this or that, and move on.

Yesterday at my appointment, after talking with the doctor and nurse for a long while, after they looked at my body and looked at my records, the doctor sat down and looked straight at me and said, “I’m going to be honest, you’re a mystery to me. There’s definitely something very wrong with you, but I don’t know what all it is.”

I was actually elated to hear this. I needed honesty, and I needed to feel seen.

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As I alluded to, doctors have never really figured out what’s wrong with me, but they knew that something was wrong and prescribed various treatments, medications, supplements, lifestyle changes, etc. (I’ve been on a treatment that I inject in my stomach or legs every other week.) Doctors might recommend me to some other specialist or tell me: it’s all just something you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. Which is never what you want to hear when you’re struggling to make it through each hour, and you aren’t really sure if you want to make it to the next. (dramatic, much?) Or, as I said, they might claim it is some specific thing just so there was a definitive name to call it and declare this treatment or that treatment will cure all. (Let me note that I know doctors mean well, and I know they are often not provided enough time to sit down with a patient to determine the root causes of illness).

But people love to put things in neat little boxes, it’s comforting and makes you feel like you have control. If there is no specific name to call it, no real way to categorize and qualify it, no objective answer to the question, then it is almost as though it doesn’t exist. It’s easier that way. But it can make someone with a chronic, undiagnosed illness feel like they don’t exist.

If you have cancer, a broken leg or a heart attack, people know what box to put you in. With chronic illness, you’re sort of left floating around in space, boxless. It makes sense and that was totally profound, I promise :)

[I always feel the need to note that I completely acknowledge there are enormous amounts of people who suffer from far, far, far worse health conditions than I. And I do not intend to belittle, compare or inflate the validity or importance of one health issue over another.]

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As someone who comes from a family that is not-so-great at admitting they are not feeling well or are sick, or that they need to slow down, I have always had a difficult time believing anyone (including myself) when they say they are sick or need to take a break. It sounds awful, but my thinking was: “Well, I feel terrible quite often, and I never stop, so why should other people stop? They must be weak. We should all just keep going, keep pushing. Survival of the fittest! (and most stubborn) Yea!”

And we see where this gotten me. Of course, I never said those things aloud to someone claiming illness, and I always acted like I deeply felt for their suffering. (Let me note that this did not apply to all people suffering, as there are certain folks who you can tell without a doubt they are suffering in beyond-imaginable ways).

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This illness, this whatever it is, has made me both more and less empathetic to others. At times, all I can think about is the pain or fog or excruciating electric itch I feel. The burning skin, the disorientation, the headaches, the shaking, the exhaustion in the night accompanied by the complete inability to rest and sleep because I cannot find comfort in the body which I reside.

I currently work with people experiencing homelessness in the social services sector. I have many days and moments where I feel their story penetrate my marrow, and I cannot get them off my mind as I try to live out other parts of my life that aren’t my “work.” I deeply and agonizingly am overtaken by the severity and injustice of their various situations. And then I have moments where someone tells me the most horrifying and painful story, and I feel close to nothing. Part of this could be compassion fatigue, hearing people’s terrifying tales everyday, helping others (or at least trying) everyday. You can sort of lose yourself in this. You grow weary of helping others constantly without ever helping yourself. I have seen this in a multitude of people working and serving in the social services field (and in other fields like teaching, health care, child care, etc).

But part of this lack of empathy seems directly related to when I am feeling my worst. As if I have nothing left to give in that moment, because it was all I could do to get up, take a painful shower and drive myself to work, trying to break through the swelling fog that overtakes my vision daily, which glasses cannot remedy.

Whenever someone asks me about my health or wants to know more about chronic illness, it takes about 7.2 seconds before their eyes begin to glaze over like a fresh Krispy Kreme donut. If you haven’t experienced chronic illness, it seems that it’s extraordinarily difficult for people understand and identify with it (and that makes sense). Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to understand. I would possibly think someone was likely just not eating correctly and just didn’t have the willpower to do what they needed to do in life. I might think they were lazy or a hypochondriac. (Not that I’m saying folks like that don’t exist. They do, and they are making it really stinking difficult for us with debilitating autoimmune issues and other chronic illnesses to have an accepted and acknowledged place in the world.)

When someone at work questions why I may have to leave the field in order to pursue something more remote, less demanding and on-call, or when they ask “are you sure you need to leave?,” “what about your clients,” I feel almost smacked in the face. Though I know they mean nothing by it, and they just want me to stay on the team. But part of me wants to scream, “IF YOU ONLY KNEW, YOU WOULDN’T QUESTION THIS DECISION AT ALL.”

But I don’t do that, as why should they know or understand what I’m going through when I’m walking through everyday, all day pretending that I’m okay, or even better than okay? Why would they know what’s really going on, when I’m faking being okay?

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We want to be understood, we want to be validated. We all do. I want to be understood, but I know that’s a tall order. I can see the lack of comprehension by those who learn I have some sort of chronic illness, the lack of understanding that this is something that affects me on a minute to minute basis. This all sounds all so selfish and pity-seeking to me. I can’t stand to feel this way, but that’s what I am reduced to at moments. I’m writing this as I’m crying on my bed, punching pillows, pacing my bedroom floors, so frustratingly tired and angry and just so sick of being sick. People have said to me before, “One day, you’ll wake up and realize you’re all better, and that slowly it just all went away.” I’ve been waiting and waiting for that day to arrive. I’m tired of waiting, I’m just so tired. I’ve had glimmers of the old me, the one who scaled rock walls and sprinted up mountains. But that person feels far away. I feel like I began to lose myself somewhere around age 27, (when the health issues began) and it’s been a slow and, at times, sudden and harsh loss of myself since then. (My apologies for how dramatic this sounds. Though the Vanderbilt doctor told me I say “I’m sorry” too much and that I shouldn’t apologize for what’s happening to me. Sigh. But anyway….)

I’ve spoken of this before, in writing and in some (embarrassing) videos I’ve posted here and there, but it is as though my interests, my goals, my drive towards something, anything slowly seeps out of my being. Oftentimes, I can’t seem to figure out what it is that I’m interested in anymore, other than researching ways to get well. It becomes an obsession. The sneaky creeping thief continues to slowly eat away at what I thought was me. Sometimes pieces of me return, and I welcome them back like that old piece of clothing you rediscovered in your closet. You put it on and you feel your old self and adventures woven into the threads, and somehow by wearing it, you feel like that old you again. (Maybe this is an experience only I have?) But I digress…

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I’ve often wondered what started it all. And I have written about this before, of course. Was this in me the whole time? Did this happen because I took too many antibiotics as a child, because I used too many steroidal inhalers or other oral and topical steroids throughout my life? (I think yes.) Why did I need those things to begin with? Was it all the doxycycline I took when I had outrageous acne in high school and college? Is it what I’ve eaten? Is it our overly-sanitized, chemical-laden world that has brought down my already weakened immune system? Is it because I overwork and over-stress myself in every single job I take? Is it the jobs or is it me? I ask myself these questions all the time, but it hasn’t led me to a “fix” yet.

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This is my reality right now. It’s what I know and understand. You’re likely experiencing some sort of reality that I could not understand and maybe I never will fully know or understand it, just as you may never know or understand my reality. But I think we need to share our experiences—to shed light on what is not known to others. (Golly, I sound cliche, do I not? This is the days-later version of myself rereading what I wrote.) Much of my intention for writing, well part of it, is to continually reveal that you never know or may understand what someone else is going through. Many people suffer in silence or just have some sort of experience we may not know or understand, whether it be some sort of mental or physical illness, a severed relationship, death of a loved one, financial problems, homelessness, constant experiences with racism, and a whole multitude of things.

Maybe one day you will know or experience their reality or a similar one, mine or someone else’s, but your experience may occur somewhere down the line. And you can look back to my story or someone else’s and feel some sort of sense of comfort in not being entirely alone.

Alone and isolated—that’s what you feel and that’s what I feel when not understood, when not heard, when my reality and what feels like ‘myself’ goes unseen. (Geez this sounds so dramatic. Again, I’m reading this days after I wrote it, which shows how grand of a wax and wane my mental state and overall mood can be. Another aspect of this chronic illness is the extreme ups and downs of it all. I can and certainly do have good days.)

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I want my family to understand. I want my friends, my coworkers, the lady at the cash register, my niece and nephew, my clients and the doctors to understand. I want my husband to understand completely, the one who has been around me the most and seen me at my worst. I want him to understand why I don’t care at all about looking for a new rug for our living room, why talking about sizes and colors and fabrics have no meaning to me.

Marriages with one partner having chronic illness have a 75% divorce rate. How’s that for encouragement? I hate this for my husband, and have often wanted to relieve him of his duty toward me (and have tried to encourage him to do that, but gosh darnit, he keeps sticking around and supporting me). I don’t like being the sick one, the one in need, the one who changes the way we live or keeps us from living how we want. All of this began to unfold very early on in our relationship and became all-encompassing a few months into our marriage, and it has persisted since. So much for the carefree honeymoon phase. Chronic illness places spouses, partners and other friends and family members in such difficult positions.

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On a recent Friday, I thought I was going to end the day early for once and was excited about the prospect, when I received a call from a client panicking, as she had just been in another domestic violence situation with the man she’s been with for some time. She was finally ready to escape, and there was finally a place available at a domestic violence shelter (anyone in this field knows that is a rare occasion). Knowing I needed to seize the opportunity before she changed her mind again, I took off across town to pick her up at a random Piggly Wiggly on the side of the road. Through a series of events, the entire process of getting her to the shelter took many hours and inched its way into the evening. This included a run to Sonic for her comfort food, waiting, questioning, panicking, crying, multiple cigarettes smoked (her not me) and a host of other tense and upsetting emotions and conversations. (Along with me peppering in light-hearted awkward things, trying to lessen the severity of the situation. Trying.)

Somehow, my mind and body shut off my ability to feel any of these heavy emotions she was feeling while I was with her (at the time I thought my compassion fatigue had just fully set in). I tried to just remain present and be the comforting yet in-control person she needed. (I’m not sure if I pulled it off, but that’s what I was going for.)

When I finally made it home, walked inside, dropped my bags and changed clothes, it’s as though my body suddenly realized it was time to turn my feeling human brain back on, and a heavy curtain of mental, physical and emotional exhaustion draped over me.

My husband was sitting outside on our back patio, drinking a Topo Chico when I arrived, and I tried to sit with him. It was like his words didn’t have meaning (it sounded the way adults’ voices sound in Charlie Brown, if you understand that reference), or the subject matter didn’t seem important, and my brain didn’t have the capacity to be present with him. (Again, my poor husband). It was as though there wasn’t enough air in any room (or in this case, outside) for me to be around anyone else. Being around any other human’s energy was too heavy and burdensome.

And the rest of the weekend was consumed by worsening physical symptoms, exhaustion, and I didn’t want to leave the house or be in public (mainly because of how I looked due to worsening symptoms).

(Autoimmune symptoms aside, I think this probably happens frequently to people who work in this field or similarly physically and emotionally taxing vocations.)

---

I’m not really sure why I told this story or really why I’m writing any of this. I guess I just wanted to demonstrate that it’s been difficult to balance caring for myself and trying to care for others inside and outside of my job. It becomes difficult to fake it. I saw a post recently that said “If you have chronic illness, you lie everyday.” And it’s true. Folks with chronic illness and other such health issues often have to feign healthiness and well-being for the benefit of their job, friend, child, significant other, etc. I’m not saying we should be melancholy all the time or tell everyone we encounter all our woes. I guess I’m just saying, sometimes you have to tell your story, otherwise nothing will ever change. (Sheesh, dramatic me again.)

At times, I’m frustrated, furious, despondent and just so mentally and emotionally exhausted. I do have good days though. As I said, my moods, flares and overall physical state wax and wane. And that’s one piece of chronic illness that makes it so difficult—the unpredictable nature of it all. It makes it extraordinarily difficult to plan for the future. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do right now, I don’t know what job I should be in, when I’ll be better and for how long. What will my life be like in a month, a week, a day or a year from now? I don’t really know, and I’m trying to be okay with that. (Buuuuut I’m not.)

I don’t know how to end this, so I’ll just end it by recommending a book to anyone with chronic illness or who knows and loves someone with chronic illness. “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness” by Megan O’Rourke. I read it and thought, “oh my lord gracious, I could have written this.” (Except that she is a stupendous writer.) I identified with it so incredibly much and it reveals the ambiguity, unpredictability and long and frustrating journey that someone with chronic illness endures (and how we are often delegitimized in mainstream medicine of ‘diagnose and prescribe.’)

ALSO! To end on a positive note: I did feel more hopeful after my most recent appointment at Vanderbilt. More to come. Hopefully more clarity.

Links to previous articles I wrote about my chronic illness: “I’m an illness orphan: part one.” and “I’m an illness orphan: part two.”

https://www.hinsdalelawyers.com/blog/how-chronic-illness-affects-divorce-rates

https://time.com/83486/divorce-is-more-likely-if-the-wife-not-the-husband-gets-sick/

https://www.benaroyaresearch.org/blog/post/diagnosing-autoimmune-diseases#:~:text=Being%20diagnosed%20with%20an%20autoimmune,typically%20has%20seen%20four%20doctors.

"the in between," a poem.

I’m in the waiting, the in between

This is still the present,

But it’s not the kind of moment you want to present to others

Or even to yourself.

It’s not something you celebrate,

Or strive for.

It’s just where you are.

You celebrate the end of college,

The start of a marriage,

Leaving or beginning a career,

But do you celebrate day 23 after your divorce?

Or when you’re unemployed?

While you wait to become…someone?

But it’s in the becoming that we find who we are.

I think.

Once you’ve made it somewhere

People throw you high fives and good vibes

Presents, casseroles and money,

Which really doesn’t make sense

As we need the money most when we’re not making cents.

I’m trying to be patient

Trying not to demand,

I just want to appreciate where I am,

Even if it’s not where I’m meant to be.

Whatever that means.

It’s all a trick of the brain.

I suppose we’re always right where we’re supposed to reside,

If we decide,

The world is on our side.

I want to have a party for not having yet arrived

I want to dance to a song titled I’m still figuring out, but I’m getting by.

Dancing makes me feel free

It makes me feel like time is not a thing,

And maybe I’m not even me, I’m just being.

I want to accept where I am now,

Acknowledge, allow,

Give it room to breath and be,

Provide a stage for this current me.

The more I try to rush this, to silence it

Pretend this isn’t happening

The more difficult it will be.

The longer it will take,

It seems.

I’m in the waiting room,

My name hasn’t been called,

I watch each person receive their summoning to what’s next,

But my name isn’t even on the list.

But maybe that’s okay

Maybe my self isn’t ready for what lies that way.

Be patient, be patient.

We can’t always be arriving or departing.

You have to stand in the grocery line

With those ingredients before you can eat the risotto.

It takes time for a seed to become a tree.

It takes space for things to grow.

Some cicadas live underground for 17 years

Before they become the winged things that buzz, click and whirr in our ears.

Magicicada septendecim, the name of the cicada

Who exists in the waiting room for 17 circles around the sun.

I think they receive their name because they are the magical ones.

I want to have a party for not having a baby

For not taking the job

For not marrying that guy

For not knowing what to do next

But giving myself time.

The in between is still a place.

Like a hotel, a hostel, a gas station on the highway.

It’s not where you used to live or where you’ll stay forever.

The pictures on the wall are a little bit weathered.

There’s graffiti and scribbling in the bathroom where others existed.

They’ve been in this place too, and this is their past presence

Here to let you know you’re not alone.

She’s been here. He’s seen what it’s like.  They get it. Me too. Me too.

The pillow doesn’t quite nestle your head the way the one in your bed

But when you make it back home, if you do,

You relish the old pillow and that mattress with the coffee stain in the corner

From that Sunday you didn’t feel like lifting your head,

These things you used to complain about

Are now the most welcoming, worn friends.

The cliché saying reigns true

Until it’s gone, you don’t appreciate what you have,

Your freedom to move, to eat, to sing and just be

Without pain, without defeat,

Your loved ones, or the lost one.

Tell them.

Our bodies constantly renew

Always in the becoming,

Always right on queue.

There’s never one moment where we’ve made it

To the creation we think we were fated.

Your skin cells cycle and die every two to four weeks,

White blood cells after seven days,

Your stomach can fully renew every 48 hours,

Always unique,

But the cycle keeps going, we’re devoured, we devour

Ourselves.

There is no beginning or ending

Until your loved ones are bending to lay flowers on your grave.

Morbid, you say?

That’s life, and death, so you better live for the day.

Even if you’re in between this thing and that dream,

Why rush through the twilight

When all we have is this finite time?

-Mary-Margaret Weatherford

I’m an illness orphan: mysterious health issues, revealed. Part one.

As I first step into the fan of warm water raining from my pretentious filtered shower head, I shriek silently, and quick gasps and quiet screams curl from my lips, as I crumple while the multitude of molecules made of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms sting like thousands of fire ants infiltrating my body’s wall.  The warm, just warm, not hot, water sizzles my raw, slit, scraped skin, and I tense my whole body, straining, contorting, folding in on myself as if this will make the unrelenting scathing end. (Am I being dramatic enough yet?) Then a blood vessel pops. I didn’t even know such a thing could happen in this scenario. It appears my eye has been smeared with red paint.

You know in The Lord of the Rings, the flaming Eye of Sauron or the Eye of Mordor, well that’s kind of what my eye looks like here. And I thought, Geeez, popping blood vessels in my eyeballs is not what I needed to add to my beauty routine. Along with swollen, wrinkled eyes, a raccoon-face, red donut surrounding my eye, frighteningly red and inflamed skin all over my body, a wrinkled, bleeding, weeping neck, well, this just seemed a bit much. It’s kind of like wearing enormous earrings when you already have on seven necklaces, four bracelets and a purple and orange floral dress. It’s just too much. An unnecessary accessory. My flaming eye ball of Mordor was a fashion faux pas. The blood vessel burst because I was in a special type of pain and discomfort.

Actual photo of my eyeball. (but not really)

My body has become allergic to everything seemingly. And a myriad of other things are happening. More on that later. Showering right now kind of feels like someone taking a cheese grater to my skin whilst graciously pouring salt all over the tiny open woulds blanketing my body. (I don’t recommend trying this.)

I realize this type of pain is nothing compared to what a multitude of people endure on a daily basis. You know who you are.

But my body is deeply confused about what’s what and what to do about it.

I often feel like all that is happening shouldn’t be affecting my life this much. Am I imagining it?  Am I exaggerating it?  But I have to plan everything around what is happening to my body.  What clothes can I wear that won’t be painful?  What fabric won’t I be allergic to?  My skin feels like it’s been burned. I don’t want to move my arms or legs or turn my head and strain the skin on my neck.   I haven’t been able to fall asleep until 6 a.m. and sometimes 7 a.m. lately, which is later than I used to wake up every morning.  I’m uncomfortable all through the night because I don’t want anything to touch me, and I’m ABSURDLY itchy. (Maybe that sounds benign, but imagine ants crawling all over your body all night, biting you while being burned with a hot skillet as your entire body is emits heat like a radiator but you’re simultaneously shivering and shaking uncontrollably.

I promise I won’t be complaining and throwing a pity party through this whole smattering of words. I mean, maybe. You’ll see (Mwhahahahaha!). Originally, I meant for this all to be a comedic take on everything that’s going on. I mean, I now wear a hazmat suit to clean my apartment so I won’t have some enormous allergic reaction and have to go to the hospital. I look (and feel) like an astronaut while dusting and sweeping. I’ve confused a few neighbors when I step onto my balcony and disrobe from my hazmat suit. (Don’t worry, I have clothes on underneath.) If that’s not humorous, what is?

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Why has there been such a dramatic increase in allergies, autoimmunity, certain cancers and other diseases over the last few decades? I’m exploring that these days, but that’s not really what this slab of words is about. Perhaps I’ll write about such things later. I just want to throw this in here to confuse everyone.

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I’m not exactly writing this to share my story or improve anyone’s life. Not really, anyway. Maybe a little. Mainly, I’m writing this to improve my own life. I know, I know, selfish. Because it helps me process and let go of emotions and memories. And maybe by some magical magic’yness, if I get all of this down in the written word, then it will leave my body and only remain existing here on the page. This writing also provides a distraction from all that is unfolding in regards to my health. AKA I want to rip the skin off my body. Everything hurts. I don’t want to move my body. It hursts to wear clothes. I can’t leave the house. If I leave my home, I will surely terrify old ladies and small children because of how I look. I don’t know what to eat. I’m allergic to everything I encounter. I can’t sleep at night. All night. Literally. No, actually literally. Not like when someone says “I literally died.”

I guess I’m also writing this because there are so many difficult-to-diagnose diseases and health issues out there that people are struggling with every day. I feel like doctors, family members and friends often don’t take them seriously because they don’t understand them. And many of these ailments are rather new in the realm of scientific study, as there are new diseases and health issues popping up because of the changes society and industries have undergone over the years. I often have not taken people seriously, as I’ve had the mentality to just “buck up” and push through the pain. Don’t be a pansy. Don’t be weak. People shouldn’t see that I’m vulnerable, so I will push that mentality onto others too.

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I’ve been grappling with these health issues for about four years, but the last 11 months have been the most brutal and unending. It’s the kind of thing you don’t know when it will end or how much worse it will become. Some days are better than others and you think you’re taking a turn for the better for ever. And then you fall back down into the all-encompassing, can’t-focus-on-anything-else, please-let-me-out-of-my-body phase.

I realize what I have going on isn’t the worse thing ever in the world. But it does occupy my mind (and body) on a moment to moment basis. I have to be conscious of almost everything I choose to do, in regards to what I eat, drink, what touches my body, what clothes I put on, how I move my body, where I go, what I’ll be exposed to when I go, what new things is my body allergic to, what do the people around me have on their body—perfumes, animal dander, cleaning products, chemicals? Will I be able to open my eyes in the morning? Will I sleep more than one hour tonight? Will I sleep at all?

My body is seemingly attacking anything it comes into contact with; that is, water, clothes, hot and cold temperatures, food, drinks, when something barely touches my skin, any cleaning product or chemical, a feather, animals, plants, squashes (for real) and so much more.

In some ways, it sort of feels like I’m slowly becoming the Bubble Boy from that episode of Seinfeld. It feels like one day some day soon I may have to live in a bubble because my body can’t seem to handle anything it encounters. Yes, let’s just laugh about it for now. Mary-Margaret the Bubble Girl. Hahaha*. [Secretly crying my eyes out*].

My health issues are multi-faceted and complex. This isn’t just skin deep, something is malfunctioning within my body, of course. And there is pain and mayhem within my bod, but it’s difficult to discuss and nobody seems to know what’s going or how to fix it. I've been tossed from doctor to doctor, as I’ve heard many people have been with such ambiguous issues. We’re like illness orphans. Nobody wants to claim us or knows what to do with us, so we’re just wandering the streets opening random doors hoping it’s our home and that someone can help us.

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[Some of the following writing was written at various times, random bits from recent months. I might date certain things, some I might not.]

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Journal entry, Mid-December, 2020:

“I’m sitting here on my bathroom floor, in front of the sink, listening to sad music by John Moreland finishing up a dramatic cry after realizing just how much all of my dadgum medical bills have added up to over the past year. It’s a hefty heifer much.

But life is sad and life is funny and things are weird and difficult and confusing and sometimes we just have to laugh at it all.”

So let’s have a laugh at some of the things that have occurred throughout my “health journey.” That itself is an annoying phrase. I picture myself in a teeny tiny submarine floating through my bloodstream on a quest to crack the code of my perplexing body. Captain Mary-Margaret on her maiden voyage. Kind of like in the Magic School Bus. Did you ever see that show? They took a bus into someone’s body once.

Previously, I said this has been going on for about four years, but I feel like it’s been building for many more years. I first actually noticed abnormal health things in 2015 after I said no to my first marriage proposal, quit my job and spent some time living in a tent on a farm getting certified in Permaculture Design. As people do.

Maybe that situation ignited the fiery anger in my bod.

(Sorry in advance for anything that sounds gross or unpleasant. But life is unpleasant. So here we are. Also, not all the soon-to-be discussed health predicaments are necessarily related… but they’ve just happened, so I’m plopping them down here. And I will also not discuss all my heath issues. Like my hip injury that will require me to have a hip replacement eventually, and now I’m not supposed to run.)

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Let’s just pop into the view of the fly on the wall at some of my doctors appointments.

We’ll flip the channel to my appointment where we try to determine if the two-centimeter mass in my right breast is cancerous. (Yes, I realize this seems like a large leap from skin issues to possible breast cancer.)

After changing into a stiff, papery blue gown and sitting in a small “room” that was really just a cubby pardoned off by a shower-curtain, I sat there staring at the curtain dance in the wind as people swished by, and my scantily clad body shivered in the subarctic temperature of the office.

They finally called my name, well part of my name, just: Mary. In all my paperwork, I always hyphenate my name Mary-Margaret, so people will hopefully get the point that I am from the South, and I do indeed have a two first names. Yes, it may be unnecessary to have them both, but it’s my name, dadnabbit. If your name was Pam, would you be okay with me shortening it to Pa?

Anywho. So it’s time for my mammogram, and I’m in the dimly lit room with this ginormous contraption that looks like it’s either meant to smush my whole body or pull my limbs apart. Mostly it’s for the first…well, to smush part of you, the mammary part. Mammary… funny word. Heehee. If you’ve had this done, you know that it can be a wee bit uncomfortable to have your gals smushed in between two cold plasticy (or maybe metal?) plates. (I blocked it from my mind.)

Hi, I’m about to provide too much information about my body.

So, I’m not super, um, well-endowed in that particular area of my bod. It is what it is. Sigh. Basically, when you don’t have too much to work with, (i.e. much to smush in this contraption so they can scan it for bad things) then by golly gosh, it’s a might uncomfortable. I had to move my body so incredibly close to the contraption, my face was smooshed against some other plastic protruding pieces. Also, they make you hold your breath while each actual scan is being done.

After some smooshing of muh’ chest under this thing a few times, some beep-boops happening while scans took place and holding my breath, I suddenly began to feel a bit tingly, and things became bright and sparkly starry. I thought, that’s kinda cool, but… it’s probably not supposed to be happening. And then I declared “I think I’m about to pass out,” as I began to slide to the ground, mammaries still locked down.

But the nurse swooped in, placing her experienced arms underneath my underarms, dragging me to a chair. It wasn’t pain that got me, but it just felt so odd having this done.

So that was embarrassing. Kind of like the time I passed out when I was getting a teeny tiny daisy tattooed on my forearm by a hefty dude covered in tats.

The nurse assured me that was something that happened often, though I’m not sure if I believe her. She also told me my size was ‘fiiiiiiiiiine’ for the smooshing, and that the ultra big’uns and the flat-as-a-board ones (her words) are far, far worse. That also might be a lie. But thanks, Nurse.

After the mammogram, I moved into a room for an ultrasound of the breast. I lay there in another frigid room with my shirt off as they smeared cold oily wet stuff on my chest. What is that stuff?

She started moving the ultrasound thingy-poo on my breast (I hate the word breast. But I hate the word boob more.) Anyway, it’s cold and she’s really pushing down on it in order to reeeeeally get a good look at that mass up in there.

I learn that I apparently have ‘extremely extremely dense breast tissue,’ making it wildly difficult to see if there’s any cancer hanging out in there. So this nurse brings in the head-hancho doctor to take a look. Before she arrived, the nurse warned me, “she pushes a lot harder than me, so be ready.” The doc was a slight woman with fierce angular features. The nurse and head-hancho were talking quietly to themselves while looking at the screen. That’s never comforting. Come on, tell me what you’re saying and seeing! I’m right herrrrre.

Then the doc starts pushing the contraption all around. It hurts to have the mass pressed on (which I think is supposed to be a sign that it’s not cancerous actually… I heard?). She speaks in some Russian-like accent as she aggressively interacts with my breast. Sheesh, we just met, doc.

Long story short, or maybe not so short, she couldn’t ever get a view of cancer. I learned that if I wanted to really find out if I had cancer, I’d have to get a biopsy and all that jazz. I also learned that mammograms and ultrasounds are really expensive even with insurance. Which made me decide to not proceed with more tests because frankly I don’t want to pay for them nor do I really have the means to do so.

I also learned that when you have really dense breast tissue, and the head-hancho doctor can’t see cancer but they don’t exactly know for sure, for sure, they will send you a letter in the mail that explains: ‘We couldn’t find cancer, but you still might have cancer, so don’t sue us if you end up having cancer. And consult with your doctor. But just don’t sue us. See, here, now you can’t because we sent you this here letter warning you that you might have cancer, we just couldn’t see it because of your abnormally dense breasts.’

Some of you may be thinking, ‘That’s rather irresponsible or stupid or ridiculous. Don’t be such a boob, Mary-Margaret, just go ahead and really figure out if you have cancer.’ But.. I’m pretty sure I don’t. And no one is making me go get a biopsy, as in doctors aren’t forcing me to. And lots of people have masses in their breasts that mean no harm. And I think I would be losing weight if I had cancer, but I think I’m gaining weight. Also, again, everything is expensive. And our healthcare system is a a bit of a mess.

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Back to regular programming of the show: i.e. discussing the stuff that’s really driving me bananas.

Whatever I’m suffering from, no regular family doctor, naturopath or allergist has been able to figure out. I’ve realized that if you can’t put a name to something, people generally don’t care too much. If you have an official name for it, a person can put it in a box and think of it a certain way. We like to know what things are and be able to identify what they mean and how they fit into our world. Hence why I am a street-wandering orphan in the healthcare system.

My stuff doesn’t really have a name. It’s a combination of all kinds of poorly-functioning body systems. Or maybe I should say my body is just confused. Or it’s trying to tell me something. Yes, she’s just confused so she’s attacking herself. Kind of like a scared, deranged animal in a cage, that slams its body against the walls, trying to run out of the cage only to once again crash and crack its face into metal bars, ripping fur off its body, scratching, tearing at its own skin. That’s me.

Me.

One of the aspects of my issues that drives me absolutely [I want to cuss right here] insane, are my skin issues. Some would say its severe eczema. ‘Oh, eczema, that’s just a little dry skin or rash,’ you say. ‘That’s what babies have sometimes,’ ‘Just moisturize more.’ ‘Have you used coconut oil, Mary-Margaret?’

This makes me want to slam through a wall like the Kool-aid man.

IT’S NOT JUST DRY SKIN. And this is not eczema. It is and it isn’t. It’s an allergic reaction to foods I eat, to anything I drink. When a hair from my head touches me, I get itchy and sometimes break out in hives. Water can make me break out in hives. Sweating makes me want to tear and rip my skin entirely off my body and never put it back on. I can’t work out anymore. I can’t take showers without wanting to scream and perhaps without busting a blood vessel, as we’ve learned.

As I’ve said, it keeps me up all night. I never sleep more than an hour in a row, and often I don’t sleep more than 30 minutes at a time. Every blanket is uncomfortable. My temperature regulation is all kinds of off. I don’t want anything to touch me. It hurts for anything to touch my skin. It hurts to turn my neck or to have my legs and arms bent a certain way.

I generally sleep for about one to five hours per night. For nearly 11 months now, it’s been this way. No, really, that’s all. Usually around three hours. Lately about two hours. That one to five hours of sleep is gathered over a long period of time of me tossing, turning, ripping blankets off of me, holding ice packs against my skin, laying wet towels on me, slathering all kinds of skin remedies all over my body, crying, scratching, bleeding.

And let me tell you, things get pretty darn interesting when you’re sleep-deprived every single day of your existence and you go to work and interact with the public. (*Since first writing this, I had to quit my in-person job because everything with my health has gotten too out of hand and unpredictable. Yes, really. Sigh.). When you haven’t slept, things can be extraordinarily funny that aren’t actually funny at all. It’s great! Things can be unbelievably sentimental and inspiring. Awwwwww. I looked up in the sky a few days ago and saw a hawk or some such bird flying, and I just immediately started crying (whilst walking down a busy street) because I thought: ‘Wow, he’s so majestic. And life is beautiful.’

But it’s not all fun and games, folks. My brain also has way less patience. Sure, I can somehow manage to fake it at work. But I usually feel like flipping over tables and/or just running out the door because sometimes nothing seems to matter when you haven’t slept and are probably borderline secretly psychotic. (I say this in a sort of joking way, as I’m sure I’m fine, and I’m not trying to downplay those who are indeed psychotic. I only bring it up because there are studies that show major sleep deprivation lends itself to psychosis.) I’m fine. How are you?

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I can’t be within a ten foot radius of a dog, cat, horse or hamster without having an allergic reaction. I can’t let water touch me unless I intensely moisturize right after (hand washing has destroyed me during this pandemic, let me tell ya).

I’m also seemingly allergic to smells, fragrances… like just in the air. I smell a strong perfume or cologne and my body suddenly says, “Now time bring out hives. Mister Hives want say hello to Miss Fragrance.’

I’m not sure why my body talks like a cave man, but she does. Clearly, she has a lot to learn.

Clothes make me itchy and rub my skin raw. I have to choose each item of clothing specifically if I want to actually remain in a semi-bearable state. Which means I have to wear loose clothing. which also means, I have to choose each day: Do I want to look cute today? or do I want to look like I’m wearing a sheet for a shirt and trash bags as pants?’

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My suffering usually goes unseen by most individuals. Sometimes I’ll look like I’m strung out on some kind of drugs just haphazardly scratching my skin. ‘Hello, I’m Mary-Margaret and I’m on crack. But not really, a leaf just touched my skin, so now I have a monstrous weeping rash all over my body.’

Apparently my cortisol levels or regulation of cortisol is out of whack, which connects to my temperature regulation, sleep/wake cycle, stress levels, blood pressure, weight gain/loss (I’m on the gaining side, I’d say). According to good ol’ WebMd, “Think of cortisol as nature’s built-in alarm system. It’s your body’s main stress hormone. It works with certain parts of your brain to control your mood, motivation, and fear. Your adrenal glands -- triangle-shaped organs at the top of your kidneys -- make cortisol.”

At night, my body tends to be in fight or flight mode, when I shouldn’t be flying, I should be lying. I tend to shake uncontrollably whilst simultaneously being unbearably itchy. My hands become entities of their own and scratch with no abandon, as if there are no consequences, as if they don’t have to go to work the next day and show everyone the pretty red, bloodied marks they’ve made all over my body that also has to go to work.

My inflamed eye area has aged me to that of a 72-year-old woman who’s smoked all her life and thinks French Fries are a vegetable.

Speaking of vegetables. Some people think part of what is wrong with me is that I’ve been poisoned by all the chemicals that now reside in our food. Pesticides, glyphosate and all such things.

I definitely think this could be a contributing factor.

Some people think it’s because I’ve been vegan for seven years. Or “plant-based” as I like to say, which sounds even more pretentious than ‘vegan.’ Maybe that has contributed, maybe, BUT my husband has been vegan longer than I, and he’s just flipping fine. And so are a millions of other vegan people (Yes, vegans are people too, I think?). But also (drum roll, please)…….. I’ve tried eating meat again lately. There I said it. Pretentious organic grass-fed beef, to be exact, prescribed by my Alternative Medicine doctor. And some local, organic eggs. [Don’t worry people, I saw regular doctors too.]

***BREAKING NEWS : This just in! Mary-Margaret may have a nickel allergy! which means her plant-based diet high in whole grains, beans and nuts MAY INDEED be contributing to her ailments.*** [We made this potential discovery after I’d already written this piece.]

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Let’s now flip the channel to one of the times I had acupuncture done.

(I’m actually still going to acupuncture some. I’m not sure if it helps at all. But I’m going. #desperate)

I go to a place in East Nashville that is certainly not the fanciest (but everyone is kind and helpful). There’s a whole bunch of humans lying in recliners, often asleep whilst needles protrude from various areas and extremities—all in the same room. It’s pretty odd-looking, really. There’s soft meditation music playing and dimly lit lights that look sort of like ginormous snowman lanterns sitting on the floor staring at you while you lay there like a slug.

During one of my first few sessions of acupuncture, I found myself getting extraordinarily uncomfortable after some long-feeling amount of time. I had to pee like a pregnant lady needs to pee, as in RIGHT NOW. This went on for some time. I shifted around, tried to not pee in this lazy-boy-like chair. I tried to meditate, chastising myself for not being able to reach inner peace, tranquility and self-actualization in what shouldn’t be more than 45 minutes to an hour. (They come get you after that allotted time. Supposedly.)

I had reached my bladders bursting point, and the rest of my body wanted to explode out of this stagnant position. So I finally sat up and someone came to pull the needles out of my bod. They didn’t act like anything was off, and I just walked out in search of a bathroom. Whilst I sat in the stall releasing all the urine one could possibly hold (don’t you hate the word ‘urine’? Ew.), I glanced at my phone to see missed calls and a text from my husband asking if I was okay, worried. And yes, I held my phone while in a stall of a public restroom. Don’t even play, you do it too.

Upon looking at the time, I discovered I was left lying in the chair with needles sticking out of my body for over two hours and fifteen minutes.

I thought this was going to be a much more exciting story, but it wasn’t. But that’s a really stinking long time to have to lie still while needles stick in you, that’s all.

______________

And now we’re zipping over to some Alternative Medicine stuff.

Have any of you ever heard of muscle testing or had it performed on you? It’s difficult to explain but it’s this way of determining weaknesses in the body, sensitivities and allergies to food, supplements, etc. I’m sure there’s validity to it, there is, but.. it just feels hokey. (But again! There’s legitimacy to it. It’s applied kinesiology. I’m not meaning to demean the method.)

For my muscle testing… I hold out my arm as the doc presses down on my arm at various times while she simultaneously presses certain areas of my body or holds a food or pill or supplement against my body to see if my arm drops down more while she’s pushing down.  If my arm drops down, as in it gets weaker when she pushes, then that means I have a weakness in what ever organ, body part she was also pressing on, or have an allergy, sensitivity, aversion to whatever food, herb, supplement she was testing.  Hmmmm, I explained that horribly.  Basically what I wanted to say was that often times, it felt like she was pushing my arm down more at certain times and I wasn’t actually the one reacting to certain things.  I’m sure that’s not true… it just felt rather not foolproof.

Basically, she determined I have all these toxins in my body, heavy metals, bad things, accumulated over the years, from walking on ground laden with pesticides, chemicals, insecticides (likely on our family farm I grew up beeboppin’ around barefoot on, and also from eating mounds of vegetables and fruit doused in crap, and from absorbing all the synthetic, man-made unnatural, chemical’y things from cosmetics, lotions, soaps, shampoos, plastics and all the like).  And from when I took tetracycline in high school for my skin. And when I’ve used oral steroids (not the weight-lifting kind), received steroid shots, used steroid creams (though I kept these to a minimum since I heard they were detrimental to your skin) and all kinds of fun things. This may sound like conspiracy, but THIS I actually believe to be true. I think most of us have been contaminated, we just all react differently and in different ways.

The alternative medicine doc recommended I take a bucketload of supplements that all happen to be sold in the office of this particular practice. (I’m sure they’re legit, it just didn’t sit right with me). But almost literally a bucketload, folks. I did it for a bit, but once my body had fully FULLY turned red from the “detox” and the supplement load jumped to 50 pills a day (consisting of about 16 different supplements), I had to pass. I canceled all future appointments. But before that, in the moment, I purchased all the stinking pills out of desperation, and now they’re sitting in a brown paper bag under my bathroom sink laughing at me. Everyday.

_________________

Allergy Shots

Many people and doctors (not that doctors aren’t people) were certain that allergy shots would majorly help with all my allergic reactions. So I had some allergy patch testing done on my back, and my skin lit up like a Christmas tree strung with only red pulsing bulbs. Beautiful.

So boom. Allergy shots commence once per week. Long story short, I went for many months and my skin and allergies progressively got worse. I kept thinking, ‘This is supposed to happen. My body is acclimating. This is fine. This is fine. I want to burn my skin off, but this is fine.’

The nurse administering the shots started questioning how I was doing since I looked like I had been stung by bees all over my body. I came in one day, they looked at my skin and refused to give me the shot and scheduled me an impromptu appointment with the main doctor right there on the spot.

Multiple staff members looked at my skin and asked me questions, ‘what laundry detergent do you use?’ ‘Have you considered natural alternatives for skin care products?’ (OH MY GOODNESS. Yes I f***ing have.) ‘Are you moisturizing'?’ (Inner screaming and punching. I know they’re just trying to help though). ‘Have you thought about cutting out dairy and gluten?’ (Both of which I do not consume. And my whole life revolves around what I can and can’t eat) ‘Are you sure you haven’t been rubbing poison ivy on your body?’ ‘Have you considered living in a bubble?’

Ok, they didn’t ask the last two questions. But at the end of the appointment, they refused to treat me any further with allergy shots.

____________________

Random things…

I’ve done oatmeal baths, baking soda baths, bleach baths (yes, it’s a thing), epsom salt baths and bentonite clay baths. I’ve tried an infrared sauna (holy cannoli, the sweating made me unbearably itchy itcherooskis). I have HEPA filters in my home, all natural cleaning products, all natural hair and skin products. Like really natural.

I’m removing non-stick pans because I heard chemicals can leech out of them into your food (Go watch the movie Dark Waters, a true story about a lawsuit concerning Teflon/Dupont. The chemical discussed has since been removed as of 2013, but there are other concerning chemicals within. These are things our grandparents didn’t have to deal with.)

I’m eating all organic, I’ve taken out most grains, obviously I’m gluten-free and dairy-free, I completely took fruit out for a while and now have it minimally (because I read that any type of sugar can cause little bits of inflammation). I don’t consume soy, corn, gluten or peanuts. I have a filtered shower head….

___________________

I recently went to another doctor to have a smattering of bloodwork done. At the end of my visit with this doc, I asked, “Do you think any of this could be happening because of environmental reasons, because of what we’re spraying on our crops, absorbing weird chemicals and such?”
Immediately she said, “Yes, definitely, I think you’re at the forefront of what’s going to happen to a lot of people,” that is, diseases caused or exacerbated by our environment, from what we’re putting in the soil, on the crops, and because chemicals and other toxic substances we’re putting into products, because of what we’ve leeched from the soil and because of what we’re adding to products, etc.

“I’m only saying this because you asked,” she laughed after explaining what we do in the healthcare, agriculture, food and pharmaceutical industries is sometimes nonsensical.

Last night, I ate blueberries and oats, and all through the night I was itching and scratching like a mad woman, and after a fitful two hours of sleep gathered over a ten hour period, I awoke with my eyes nearly swollen shut and expansive purply red circles hugging my eyes. Something is wrong with my body, and maybe something is also very wrong with the blueberries and oats. Or the soil they’re grown in, perhaps.

__________________

I meant to write about how this whole experience has changed my life, and how I view everything so differently now.

And I do. It has changed me, and I hope that even if I eventually heal from this, I’ll maintain the new perspective, that I will still be unbelievably grateful for the day I can have a cup of coffee without worry of my body’s reaction, that I will still appreciate my legs and how they carry me through life even if it sometimes hurts to move them, that I’ll understand and fully realize that how we look and what we can do with our body DOES NOT DEFINE US. I still have to tell myself this over and over again, after being someone who ran, biked and hiked all the time. Someone who used to jump off bridges, rock quarries and waterfalls into a wrap-around blankets of water. Someone who ran up and down steep underpasses just for the fun of it. Someone who solo-camped all over the states in the middle of deserts and atop mountains.

I don’t want to feel sorry for myself or seek a pity party. Which some of this may seem as such. But I still feel these things, whether I should feel them or not.

This phase of my life has been the most difficult period in my thirty years on earth. But, I feel like it’s been the most revealing period of my tenure. I’m learning a grand amount about myself, about what matters, what I can endure. I’ve experienced extraordinary kindnesses from friends, family, coworkers and sometimes strangers. I am more grateful for the moments and hours that I feel good in my body. I’m thankful for all that my body can still do.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s some piece of me that is perpetuating this suffering… because as horrible as it is, in some ways it makes me feel more alive than ever, more connected to my body and the rest of the world. It forces me to understand and acknowledge what is truly important. But I also feel like it has stripped the life from me. I feel like a large piece of me has been locked away in some underground dungeon, and I can’t see my way out. I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m failing the people who are closest to me. I feel guilty being the sick wife who can’t do much of anything right now. Feelings, feelings, feelings. Bleh.

But I was told not to think or say such things—by a couple of people, by one of the persons I most feel guilty toward (If it’s even possible to feel guilty ‘toward’ someone). In the past, whenever grappling with something difficult, I’ve always just run away from others.

Like a sick dog who runs away, hides under a house, to die. Not to be dramatic or anything. But I’m not really in a phase of life where it’s acceptable to just run away from everyone. (Not that it’s ever exactly acceptable or recommended.)

From my journal: January 26th, 2021, being dramatic and stuff:

“I feel soft today. Softened. I’m moving softly and feeling things softly.  Whenever I am in great pain, I must move through the world this way.  But it’s not all terrible, I tell you, it’s not.  It slows me down, helps me to notice things, to appreciate, to care only about what one should care about.”

_________________

As I said, sometimes I relish being in this state. It’s like being in a state of hypersensitivity every minute, every second, everyday. I’m on. I’m alert. It hurts. But it makes everything magnificent that before was just mundane.

Pain has a way of doing that to us—making us feel more alive, like we’re really in this, everything is more acute, every detail and delicate piece is laced and etched into our being. Without the pain and heartache, chaos, brokenness, what would life really be? This is the stuff of life.

Humans were built for this. We have endured unimaginable pains and grief and wars. I don’t think we learn too much when things are going all happy, go-lucky all the time. Yes, we sure need those bright yellowy phases, but the shadowed, excruciating parts carve a way to unimaginable joy and awe. We just have to go looking for that grandeur sometimes.

(Man, I sure am sounding a touch dramatic.)

I’m not saying it doesn’t totally stink in the moments and years of tribulation. Because it does. And it doesn’t feel all poetic and lovely when you’re awake, alone, in pain, in the middle of the quiet night, the whole night, for the 246th night in a row.

___________________ 

This past year, we have been stretched beyond our capabilities, beyond our breaking point, or rather, the breaking point we thought we had.  But we’re still going.  We’re still showing up.  Maybe it’s not the prettiest, maybe it’s chaotic and messy and terrible and uncomfortable and we just want it to end. But we’re still here. Maybe we’ve lost some loved ones, lost pieces of our lives and replaced those pieces with another one. But if you’re reading this, you’re still here.

Tony Robbins (ol’ T-Rob) once asked Nelson Mandela, who had been unjustly imprisoned for 27 years, how he survived during all of that time. Mandela said, “I didn’t survive. I was preparing.” I’m certainly not comparing my situation or yours to the apartheid revolutionary, philanthropist, political leader Nelson Mandela’s. But I think that’s what suffering is for all of us. It’s building armor—the good kind, it’s preparing us for whatever we are to encounter and grapple with next, it’s strengthening us. We sure as heck have been preparing this past year—all of us collectively, around the world. And you’ve probably been on your own specific arduous expedition. We aren’t just surviving though. We are learning and growing and discovering and realizing we have more to give and more to do and be. We can push more, even if it hurts like hell.

So I’m here to keep on pushing and to keep on showing up. Are you?

______________________

Whoops that went on a tangent. If you’ve made it this far in my writing, you deserve a medal for this arduous reading expedition.

I don’t feel like writing more, so I’m just going to end it …..here.

Cheers, and thank you for showing up.

I’m an illness orphan: mysterious health issues, revealed. Part Two.

(If you have not read Part One of this article, please do so. Pretty please. You won’t regret it. I mean, probably not.)

*********

My suffering usually goes unseen by most individuals. But sometimes I’ll look like I’m strung out on some kind of drugs just haphazardly scratching my skin. ‘Hello, I’m Mary-Margaret and I’m on crack. But not really, a leaf just touched my skin, so now I have a monstrous weeping rash all over my body.’

Apparently my cortisol levels or regulation of cortisol is out of whack, which connects to my temperature regulation, sleep/wake cycle, stress levels, blood pressure, weight gain/loss (I’m on the gaining side, I’d say). According to good ol’ WebMd, “Think of cortisol as nature’s built-in alarm system. It’s your body’s main stress hormone. It works with certain parts of your brain to control your mood, motivation, and fear. Your adrenal glands -- triangle-shaped organs at the top of your kidneys -- make cortisol.”

At night, my body tends to be in fight or flight mode, when I shouldn’t be flying, I should be lying. I tend to shake uncontrollably whilst simultaneously being unbearably itchy. My hands become entities of their own and scratch with no abandon, as if there are no consequences, as if they don’t have to go to work the next day and show everyone the pretty red, bloodied marks they’ve made all over my body.

My inflamed eye area has aged me to that of a 72-year-old woman who’s smoked all her life and thinks French Fries are a vegetable.

Speaking of vegetables. Some people think part of what is wrong with me is that I’ve been poisoned by all the chemicals that now reside in our food. Pesticides, glyphosate and all such things.

I definitely think this could be a contributing factor.

Some people think it’s because I’ve been vegan for seven years. Or “plant-based” as I like to say, which sounds even more pretentious than ‘vegan.’ Maybe that has contributed, maybe, BUT my husband has been vegan longer than I, and he’s just flipping fine. And so are a millions of other vegan people (Yes, vegans are people too. I think?). But also (drum roll, please)…….. I’ve tried eating meat again lately. There I said it. Pretentious organic grass-fed beef, to be exact, prescribed by my Alternative Medicine doctor. And some local, organic eggs. [Don’t worry people, I saw regular doctors too.]

Let’s now flip the channel to one of the times I had acupuncture done.

(I’m actually still going to acupuncture some. I’m not sure if it helps at all. But I’m going. #desperate)

I go to a place in East Nashville that is certainly not the fanciest (but everyone is kind and helpful). There’s a whole bunch of humans lying in recliners, often asleep whilst needles protrude from various areas and extremities—all in the same room. It’s pretty odd-looking, really. There’s soft meditation music playing and dimly lit lights that look sort of like ginormous snowman lanterns sitting on the floor staring at you while you lay there like a slug.

During one of my first few sessions of acupuncture, I found myself getting extraordinarily uncomfortable after some long-feeling amount of time. I had to pee like a pregnant lady needs to pee, as in RIGHT NOW. This went on for some time. I shifted around, tried to not pee in this lazy-boy-like chair. I tried to meditate, chastising myself for not being able to reach inner peace, tranquility and self-actualization in what shouldn’t be more than 45 minutes to an hour. (They come get you after that allotted time. Supposedly.)

I had reached my bladders bursting point, and the rest of my body wanted to explode out of this stagnant position. So I finally sat up and someone came to pull the needles out of my bod. They didn’t act like anything was off, and I just walked out in search of a bathroom. Whilst I sat in the stall releasing all the urine one could possibly hold (don’t you hate the word ‘urine’? Ew.), I glanced at my phone to see missed calls and a text from my husband asking if I was okay, worried. And yes, I held my phone while in a stall of a public restroom. Don’t even play, you do it too.

Upon looking at the time, I discovered I was left lying in the chair with needles sticking out of my body for over two hours and fifteen minutes.

I thought this was going to be a much more exciting story, but it wasn’t. But that’s a really stinking long time to have to lie still while needles stick in you, that’s all.

______________

And now we’re zipping over to some Alternative Medicine stuff.

Have any of you ever heard of muscle testing or had it performed on you? It’s difficult to explain but it’s this way of determining weaknesses in the body, sensitivities and allergies to food, supplements, etc. I’m sure there’s validity to it, there is, but.. it just feels hokey. (But again! There’s legitimacy to it. It’s applied kinesiology. I’m not meaning to demean the method.)

For my muscle testing… I hold out my arm as the doc presses down on my arm at various times while she simultaneously presses certain areas of my body or holds a food or pill or supplement against my body to see if my arm drops down more while she’s pushing down.  If my arm drops down, as in it gets weaker when she pushes, then that means I have a weakness in what ever organ, body part she was also pressing on, or have an allergy, sensitivity, aversion to whatever food, herb, supplement she was testing.  Hmmmm, I explained that horribly.  Basically what I wanted to say was that often times, it felt like she was pushing my arm down more at certain times and I wasn’t actually the one reacting to certain things.  I’m sure that’s not true… it just felt rather not foolproof.

Basically, she determined I have all these toxins in my body, heavy metals, bad things, accumulated over the years, from walking on ground laden with pesticides, chemicals, insecticides (likely on our family farm I grew up beeboppin’ around barefoot on, and also from eating mounds of vegetables and fruit doused in crap, and from absorbing all the synthetic, man-made unnatural, chemical’y things from cosmetics, lotions, soaps, shampoos, plastics and all the like).  And from when I took tetracycline in high school for my skin. And when I’ve used oral steroids (not the weight-lifting kind), received steroid shots, used steroid creams (though I kept these to a minimum since I heard they were detrimental to your skin) and all kinds of fun things. This may sound like conspiracy, but THIS I actually believe to be true. I think most of us have been contaminated, we just all react differently and in different ways.

The alternative medicine doc recommended I take a bucketload of supplements that all happen to be sold in the office of this particular practice. (I’m sure they’re legit, it just didn’t sit right with me). But almost literally a bucketload, folks. I did it for a bit, but once my body had fully FULLY turned red from the “detox” and the supplement load jumped to 50 pills a day (consisting of about 16 different supplements), I had to pass. I canceled all future appointments. But before that, in the moment, I purchased all the stinking pills out of desperation, and now they’re sitting in a brown paper bag under my bathroom sink laughing at me. Everyday.

_________________

Allergy Shots

Many people and doctors (not that doctors aren’t people) were certain that allergy shots would majorly help with all my allergic reactions. So I had some allergy patch testing done on my back, and my skin lit up like a Christmas tree strung with only red pulsing bulbs. Beautiful.

So boom. Allergy shots commence once per week. Long story short, I went for many months and my skin and allergies progressively got worse. I kept thinking, ‘This is supposed to happen. My body is acclimating. This is fine. This is fine. I want to burn my skin off, but this is fine.’

The nurse administering the shots started questioning how I was doing since I looked like I had been stung by bees all over my body. I came in one day, they looked at my skin and refused to give me the shot and scheduled me an impromptu appointment with the main doctor right there on the spot.

Multiple staff members looked at my skin and asked me questions, ‘what laundry detergent do you use?’ ‘Have you considered natural alternatives for skin care products?’ (OH MY GOODNESS. Yes I f***ing have.) ‘Are you moisturizing'?’ (Inner screaming and punching. I know they’re just trying to help though). ‘Have you thought about cutting out dairy and gluten?’ (Both of which I do not consume. And my whole life revolves around what I can and can’t eat) ‘Are you sure you haven’t been rubbing poison ivy on your body?’ ‘Have you considered living in a bubble?’

Ok, they didn’t ask the last two questions. But at the end of the appointment, they refused to treat me any further with allergy shots.

____________________

Random things…

I’ve done oatmeal baths, baking soda baths, bleach baths (yes, it’s a thing), epsom salt baths and bentonite clay baths. I’ve tried an infrared sauna (holy cannoli, the sweating made me unbearably itchy itcherooskis). I have HEPA filters in my home, all natural cleaning products, all natural hair and skin products. Like really natural.

I’m removing non-stick pans because I heard chemicals can leech out of them into your food (Go watch the movie Dark Waters, a true story about a lawsuit concerning Teflon/Dupont. The chemical discussed has since been removed as of 2013, but there are other concerning chemicals within. These are things our grandparents didn’t have to deal with.)

I’m eating all organic, I’ve taken out most grains, obviously I’m gluten-free and dairy-free, I completely took fruit out for a while and now have it minimally (because I read that any type of sugar can cause little bits of inflammation). I don’t consume soy, corn, gluten or peanuts. I have a filtered shower head….

I’m getting bored listing all of these things, so I’m going to stop.

___________________

Journal entry from January 24th, 2021:

“The other night I was sitting on the couch with Dave whilst white towels wrapped around the middle of my legs, strapped down with duct tape. Yes, I know. I’ll explain.

I often have to wrap gauze and bandages and, in this case, towels around my legs and arms and wrists because my skin is so violently inflamed, cracked, burned, bleeding, oozing, aching that I have to slather ointment and antibiotic cream all over them, and wrap stuff around them just so I can bearably move throughout my home and so I don’t get stuff on my clothes and furniture. (Is this too much info?)

My skin is taut like a leather drum’s skin, but not in a bounce-back, youth-like way, but in a way that any bit of bend or fold will surely rip it open. Which is exactly what my skin often does when I bend my legs, arms, wrists, when I turn or crane my neck, the skin slits and rips, tears, bleeds, oozes.

Sometimes I look like I’m going to play volleyball or go rollerblading in the park, since the wraps look a bit like knee pads, etc. Sometimes it’s difficult to bend my arm to drink some water because of the bandages. Sometimes it’s difficult just because it hurts too much to bend body parts in general. Sometimes it’s difficult to bend down and pick something up off the floor because I know bending my legs will feel like thousands of tiny paper-cuts suddenly and savagely slitting slices all over my legs.

Anyway, back to the couch, Dave was looking at his phone, kind of subtly covering up what he was looking at, appearing mischievous.

He turns to me and says, “I found a picture of you on the internet!” And then proceeds to shove a photo toward me of a ginormous professional basketball player with enormous white knee pads on, and then he zooms in on the legs and knee pads, just to make sure I understood that this was supposed to be me. He, of course, is making fun of the fact that I’m waddling around our apartment with towels tamped down with duct tape on my legs.”

This is supposed to be funny. I guess if you have to tell people something is funny, that’s not such a great sign, eh? It’s funny because I just have to laugh at what’s happening. Maybe it’s a laugh until you cry kind of deal, but laughing nonetheless.

___________________

I try to convince myself that if I just don’t acknowledge these issues, then they won’t be real.

___________________

I recently went to another doctor to have a smattering of bloodwork done. At the end of my visit with this doc, I asked, “Do you think any of this could be happening because of environmental reasons, because of what we’re spraying on our crops, absorbing weird chemicals and such?”
Immediately she said, “Yes, definitely, I think you’re at the forefront of what’s going to happen to a lot of people,” that is, diseases caused or exacerbated by our environment, from what we’re putting in the soil, on the crops, and because chemicals and other toxic substances we’re putting into products, because of what we’ve leeched from the soil and because of what we’re adding to products, etc.

“I’m only saying this because you asked,” she laughed after explaining what we do in the healthcare, agriculture, food and pharmaceutical industries is sometimes nonsensical.

Last night, I ate blueberries and oats, and all through the night I was itching and scratching like a mad woman, and after a fitful two hours of sleep gathered over a ten hour period, I awoke with my eyes nearly swollen shut and expansive purply red circles hugging my eyes. Something is wrong with my body, and maybe something is also very wrong with the blueberries and oats. Or the soil they’re grown in, perhaps.

__________________

I meant to write about how this whole experience has changed my life, and how I view everything so differently now.

And I do. It has changed me, and I hope that even if I eventually heal from this, I’ll maintain the new perspective, that I will still be unbelievably grateful for the day I can have a cup of coffee without worry of my body’s reaction, that I will still appreciate my legs and how they carry me through life even if it sometimes hurts to move them, that I’ll understand and fully realize that how we look and what we can do with our body DOES NOT DEFINE US. I still have to tell myself this over and over again, after being someone who ran, biked and hiked all the time. Someone who used to jump off bridges, rock quarries and waterfalls into a wrap-around blankets of water. Someone who ran up and down steep underpasses just for the fun of it. Someone who solo-camped all over the states in the middle of deserts and atop mountains.

I don’t want to feel sorry for myself or seek a pity party. Which some of this may seem as such. But I still feel these things, whether I should feel them or not.

This phase of my life has been the most difficult period in my thirty years on earth. But, I feel like it’s been the most revealing period of my tenure. I’m learning a grand amount about myself, about what matters, what I can endure. I’ve experienced extraordinary kindnesses from friends, family, coworkers and sometimes strangers. I am more grateful for the moments and hours that I feel good in my body. I’m thankful for all that my body can still do.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s some piece of me that is perpetuating this suffering… because as horrible as it is, in some ways it makes me feel more alive than ever, more connected to my body and the rest of the world. It forces me to understand and acknowledge what is truly important. But I also feel like it has stripped the life from me. I feel like a large piece of me has been locked away in some underground dungeon, and I can’t see my way out. I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m failing the people who are closest to me. I feel guilty being the sick wife who can’t do much of anything right now. Feelings, feelings, feelings. Bleh.

But I was told not to think or say such things—by a couple of people, by one of the persons I most feel guilty toward. In the past, whenever grappling with something difficult, I’ve always just run away from others.

Like a sick dog who runs away, hides under a house, to die. Not to be dramatic or anything. But I’m not really in a phase of life where it’s acceptable to just run away from everyone. (Not that it’s ever exactly acceptable or recommended.)

From my journal: January 26th, 2021, being dramatic and stuff:

“I feel soft today. Softened. I’m moving softly and feeling things softly.  Whenever I am in great pain, I must move through the world this way.  But it’s not all terrible, I tell you, it’s not.  It slows me down, helps me to notice things, to appreciate, to care only about what one should care about.”

_________________

As I said, sometimes I relish being in this state. It’s like being in a state of hypersensitivity every minute, every second, everyday. I’m on. I’m alert. It hurts. But it makes everything magnificent that before was just mundane.

Pain has a way of doing that to us—making us feel more alive, like we’re really in this, everything is more acute, every detail and delicate piece is laced and etched into our being. Without the pain and heartache, chaos, brokenness, what would life really be? This is the stuff of life.

Humans were built for this. We have endured unimaginable pains and grief and wars. I don’t think we learn too much when things are going all happy, go-lucky all the time. Yes, we sure need those bright yellowy phases, but the shadowed, excruciating parts carve a way to unimaginable joy and awe. We just have to go looking for that grandeur sometimes.

(Man, I sure am sounding a touch dramatic.)

I’m not saying it doesn’t totally stink in the moments and years of tribulation. Because it does. And it doesn’t feel all poetic and lovely when you’re awake, alone, in pain, in the middle of the quiet night, the whole night, for the 246th night in a row.

___________________ 

This past year, enduring the repercussions of the pandemic, all of us—you and I—have been stretched beyond our capabilities, beyond our breaking point, or rather, the breaking point we thought we had.  But we’re still going.  We’re still showing up.  Maybe it’s not the prettiest, maybe it’s chaotic and messy and terrible and uncomfortable and we just want it to end. But we’re still here. Maybe we’ve lost some loved ones, lost pieces of our lives and replaced those pieces with another one. But if you’re reading this, you’re still here.

Tony Robbins (ol’ T-Rob) once asked Nelson Mandela, who had been unjustly imprisoned for 27 years, how he survived during all of that time. Mandela said, “I didn’t survive. I was preparing.” I’m certainly not comparing my situation or yours to the apartheid revolutionary, philanthropist, political leader Nelson Mandela’s. But I think that’s what suffering is for all of us. It’s building armor—the good kind, it’s preparing us for whatever we are to encounter and grapple with next, it’s strengthening us. We sure as heck have been preparing this past year—all of us collectively, around the world. And you’ve probably been on your own specific arduous expedition. We aren’t just surviving though. We are learning and growing and discovering and realizing we have more to give and more to do and be. We can push more, even if it hurts like hell.

So I’m here to keep on pushing and to keep on showing up. Are you?

If you’ve made it this far in my writing, you deserve a medal for this arduous reading expedition.

Cheers, and thank you for showing up.

A poem by me. 'I've been going through this thing.'

I’ve been going through this thing.

It feels like forever, but

Every day I awake with hope 

It’s a weird quirk of the mind, my mind, maybe yours.

This is the day it’s going to go

My way has been interrupted by a parasite

Stinging its bones into my days and nights

Shining through the darkness, like an incessant blinking light

Awake, awake, awake.

Collapsing finally, on the couch, a hollowed

Porcelain doll, my eyes roll back,

Everything slows and

Even with the slightest hush of rest

I awake everyday with hope

Ah, how wholesome, a heart-warming sugary glaze

Wait.   

A lump in my throat, in my chest

Too tired to impress, the ropes around my 

Chest compress into

A ball of distraction

Disruption in the plans I made

I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I can do it. Me

I don’t need you, I’m self-sustained, unconstrained.

Like a chipped bowl, no longer pristine,

Leave the bygone dish in the cupboard, once unencumbered by pain,

Turn it just so, the bad side to the back, disguise its unsightly flack.

Its flaws must be chiseled off.

Don’t let life’s guests see who you really are

Your broken, tattered, nicked, scratched paint

Only the finest china for show

Only a buffed, shined, glossy daze of reality

Blurred, out of focus. Don’t get too close.

Glasses unbroken. Perfection glows.

Sigh.

I’ve been going through this thing.

You can’t hide the infection, not really.

It grows no matter how much you ignore, crush down, bury it

Doesn’t incinerate but proliferates, the more you hide it,

The more you shew it from the light,

It grows in the darkness, alone in the drapery.

We’re blind to what we don’t want to see.

So are they.

I’ve been going through this thing.

I guess it doesn’t have to be alone.

Sigh.

I awake everyday with hope.

It’s like clicking refresh on Google chrome

Like jumper cables, negative to positive to hope

Turn off, turn on, reboot.

The night goes, the morning shows

A new view

Hold this button and that button together for ten seconds.

Reset. Hello.

Refreshed in mind frame

The architect of my brain must be a magician,

Defeat and depress perform a disappearing act

Everyday

I awake with hope

And the day unfolds.

Air thickens, slithering around my skin tightening the strings, my tendons pulled taut .

It’s too much, it’s too much, the cacophony of 

Interruption drones like a platoon of locusts surrounding my skull, unable to disable the volume, sound off, sound off, sound off 

The distress call

Me when it’s over.

I’ve been going through this thing

And so have you

Or maybe yours isn’t yet

Or happened in the past

Or will happen  

Again.

This, this whole going through things,

We all do.

Yet we prefer to pretend we’re different,

Disconnected from our connection of human existence

But your blood runs just like mine and hers and theirs

Arteries away, veins to the heart.

But every day I awake with hope

I watch your battles and theirs, and I feel hope.

I watch your struggle, yet you’re still there,

Yes, you. Over there in the corner.

Your chest still falls and rises

Like the cliché sun and tides,

Like the stock market, your weight, like mine.

Hope is still showing up

Just like you, and hopefully me,

So I feel hope.

I feel it my fingertips when I touch the petals I grew on my balcony

Across from the dumpsters, across from the concrete boxes and fields,

And the man in the tent,

In front of the window where I watch strangers’ life happen.

 Nightfall,

When hope slides under my bedroom door, wandering the apartment floors until morning,

The dark matter takes over again

Slithering and tangling its velvety finger ropes around my optimism

Now entwined with the girl who feels a ghost

It infiltrates me as it’s host.

I laugh at her, me, that girl who had the hope.

The one who thought today was the day of change.

I laugh, I scoff, I pity that diamond-eyed girl

Who thinks she can alter the plan

Yet again

When the morning sun or clouds or rain pour through the always slivered drapes

Plans change and rearrange,

My brain resets its bets

Nothing is set in stone, I say

This isn’t forever, this isn’t forever

It’s just a phase, you see, I tell me,

It will pass as the time

Every day I awake with hope,

Hope that I can heal

And you.

It washes over me,

Like sprinkler-running in the fresh cut grass, blades glued to your toes,

Water drops pirouetting down your cheeks,

Run.

It feels tangy and fresh like the tiny tangerine you tore with your teeth

It’s like seeing a flower for the first time

Can you imagine? Try.

It’s all new and fresh and clean and sheening with unforeseen dreams and possibility.

And then I fall down again

Because I’ve been going through this thing.

This thing keeps going.

 But I awake everyday with hope

It’s like that first sip of coffee touching your lips, onto your tongue.

It’s that new day hum, all alive with

I wake up every day with hope

It’s a weird quirk of my mind,

And I’ll take it, it’s mine.

And yours, if you’d like.

I secretly recorded a 12-minute conversation with a police officer at work. Here’s what happened.

The conversation I secretly recorded and other events as of late have made me realize how thoroughly we are entirely misunderstanding each other, not truly listening to one another, and maybe frankly we don’t want to understand the other.  Many people are feeling angry, defensive, attacked and victimized.  Some of us are feeling overwhelmed, sad, hopeful, optimistic and frightened. Slap all of that on top of living within the strangling blanket of a confusing pandemic, and that’s a gargantuan slurry of emotions.  Some people are fuming because they’re being told to wear masks, and some of us are infuriated people refuse to wear a mask in a business despite signs requiring a mask to enter.  Sigh.

I think anger and frustration is entirely necessary at times, of course, but we also need to listen to one another and ask questions.

In total, I questioned three officers over a two-day period at my workplace about mask wearing and why they weren’t abiding by our mask-wearing requirement at our business, as it was explicitly posted on the door. I recorded a 12-minute conversation with one officer, where we also discussed protests, George Floyd’s death and how the COVID pandemic is supposedly “bullshit.”

Here’s one of the first quotes from the main officer I spoke with:

“I think [COVID] is all trumped up by the democratic party. They’re trying to get Trump out of office.  It’s all bullshit, it’s all bullshit,” the officer in downtown Nashville explained to me.

And here’s another toward the end after we spoke about protests and such:

“A lot of these younger kids that got participation trophies when they were growing up, and everybody’s equal,” he said in a purposely feminine-sounding voice with intentionally pouted lips, as he clasped his hands together in a proper, prayer handsy kind of way, “They want reparations from us.  Some asshole sitting on the couch all day, watching soaps, eating bonbons, lazy as fuck, won’t get a job.”

See?  Some of you are thinking, “Yea! See! All police officers suck!  They don’t know what they’re talking about and are just angry idiots! This instance proves it!”

And others are thinking: “Gahhh, here we go again.  Some millennial getting angry at the police and republicans and Trump. These young generations act like pansies, thinking they deserve everything without working for it, thinking everyone is against them.  They don’t understand or respect what others have done for them.”

Maybe some of this is true on either side for various people, maybe none of it’s true. I think, in general, it doesn’t do us well as a society--as a community of people--to make grand sweeping judgements about large groups of the population. And no one is immune to doing this.  We’ve all done it.   

(Don’t worry, stay tuned.  I will be quoting more from the officer).

______________________ 

I originally went into journalism in college because I wanted to learn everything. Everything is fascinating.  Everyone is fascinating.  Everyone has a story, and most people’s story will break you. 

But, then I didn’t really pursue it.

After instances of citizens yelling, “You’re what’s wrong with America!” while I interviewed people standing in voting lines, I began to allow myself to be crushed by the anger and dismay people have for our media.  And I get it.  Much or perhaps most of it is biased.

I became disenchanted with all the yelling, fighting, name-calling, blaming, scream-a-thons I would witness on large news sites.

But it isn’t all like that, and I don’t think it has to be. 

I’m not writing this to yell at anyone, though sometimes I want to. Sometimes I want to flip over tables and punch a wall, but I refrain.  I’m writing to help us understand each other, and really, for me to understand more.  Perhaps you’ll gain some understanding also, as you venture on.

_______________________

What’s that you said? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over my brain coming up with what I want to say.

This following writing isn’t just about racism, Democrats vs. Republicans, police officers or George Floyd.  I’m a white person, so there is absolutely no way I can ever fully understand or know what it’s like to be black or basically anyone that is not deemed white.  Really, this writing, all my writing, is just me working through something—trying to process it all. 

I think, no, I KNOW some of us white people have never taken the time to acknowledge the inherent racism that infiltrates our Nation.

I had the mindset for a while that I wasn’t or shouldn’t be as “involved” in this…because I’m white. So I wasn’t writing or posting about any of it because I didn’t want to get in the way or say the wrong thing.  But I think because I am white, this means I AM heavily involved in all that is unfolding right now and have been in all of America’s history. All white people are. We need to talk about this, we need to ask questions, we need to question ourselves, beliefs and thought patterns. We need to question why we might feel defensive or angry.

If we don’t question what we’ve always thought, I think we’re doing a disservice to ourselves and those around us. Through any writing, interviews or videos I do or questions I pose, I am very likely going to say the wrong thing and stumble through my thoughts, words and thinking.  I’m going to put my foot and probably someone else’s foot in my mouth.  Please feel free to call me out.  Ask me questions.

We need to listen to one another and ask questions with the intention of sincerely hearing what the other person’s answer will be, instead of NOT listening and just preparing what OUR answer or comeback will be while the other person talks.

______________________

Life makes me feel like a melting marshmallow.

As I was writing the following, I happened to speak on the phone with my parents as they were driving away from the funeral of a family-friend, and we discussed two other people we know well who are grappling with extreme health issues that may defeat them (Covid-related, I should note).  This made me feel less fervent about writing this, defeated, weighed down by all the pieces that are life, like nothing matters.  This doesn’t matter, and my words don’t matter. 

Writing words for others to see always makes me feel squeamish and uncomfortable. It makes me feel like I must think I know something more than others or I think I have some wisdom to offer. But really, I just feel lost, discouraged, confused or upset sometimes, and that’s why I write. I write to think, and I write to ask questions of myself and pose questions to others.

I’m trying to remember I am writing about this because each of our lives are valuable and exquisite. These are issues about caring for one another, realizing that you and I are all in this together.  We all want to be loved, to be surrounded by loved ones at the end of life.  We all want to feel like we’ve lived a life of purpose and integrity, like we’ve left our mark and made a difference.

Recently, I asked a coworker if she ever considered writing about some very specific experiences she’s had. Her response was something like, “I don’t think it really matters what I have to say,” and “I don’t think people will care about my story.” 

I think everyone has something to contribute.  Maybe we won’t change the world per se, but even if your contribution—your writing, your art, your words and actions positively affect even one person, well, by golly, you’ve done it. 

I write because I want to show consistencies in human experience, not the inconsistencies.  I want to focus on what can and does unite us as humans. By working toward bringing us together, you and I have to acknowledge all that divides us.

[Future Mary-Margaret here reading this in 2023. I notice I keep writing about everything except what I said I was going to write about (the police officer), and it’s driving me crazy. But I think I was trying to work through all of this at the time, so I’m choosing to leave all of this rambling and thinking in.]

________________

My brother was a police officer. Does this give me any sort of credit? No? Maybe?

For the portion below regarding the police officer, let me preface with: my brother used to be a police officer, I have friends, other family members and acquaintances who are or have been police officers. I have many military men and women in my family, and I am wildly impressed with what they have accomplished and will go on to accomplish. I don’t think we as typical citizens can ever understand what they’ve done for us, what they’ve experienced, how much such experiences can and will change you and how it will make you view the world and everyday mundane worries of ‘civilians’ in a totally different manner.

Some people reading this may be staunchly against all police officers, and others of you may feel police officers don’t in any way deserve the negative picture they are being sketched within.  And then everyone in between.

Regardless of one’s vocation, I loathe when people think they are above certain other people. I detest when people think they are above the law or permitted to act however they want because of who they are, where they came from, how much money they make, what their job is, etc. From a young age, such acts infuriated me.

Here’s an example of little me…

The Nose Punching of ‘95

During my fifth year of life (a time when I sported a snazzy bowl cut *ohh lala* and could often be found in a mangled princess outfit, a pink swimsuit with frills or covered in snake innards from one I dissected on a picnic table), my seven-year-old brother and I spent lots of time with a 10(ish)-year-old neighborhood boy named Eric. One day, Eric pretended we were invisible. At least he pretended my brother was invisible. That’s the part I remember. We were all under the ginormous magnolia tree in my parent’s yard where everything happened (including the encounter with the rabid raccoon), and whenever my brother would say something, Eric would just say, “What was that? Was that the wind?” and look up into the sky, in the air above his head and continue to ignore him. I became quite perturbed with the boy. I saw this as an injustice. Clearly, he thought this was funny and he was cooler than us because he was older and taller and blah blah blah.

This went on for quite some time. And I wasn’t having it.

So. I punched him. In the nose. And it bled. Ten-year-old Eric ran home crying, holding his face, thanks to a bloody nose he received from a five-year-old freckle-faced girl named Mary-Margaret.

(Life update: Eric is a lovely human, who often posts pictures of cats and sometimes spiders on his social media, and at that moment, he was just being a ten-year-old kid.)

I’m not condoning violence or encouraging your children to engage in a fight club, I just cannot tolerate when someone or some entity steps all over someone else. I don’t understand it.  I’m sure (I know) I’m guilty of taking advantage of my authority, age or white privilege over my 30 years of life, and I will probably take advantage of my position again, especially unknowingly.  But I just want to live in a society where we act in accordance with each other in mind. As in: what’s good for me is good for you kind of system and mentality.

________________________

So here we go….

A Curtsey from Police Officer #1 without a mask.

At work, I asked a police officer to put on a mask when he entered into the business wanting to use our bathroom (which is currently for staff only with a sign saying as such, but we permitted him to do so). He looked frustrated, but he walked outside to his car, placed his mask on after walking back in, waved his hand across his face and said ‘here you go,’ and then did a curtsey in front of me. A curtsey. As in ‘happy now, lady?’

After walking out of the bathroom, I yelled from behind the counter that I had a question. I asked about mask-wearing and who enforces it. I asked if we could be fined. He was shaking his head, and said “That’s a mayor thing,” he said as though it was ridiculous, rolling his eyes, “we aren’t enforcing it.”

He said a few other things, but basically communicated wearing masks was a bit absurd and unnecessary. [I wanted to tell him how my mother-in-law had been hospitalized with COVID, and how painfully worried we were during that time. I wanted to tell him about friends who had lost family members, and other acquaintances and strangers I had met who had painful stories based around COVID-19.  I wanted to explain to him that the pain COVID is placing on the world is not merely the number of cases or the mortality rate, rather, a whole host of side effects that ripple into the masses, ravaging people’s health in a myriad of ways, even if they never contracted COVID.

_____________________

“COVID is bullshit.” – Police Officer #2

The next day, I spoke with another police officer who also kept coming into our business without wearing a mask. (There was construction just outside the business, and these officers were directing traffic for a few days, and we had the closest bathroom, I suppose).

Anyway, the officer comes in, and points to the door that leads to our back room that reads “STAFF ONLY,” makes eye contact with me and walks through. While he’s doing whatever he’s doing in our bathroom, I pull out my phone and turn it onto video mode, begin recording and throw it into my back pocket. He walks back out. (Tennessee law states that if one party is aware of the recording, then it’s okay. I’m not saying it’s right. That’s just what it is.)

“Hey, I have a question,” I say in (what I think is) a thoughtful and sincerely curious way.

I asked about mask wearing again, what his stance was, what we should do as a business, etc. I set him up to feel comfortable with me, letting him know my brother was a police officer/in the military, etc.

“I don’t work for metro,” he quickly blurted out without my prompting. “From what I heard, the Nashville mayor is saying or whatever that they’re going to be issuing hundred-dollar citations or whatever.  For me, the constitutionality of that is in question,” he said boldly in his New Jersey-sounding accent.

“What do you mean?”

“Me, I think it’s all trumped up by the democratic party, they’re trying to get Trump out of office.  It’s all bullshit, it’s all bullshit.” (Interesting that he chose the word trumped)

He did say COVID is real in some way. There is a coronavirus out there BUT…..

“They’ve taken the statistics and inflated them.  You get tested for COVID, right, and you come up with a positive.  They test you the same way they do for the flu, the symptoms are the same.  Research is showing that the tests that they’re administering right now cannot DIFFERENTIATE (he said this word loudly) between the flu and COVID.  You get a positive, you may [just] have the flu.”

He had a very quick way of rolling off his words.  They were all very pronounced and almost pelted at you.

“Now granted, if you’re elderly, have a compromised immune system, if you’re a 65-year-old man or woman with COPD, emphysema, and you get COVID and it kills you.. You didn’t die from COVID.  Did COVID exacerbate your death?  Yes, but you were already freakin’ dying from your stage four cancer and shit. And you say it was a COVID death? No. it’s all trumped up.”

I have a lot I want to say, but I try to create some silence, so he’ll keep talking. Luckily, I didn’t need to wait at all, as he was very willing and happy to keep telling me things without my prompting.

“Do people get onto you for not wearing a mask?” I ask.  “If I were to be like ‘hey, you can’t be in here unless you wear a mask, what would happen?’”

He didn’t answer that question and explained, “There can be a medical reason someone cannot wear a mask.”

“Do YOU have a medical reason?”

He seemed to feel a little defensive.

“This is just me.  I’m a Yankee.  I’m military.  I tell you how it is.  If I’m ever stopped, and I’m not in uniform and they ask me why I’m not wearing a mask [his response would be]: medical reason, what’s your medical reason [this hypothetical person asked]: HIPAA,” he exclaimed.

“What?” I ask. (Because I thought he said ‘hippo,’ which at that moment, I considered: ‘I don’t know, maybe this guy is just totally cuckoo for cocoa puffs and just starts randomly saying animal names.’)

“HIPAA,” he retorts.

“Oh yea, HIPAA,” I say as I realize he’s not haphazardly yelling out names of large mammals.

For those of you who don’t know, HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,” which is basically a privacy rule, meaning you don’t have to disclose medical information (which is indeed important in certain circumstances).

“That mask you’re wearing right now, ain’t doing shit for ya.  They’re not doing anything,” he declares to me, pointing at my face.

***

Even if somehow this is true, and it very well could be, wearing a mask is a sign of respect for your fellow humans.  It’s a sign of solidarity and acknowledgement that we’re all in this together.  Even if it doesn’t entirely work to prevent the spread of virus on its own (as there have been conflicting studies on how well cloth masks work), but just seeing a physical mask on someone’s face is at least a reminder that ‘Oh yea, we’re in a pandemic. I should probably distance myself from others.’

Maybe you personally won’t die or become very ill from COVID, but someone else might.  Even if somehow we as a society have totally overestimated COVID-19, we all (at least most people) have been impacted by this pandemic in some way. Whether it be by losing our job, working less, getting sick, having a family member get sick, losing business, having to shut down our business, etc.

If there’s a chance that we could potentially save someone’s life by wearing a mask or prevent them from having to stay home from work, why wouldn’t we wear one?  I think we also need to remind ourselves that we don’t wear masks to protect ourselves, we wear masks to protect OTHERS.  By wearing a mask, you don’t spew and toss your germie germs onto everyone as easily while you’re talking and breathing.  

Wearing a mask shouldn’t be political. It’s a human thing. It’s a sign of camaraderie. It’s a sign of kindness.

Just as the phrase ‘black lives matter’ shouldn’t be political, masks shouldn’t be political.

If you feel that being told to wear a mask is encroaching on your constitutional right, what about being required to wear clothes to be permitted to go places, or that whole ‘no shoes, no shirt, no service’ thing? This is just a requirement we’re not used to, and people tend to not like change or being told what to do.

***

Back to Officer No-Mask….

“Is there research out about that?” I ask.

“Oh yea, it’s out there. The mainstream media just doesn’t want you to see it.

“They want everything to re-shut down,” he explains, and says something about Trump that I can’t quite understand, but it had to do with the media wanting Trump to fail, he says.

“Where’s the best place to find that information?” I ask, genuinely curious where he gathers his information.

“Where?  It’s tough… to actually get accurate information. Uh, the CDC, they’ll have some information, but again, it’s all democratically driven.  It’s very unfortunate.  Coronavirus and the spread of it is real. My buddy, his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law and father-in-law and brother in law all had it. They’re fine.

“And they’re saying that ‘oh you can be asymptomatic.’ Noooooo,” he responds to himself, his mouth turning into a small tunnel with ooooooh spiraling out of it.  “You’re not asymptomatic.  You either have it or you don’t.  There’s no, ‘well I have it, but I don’t have symptoms, or I have the antibodies.’  It’s all bullshit,” he declares.

I can’t get a word in the conversation.

“Think about it, think about it, the highest spike in cases right now [this transition didn’t totally make sense to me], “and May 25th when the dude died in Minnesota [George Floyd],

“Granted that was wrong by the officer. Again, he didn’t die from what he did, he didn’t die from having a neck on him.  Did it exacerbate his heart attack?  Sure. But if it suffocated him, he would have had petechial hemorrhaging.  It’s a natural body response.”

He went on to say that Floyd was a career criminal and had drugs in his system.

When we start to talk about having drugs in his system and his past, I think we’re kind of entirely missing the point of why the whole nation and much of the world is in an uproar about these unnecessary deaths.

When the police officer held Floyd down with his knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds, he didn’t know he had drugs in his system, and he didn’t know his entire history.  I don’t know his entire history.  I think some people are searching for all the bad in his past, and some people are searching for all the good. 

I understand when a police officer truly fears for his or her life and in self-defense kills someone.  Killing someone is never the preferable answer, but it makes more sense in that scenario.  That’s not what happened in this situation, and there have been a great many situations where unnecessary deaths have occurred.  

The officer started talking about many topics and ideas all at once and it became a little confusing.  Some of the thoughts of his didn’t quite flow together in full, natural sentences.

He explained that ‘they’ purposely planned the protests in Arizona, Texas and Florida because that’s where Trump was supposed to have rallies.  By protesting there, hotspots of COVID cases were created, preventing the rallies from taking place, he said.

“They are taking this and spinning it to meet the democratic agenda. They don’t want Trump in office.

They can’t control him. 

“Now, granted, my only issue [with Trump] is arrogance.  Ain’t nobody perfect.  But he has the courage and ability* that Ronald Reagan had.

 “A lot of these younger kids that got participation trophies when they were growing up, and everybody’s equal… They want reparations from us.” (he just kind of kept talking non-stop).  “Some asshole sitting on the couch all day, watching soaps, eating bonbons, lazy as fuck, won’t get a job.”

He explained to me that, during a protest, once a protest participant steps out onto the street, it is no longer considered a ‘peaceful protest’ because it’s “blocking someone’s freedom of movement” down the roadway.  “BY the constitution, that’s what it says,” he exclaims in a satisfied, I-win-this-conversation kind-of-way.

 “Call me a conspiracy theorist, sweetheart!” he blurted out in his New Jersey’esque accent, hands thrown up in the air to each side. Sigh. Please, don’t call me sweetheart.

 Just to note, as not to leave out information, he said his grandfather always said, “There’s two things that are never present in a fox hole: doubters and color.” (For anyone who doesn’t know, as he thought I didn’t know: a fox hole is where you take cover when in a war, basically.)

I at first thought he meant “colored” people weren’t allowed in a fox hole, but he meant you don’t see color when you’re fighting in a war, especially in a fox hole.  I think he meant this in a nice way and to suggest he was not racist.  However, referencing extreme scenarios as the time to finally not care about someone’s race is perhaps not the most compelling argument for being non-racist.

I think saying you “don’t see color” isn’t helpful, even if people may mean it in a kind way (sometimes it’s defensive).  I think if we choose to not see color at all, we relinquish our ability to understand that others DO have to live life differently than us.  We have to acknowledge our differences in order to understand what others grapple with throughout their life.

We also somehow managed to talk about people with addictions. (I believe this came up because I countered that some people do need financial assistance and other types of support to get through periods in life, certain situations, etc.).  He relented with a conversation on addiction, and it sounded as though he had personal experience with such. 

He talked about his addiction with cigarettes, but it sounded as though he had more experience with addiction, either his own or someone close to him.  He explained that it is a choice to drink or drug, but once it gets ahold of you, it won’t let go, and it’s no longer a choice.  It’s a disease.

This was a subject he felt compassion, understanding and empathy toward.  He understood why people would need an immense amount of support in these circumstances.  I dare say this is because he actually had experience with it.  It seems that much of his thought patterns and beliefs are based on his experience, which is what it is for most of us.  This is why we all need to branch out of our lives, ask questions, listen to others and peer into their experience in order to better understand what it’s like to be someone else.

*I am not totally sure what word he said on the recording. It was something complimentary of both Donald J. Trump and Ronald Regan.

__________________________

“I am the least racist person in the world.” – President Trump

The words of our leaders’ matter.

In an interview, the president of the United States said he is “the least racist person in the world.”  A bold statement, for sure.  It seems that the leader of our country, a wealthy white male, should be able to at least acknowledge that perhaps he may hold some deeply ingrained pieces of accidental racism within himself and within this Nation (or perhaps not accidental). This is NOT just a view I have about our current president, but any white male president of the United States, which is all of them except for Barack Obama.  That’s 44 white male presidents.  If we peer into our history and also take a critical look at ourselves as a nation currently, we can acknowledge that we grew up in this racist society and it is essentially impossible not to have at least some socially-induced racism within our ways of thinking and living.

I recommend reading “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein and “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo to better understand how racism is built within the pillars of America. There are, of course, many others to read.

I shall not speak much more on President Trump.  You all have your opinions, and at this point, if you have remained the same in your stance, I imagine you shall stay put.  I think the words and actions of our leaders hold grand importance.  Think about the examples of our leaders’ and the examples you want to set for your spouse, friends, children, coworkers, boss and strangers.  How do our various leaders’ actions hold up?  Is this how you would act and want to set such an example? For your children?  Is this how you want the people in your life to act?  I believe our leaders should be held to a high standard, as that’s where they chose to place themselves.

This is a bit of a tangent, but just a note: on Twitter, our president threatened to defund some schools if they chose not to reopen for reasons related to COVID-19.  He threatened schools on Twitter. That sounds like something an angry teenager would do.  A nation should not be led in 280 characters or less. (The length of a tweet, for those who don’t know.)

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If you’re a white person…

If you’re a white person and you’re suddenly uncomfortable being white and you feel persecuted, singled out and harassed, if you feel like the victim of hate, I’d say that massively pales in comparison to how black people have felt for the entire existence of America.

It’s time we white people felt uncomfortable in our skin, it’s time we looked around and questioned how we think, act and live.

I saw a meme recently with one side of the picture reading: “Racism sucks,” and the other side of the picture said: “Being falsely accused of racism sucks too.” *major face palm moment*  I’m not black, and I certainly don’t claim to know how being black feels, but that does not compare in any way. Suggesting so is entirely disrespectful to black people and an ignorant notion. (Not to blatantly throw out my opinion or anything. *insert sly smile*)

I’ve always prided myself on being an advocate for all people, wanting everyone to be created equally in all facets. I mainly focused on homeless and impoverished people, people who are deemed to be “lower class” or who have a lower-class job or live in a “bad” area of town or who are less formally educated.

However, I honestly did not focus on the major discrepancies between white and black (and other minorities). I saw it, I knew it was there, but I didn’t speak of it specifically and individually. I think I was a little afraid of doing so, for fear of offending or upsetting some people. I aim to push through this fear, in order to help myself and hopefully some other people (white people) understand what has been happening basically the entirety of America’s existence.

I am guilty of not being aware enough and not talking about it. And I’m also guilty of talking about this with my groups of middle class and upper middle-class white friends and family, getting angry about racism and not doing a thing about it.

I’ve heard many people say ‘black people get things white people don’t get,’ like Black history month.

Every month is white history month.

The great Tony Robbins said, “Contrary to popular wisdom, knowledge is not power—it’s potential power.  Knowledge is not mastery.  Execution is mastery.  Execution will trump knowledge every day of the week.”

So if we have knowledge of our racism and others racism, we need to put our knowledge into actionable change.  (I’m still figuring out what this looks like).

I’m not writing this for my black friends. I’m writing this for the white friends, family, acquaintances, strangers so we can think about this together, so we can question our ways of thinking and living, so we can acknowledge and question the racism that is instilled within our society, culture and laws, and in our families and friend groups.

It seems that some of us are acting like this whole racism and discrimination thing is a new resurgence, and all of this madness just popped up again. I’ve heard some black friends say their white friends are reaching out to them NOW to check in and see if they’re okay. And the sentiment I’ve heard they feel is: “um, this has been happening all along, and I’ve been dealing with it my whole life, but thank you for checking in on me now.”  As in, we white people are kind of ignorant. And we are! Racism and discrimination have always been with us.  Since 1492 when ol’ Columbus floated over here and all the European dudes started destroying the native American’s existence, since the official declaration of the original American colonies in 1776, since 1865 when slavery was supposedly abolished, since indigent black child apprentices were “employed” in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, since Veteran’s Affairs denied black WWII veterans mortgage subsidies and since Trayvon Martin, 17, was killed as he walked through a gated community.

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The Young vs. The Old(er)

I feel like there is a wide divide between the young and the old right now. With the old thinking the young ones are overreacting and the young ones thinking the older ones aren’t understanding and are thereby under-reacting.

I’m not saying everything everyone is doing is right.

But I dare say the generations following the era of slavery thought the generations who lived before them were thinking and believing in an entirely incorrect and absurd way.

Isn’t it possible that younger generations could be right? Just as previous younger generations were right in moving toward a more equitable direction? Could this be happening again?

Did you agree with everything your parents believed in and taught you? Did you believe all the things your grandparents lived and stood for? There are many wonderful aspects of previous generations and commendable ways of living, but that doesn’t mean we should accept all the pieces. There is good and bad in all of us and in all of history. Search for both within yourself and within society at large.

People enjoy proclaiming, ‘I would never have been racist back then! And I never would have owned slaves! I’m not racist at all!’ or ‘I have black friends/black coworkers/[insert word of choice]! See, I’m not racist!’

And indeed, you may not exaaaactly be racist, but we all grew up in an inherently racist culture. It was everywhere in everything from where you live, to the loans you’re able to get from the bank, to the type of food you eat and is marketed to you, the schools you go to, the clothes you wear, the jobs you get and the pay you receive, to how many tickets you receive while driving, how often you’re pulled over, and all of these intertwine and feed off one another.

Being racist doesn’t mean you’re automatically a bad person. It’s not a good person vs. bad person thing. You can be a good person and be racist (which may sound totally odd and you’re like, ‘Mary-Margaret has officially lost her marbles.’) Racism is a you-grew-up-in-America thing, so it snuck it’s way into your life. The part that defines the good person vs. bad person part is, I think, whether you’re willing to acknowledge it and then make a change. I believe it is something we will constantly have to acknowledge, change and evolve, as it has been so deeply driven into the culture in dramatic but also sneaky and pernicious ways.

“[White people] are still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it”

— James Baldwin

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Sometimes I have to be in pain to learn.

I have been battling some frustrating and life-altering health things lately, the past few years, but especially the past six months. It’s been difficult to function as a normal human, and do normal people things.  I sleep only a few hours a night, and it makes me feel psychotic and exhausted.

(I have a point in divulging all this, I promise.)

There are far worse things to be dealing with than what I am in the throes of, but it feels as though I have a major barrier or hurdle that not everyone deals with, which prevents me from being on the same level as others. At times, it feels unfair and unequal. (Not that I should feel this way, but I do.)

I’m not in any way suggesting my health issue resembles living a life impacted by racism, but I’ve noticed that my struggle has made me more acutely aware of other’s struggles, in a variety of forms. It’s helping me understand that we cannot always know or comprehend what someone else is enduring. We don’t know what it’s like to be someone else, no matter how smart and “woke” we think we are. There’s always more that can’t be fully seen or understood. But we can ask questions and try to understand.

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Back to the police officer discussion…

I realize the police officer I spoke with is one person and he does not in any way represent the entire police force. He represents himself.

As I alluded to in the opening of this, police officers and military men and women undergo insane mental and physical hardships over their years of service. This will almost inevitably lead to anxiety, depression, PTSD, various addictions and a whole host of psychological issues/diseases. I won’t discuss all of this at the moment, but this leads us to an entire conversation about how we as a country should better provide psychological, mental and emotional support for our military and police force (and for everyone). What many or most military folks have endured is beyond anything we typical civilians could imagine. Their experiences dwarf the daily concerns and sometimes seemingly minute hindrances we encounter each day. In regards to the overall mental health system in America: we are failing. We belittle mental health issues, and we sometimes chastise and isolate those who endure psychological issues.

When I was a server at a restaurant years ago, a female police officer confessed to me that she drinks to numb all the emotions and anxieties resulting from her time as an officer. (For some reason, people tend to just tell me things). At that time, my brother was a police officer, and she told me to warn him what will almost inevitably happen. She said there will be immense amounts of experiences you will want to forget, that you’ll try to suppress and you’ll basically start feeling angry and depressed. Because you see so much of the bad that humans commit, you begin to view everyone and all of your human experiences this way.  She explained it makes you bitter, resentful and it can move you to isolate yourself from experiencing life with others. In part, because you feel like people won’t understand, and you just view humans in a more negative way, she said.

Clearly, we need to find a way to better support our service men and women in a myriad of ways.  We are not setting them up to function well in normal human society. Re-training is necessary, certain restrictions need to be implemented, mental health training and therapy should be readily available, encouraged and should not be branded as something a weak person needs.

Two of the brothers of the police officer I spoke with at my workplace had passed away. His twin brother was killed in Iraq in 2002, and his older brother, a fire fighter and paramedic, died in 2015.   I imagine this, along with all his other experiences in the military and as a police officer, dramatically influence his viewpoints.  That does not fully explain or excuse any potential actions or words of his, but it’s a piece of the puzzle in the unraveling of the story behind why certain people are the way they are.  Which is what I am constantly exploring.

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Just me, myself and I. Pullin’ up my bootstraps!

We in America relish feeling like individuals, like we’re different, that we’re better than others, that we can do more, that we can go it on our own, fly solo, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and all such other sentiments of the like.

I feel this. I feel it in my bones even if I shouldn’t or don’t want to. It’s why I by-default want to be alone, why I have always gone on long solo trips across the country, why I camp alone, why I never thought I would get married, why I didn’t want to commit to relationships in the past, why I don’t like people to help me in any way shape or form. ‘I will carry this bed up three flights of stairs on my own! No, I don’t need help lifting that. No, I don’t need to talk about it. No, I’m fine. Let me be alone. I can figure it out on my own. I don’t need your help. I don’t need your sympathy, pity or empathy or anyone’s anything.'

I think this is why many white people in America think anyone who isn’t white just needs to just ‘buck up and move on with it already.’ ‘Work harder,’ they say. ‘Don’t be lazy.’ ‘You weren’t personally enslaved, why do you deserve reparations?’ (Black people do not have the same privileges and advantages as we white people do, even if we white people don’t see or understand it.)

(This is a weird transition and an odd way to end this chunk of writing, but just bear with me here.)

Part of the individualism characteristic we praise and strive for in America contributes to our desire for total control--total control over ourselves, our lives, animals, entire countries and groups of people.  We don’t want to be told what to do or to change our ways. We don’t want to be told to wear masks. We don’t want to be controlled, and when this is challenged, we usually end up becoming anxious, angry, feel attacked or victimized, lash out and do or say something completely irrational.

I think the pandemic is making everyone feel out of control, as everything feels unpredictable. We have to move through life differently than we are accustomed to or comfortable with.  We don’t like it, and we want it to end.  NOW. But it isn’t ending, and it makes us feel itchy, scratchy, uncomfortable, anxious, stressed-out and fearful.

All the protests, George Floyd’s murder and general social discontent have put people on edge and ready to strike.  Some of these events have brought about community and camaraderie, though. 

“We’re all a little bit sad all the time. That’s just the deal…”

We are all here, in this moment, sharing this time together.  We’re all in it. And it does kind of suck.  Let’s just admit it.  We don’t have to talk about rainbows and sunshine all the time.  I think we bond over our shared pain and difficulties. We become closer when we are vulnerable with one another.

I tend to have an existential crisis about every 48 hours, give or take. But in my best moments, I seize the struggle that is ‘being human,’ and I relish what it means to be living life, trying to improve myself, working toward a better world along with all the other little broken, tattered and scrappy humans on earth (all of us). I (try to) embrace that there will be moments and large chunks of our lives that are going to be excruciating, but with those times comes so much feeling. It sucks, right? Gah, feeeelings. Bleck.

‘They’ say: you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. And it’s one of those gosh-dangit-annoyingly-true cliche sayings, and whoever this “they” is knows what they’re talking about. Basically, we have to endure some crappy times in order to relish, truly appreciate and love our life. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy all the time or that you should be. It just means you’re going to notice the good stuff more, and you’ll notice that things which previously didn’t really have much meaning now have so much more meaning. It’s such an odd thing to be designed this way, right? But maybe it makes all the sense in the world to be designed so. It makes us resilient, it brings us together during the horrendous, terrifying times in our life—when we need human connection the most.

I tend to resist watching many TV shows because I stink at sitting still and want to feel like Im accomplishing things. BUT in the TV show The Good Place that I was convinced to watch (and I’m glad I did so), the main character Eleanor said, “All humans are aware of death. So... we're all a little bit sad… All the time! That's just the deal.” The other character says: “Sounds like a crappy deal.” Eleanor responds:  “Well, yeah, it is, but we don't get offered any other ones. And if you try to ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. I've been there - everybody's been there. So don't fight it.”

Maybe it isn’t explicitly death that we’re all aware of or thinking about, but there’s a lot of heavy, upsetting, confusing and stressful stuff constantly being thrown into our faces. Everyday, over and over. And that can make us feel a little crazy and on-edge, eh?

Even though we’ve seen anger, confusion, death and destruction in all that is unfolding in the world, we’ve also seen an absolute outpouring of human compassion, empathy, unity and solidarity. It’s in us. It is. I see it in my coworkers who are always willing to help one another and genuinely care so much for mankind; I see it in my boss who tirelessly cares for our team in grand and minute ways over and over again, quietly and constantly; I see it in my family who always supports me and gives so incredibly much of themselves to everyone; I see it in my friends who put up with me and my eccentricities and in how they contribute to the world and constantly want to grow; I see it in the customer who brings in the man experiencing homelessness to purchase all kinds of wellness products and just talks with him about life; I see it in the police officer talking to the homeless man about sports, just like a couple ol’ friends (I overheard this convo); I see it in all the acts of selflessness and kindness, in the art work and words and actions of so many people around me and far away.

Go ask those difficult questions, and answer the difficult questions for yourself and for others. Go listen to other people. Think about what their experience has been like and will be like. Notice your differences—it’s okay. You and I are different in certain ways, and we can embrace our differences. And I can’t say it enough: You and I and everyone else are just human. We all need to feel that we belong, that we are noticed and that we have purpose here. We all need to feel we are apart of something grander than ourselves. We all need support from others, and we all need to be open to what others have to offer us.

I might have COVID. But who knows! They don't! Do you have it, too?

I vacillate between ‘I want to throw myself through a wall. GET OUT OF MY WAY.’ to ‘Wow, golly gee, what a beautiful life I have, I am so grateful to be alive.’

On Thursday, March 12th, around 2:43 p.m., a nurse threw a face mask at me after fearing I might have COVID-19, and she snapped a face mask and gloves and other garb on herself immediately. She was angry.

What a weird time this is, eh? Weird is the wrong word. An insufficient word. This is insane, confusing, frightening, frustrating, anxiety-inducing, apocalyptic, challenging and…perhaps a time of personal mental exploration and growth… yes?

I write when I don’t know what else to do and want to process things.  The page is my therapist.

I know I don’t even need to say it, but the coronavirus, COVID-19, that is, has seemingly infiltrated every aspect of our lives. I’m sick of hearing about it, and I’m sure we all are, but we also all can’t seem to quit watching the news and looking up new stats and cases, number of deaths, which new places have been shut down, etc. We can’t stop looking at social media posts about it and potentially yelling about said posts and potentially commenting on said post or posting our own words in the media to make us feel some semblance of control or contribution. (Not that it’s bad to do so. Here I am posting a whole novel.)

In Nashville, Tenn. where I reside, I and many of us thought the mad tornados that slammed through on March 3rd, destroying massive sections of the city, would be the event we’d look back on in 2020 and think “wow, what a crazy and upsetting time.” We were wrong.

On a personal level, in the past month, my maternal grandmother passed away, my six-year-old nephew severely broke his leg and I was in the hospital right after it happened as he screamed and cried and didn’t understand exactly why it all had to happen. On the same day my nephew broke his leg, my other grandmother fell and hit her head twice. A few days ago she fell again.

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Being holed up in your home has a way of rotting you away to what or who you really are. Which is usually an innately selfish and possibly irritable entity roaring about the home silently being angry that you are holed up in this minuscule place on earth, or perhaps you’re a pacing soldier vociferously declaring “I can’t believe I’m not allowed to go anywhere!” Or maybe that’s just me. I don’t like not being in control. It pains my soul.

At night recently, my husband turned to me and said in a farcically whimsical way “what are we going to do tomorrow?!” And like a mad clown staring at it’s face in a distorted mirror, we just looked at each other and began laughing hysterically because WHAT THE HECK ARE WE GOING TO DO? inside. again. alone. together.

This was originally supposed to be about how everyone is losing their mind, everyone is shaming everyone on all sides of the sides, of the sides. You’re worried about this? How dare you be worried! You’re not worried?! How dare you not socially distance yourself from me! You bought all the toilet paper?! You must be crazy! (Or maybe you just have some digestive issues.) You’re still going to your job? Blasphemy! You’ll contaminate others! You won’t go to work because you’re afraid? You lazy scaredy cat!

So I was going to talk about that and try to convince everyone to be kind to each other and have empathy and compassion and understanding. And to listen. But that’s not really exactly what this will be because I’m not sure that’s helpful (or maybe I’m tricking you into reading that). It’s more of ‘Story time with Mary-Margaret: Her experience probably not having but maybe having COVID-19 and being stuck inside her apartment for 20 years. Mary-Margaret is also very dramatic.’

But we do indeed need to have some compassion and empathy for our fellow humans on this planet. It’s a weird, confusing, upsetting, apocalyptic, mysterious time, as I’ve said. This is unchartered territory, at least for most of us. We don’t know what to think or how to act. And we feel out of control. When we humans feel out of control, we start to do some weeeeird stuff.

Venturing to the Doc to prove I’m Corona-free.

When I went to the doctor (to hopefully prove to my family, friends and employer I didn’t have the Corona) I ended up feeling more shameful and mutant-like than ever.

I called ahead of time and was told if I didn’t have a fever I could come in for the walk-in clinic. And so I took my temperature three times beforehand (after waiting the appropriate amount of time after consuming water/food). It varied a little but all supposedly below 98.7 every time.

I sat in the room that was magazine-less, that had awkward amounts of seating arranged strangely so you were forced to sit beside someone no matter how few people were there. A small children’s table sat in the middle of adult chairs, like an abandoned orphan. It was covered in crayon, ‘Matt was here,’ ‘jUlia was hu(illegible letters)’ and a myriad of other names and scribbles I don’t recall and weren’t really legible anyway.

After I made it through my time at the front desk, getting (mostly) checked in, a large man in worn-out jeans shuffled up from the waiting area and announced he had to leave and would reschedule. I don’t really recall anyone acknowledging this other than me, but I’m sure they did. I was then handed my clip board to fill out my new patient info. I ever-so-lightly dangled the clipboard between two fingers thinking the germs might appreciate my gentleness and leave me alone. I stared at the cup on the counter by the maybe-fake flowers. It had at least 57 pens jammed inside. All gray. All touching each other. I gingerly slid one out, trying not to brush against the rest and then squirted hand sanitizer from the uncomfortably large jug onto my half open hand. I nervously walked toward the sitting area hoping I could snag a seat NOT beside anyone. Found one! Simultaneously, as I lowered myself down into the lap of the chair, I noticed large bottom indentions. The seat was all warm.* cringe * This is where ‘I gotta reschedule’-washed-out-blue-jean man had been. It always makes me uncomfortable to sit in a seat where someone just was. It feels too intimate. The warmth of some strangers body still residing where you now are is…unsettling, at best. But, so too was the masked lady on the other side of the waiting area, coughing into her sickly-yellow colored mask.

I stared into nothingness for a while, contemplating walking out of the doctor’s office, because I didn’t really think I was ‘sick’ and because this seemed like an ideal place for someone with a suppressed immune system (me) to get COVID-19 from these other sick hooligans (them).

I felt like I was the only one looking around the room really thinking about the situation we were in. Everyone was looking at their phone, seemingly unaware of much anything else. But maybe they were looking around while I was looking down at my phone. We all think we’re the different ones, the more aware ones, the better ones, the more-in-tune and intelligent being.

Finally someone called the name “Mary” from a suddenly opened door, that was facing the direction of the front desk and not toward the waiting room, which seemed like an odd choice of design. First thought: I intentionally hyphenated my name on the check-in sheet, so they would call me Mary-Margaret and not just Mary. Sigh. I rounded the corner of the open door and was herded onto a scale to check my weight right behind the door. I tried to bond with the nurse by asking, “Are you going crazy yet? How’s it been?” I don’t quite recall what she said, as I was then staring at my weight in numbers, which tends to be a distraction. But we shared a bit of a laugh, but it didn’t feel like she was ready to bond. I have a problem where I like for people to like me, almost immediately.

As we made it into the room, she asked why I was there, which I thought would have been communicated to her, since I had told two others already at this facility (but it’s busy and insane there, of course). I prefaced with the fact that I didn’t have a fever, and listed a few minor symptoms. When I told her I was just trying to prove to my family and employer that I didn’t have the coronavirus (sort of said in a light-hearted way), I was quite baffled by her reaction. This was obviously the wrong thing to say. She immediately threw a face mask at me without saying anything, snapped one around her face, slid gloves on and I’m not sure what else. As a pulled the stretchy string behind my ears, I again wondered why all the masks have a sickly-yellow tinge to them. I immediately said I don’t have a fever again, and explained I was told I was allowed to come inside. She was visibly angry and didn’t seem to hear what I said and exclaimed, “Didn’t you see the signs outside the front door?! You’re not supposed to come in if you have the symptoms!” I again explained I called ahead, took my temperature three times and was given the go-ahead to come inside. She took some vital signs, but when we got to the part of taking my temperature, all hell broke lose. I did indeed have a fever. Blurgh. I explained again that I really had taken my temperature, and my thermometer must be broken. She wasn’t saying anything and was angry and moving things around. I just kept apologizing for coming in, and then she left without explanation.

(Just for info and transparency, the sign outside the door said for you to stay in your car if you were coughing, suffered from shortness of breath, sneezing, running a fever.. and maybe some other things. I did indeed at one point have all these symptoms, including sore throat, wheezing, requiring use of my inhaler, and I did have a fever early on.. and apparently still at that time, I found out. So I shouldn’t have come inside and instead had someone come see me at my car. But again, I didn’t expect anger, especially since it was unintentional).

I totally get being upset, I really do. I would be scared to be in her shoes, and I really wouldn’t want to be in her shoes. Her shoes are probably covered in germs. I’m sure she deals with people all day who do dumb things and expose others to harmful illnesses, who show a lack of awareness and care for others. I’m sure she felt personally in danger by having me in there with the potential of my having COVID-19. But I just couldn’t understand the anger and lack of empathy. I didn’t mean to come in whilst having a fever. I didn’t know I had one. I explained over and over. I felt so incredibly shameful, gross and inhuman. I lost my humanity for a time while I was thought to have had the virus (not that we know for sure I haven’t had it. More on that later). I wasn’t a patient anymore, I was something to be avoided, something that was other and needed to be disposed and taken care of. I’m sure she’s tired, overworked and sick of dealing with sick people and people who think they have the coronavirus. But it just stung to feel like… a virus. For some reason, in life, it always peeves me when people get angry at someone who accidentally did something—totally unintentional and unaware. I just don’t think it’s fair to be totally angry at an accident.

(There is a difference between an accident and willful ignorance, though. But that’s another story.)

I sat alone for an uncomfortable amount of time, not knowing what was going on.

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A woman donning a fully-covering face-mask and other protective garb entered the room. She reminded me of a beekeeper in suit trying not to get stung. I immediately apologized to her for having come in the facility while having a fever and again explained I didn’t know and my thermometer must have been faulty. This woman had a gentler presence and said, “It’s okay,” but then she immediately added, “I’m going to put this up your nostril.” I then noticed she carried some sort of kit with her that had an uncomfortably-long looking plastic cue-tip thing. Without explaining why this was happening and what it was for, the long plastic cue tip went up my right nostril. It was a bit painful and made me cough in the woman’s face. Then, Mr. XL Cue-tip ventured up my left nostril. This was also not-so-gentle and cough-promoting. At least she had on a ginormous face mask.

Without explanation, she vanished through the door. Alone again, I waited for a looong time, trying to set my mind right. I don’t have corona, just keep thinking that. Think positive. Visualize them telling you that you don’t have corona…… Gah, I have corona. Of course I do. Of course my lousy immune system that is allergic to everything and breaks down all the time gathered the coronavirus up and spewed it out all over my body. Maybe this is good. I can develop antibodies to it, and I will be immune. I will be super girl. How will I work though? How long do I have to quarantine myself? Maybe I don’t have it. Maybe they were wrong about my temperature. Does everyone think I’m lying about being sick? I don’t want to be sick. I don’t get sick. I’m not sick. I can’t miss work. I don’t miss work. I never call out. I must be the last man standing always and forever. Why do I never allow myself to say I’m sick? Why do I view it as a sign of weakness? Why do I view others who so easily declare themselves as “sick” to be weak and lazy? I’m envious of them. I want to feel like it’s okay to be sick and call myself sick.

This went on for a long time, as I sat on the edge of the patient table/chair thing, my feet dangling off, my ankles becoming more red and splotchy by the minute as my blood gathered at my feet. They felt tingly. Here I was having an existential crisis in the middle of East Nashville in a small, crammed doctors office that had a sheet of paper on a bulletin board that said “Your baby may smell like roses, but her diaper.. something, something.. noses.” I couldn’t see the rest as it was covered up by some other paper that talked about calling ahead to renew your prescription.

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I can’t wait for the day that I don’t have to feel shameful for coughing while walking down the street. Dear gracious goodness cough drops almighty.  It’s as if I’m a seven-eyed ginormous gremlin foaming at the mouth slinking down the street, parents yanking their kids away, dude-bro-guys holding beer bottles on their porch backing away slowly as their eye line follows my disgusting foamy coughing gremlininess on the sidewalk.

Why seven eyes?  I don’t know.

When I went to Kroger a few days ago, I had an unfortunately-timed major coughing fit in the middle of the store (this was about a week before everything really started shutting down). People were literally u-turning in the aisles to escape me. One dude wildly obviously leapt away from me, his hair swooshed to the side as he dodged the potential corona-soaked cloud that was me. If we can, perhaps we should be slightly more subtle in protecting ourselves. But also. Don’t go to the store if you’re sick. *insert smiley face* Sorry.

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Finally, another woman with a normal face mask and gloves came in the room. She was holding a pen and a few post-it notes (in hindsight, that doesn’t seem very official). She sat down on the stool by the small table built into the corner of the wall. I remained on the edge of the patient chair. Which still put me right in front of her because the room is basically the length of the patient chair. I could see her visibly pushing against the wall to be as far away from me as possible. I get it. I didn’t want to be inside my skin now that I feared the coronavirus was slithering its way through my body. I wouldn’t want to be near me either.

She was kind though, but I also apologized to her and explained the thermometer thing, again. She asked me lots of questions about whether I’d traveled and my symptoms. We talked about where I worked, how I work with the public constantly, how mostly sick people come in right now because it’s a health and wellness place. I explained how my husband had traveled to Arizona recently for a tax conference, and he returned home wildly sick. She made a jokingly repulsed/ick sound after my mentioning the tax conference and we both laughed about it. Ohhh, haha, taxes. Boring, nerd stuff. Sigh.

I for some reason left out that I’d been getting really hot, sweaty and dizzy intermittently and fell to the floor a couple times. Again, I don’t get sick and that was probably some weird blood sugar thing, yes? I also failed to tell her that I have autoimmune issues that make me more susceptible to allergies, illnesses, sensitivities, etc. Because I am a crazy, that’s why I didn’t tell her. I told her about my asthma, shortness of breath and all that jazz though. She explained that even if they wanted to give me a test, they weren’t allowed to because I didn’t fit the criteria as a candidate to take the COVID-19 test. I would have had to have traveled to one to the majorly affected areas or would have to have proof that I’d been exposed to someone with COVID-19. She was visibly frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to test me and hadn’t been able to test many people. It obviously wasn’t her fault, as the health department only provided them with about twenty tests, she said, thereby they had to be supremely choosy about who could receive a test. I don’t actually know which facilities these twenty tests were for—if it was just this office or for multiple doctor’s offices in Middle Tennessee or what.

She listened to my breathing and said it sounded decent, so I likely just had an upper respiratory infection, but juuuuust in case, I needed to self-quarantine myself for a few days and monitor my temperature and not go to work or be around any people really at all. And I should wipe down my own kitchen after I use it, she said.

I asked how she’s been doing, and she seemed relieved at the question. She told me she’s in between full time jobs at clinics right now and will be moving back to full-time in the next month, which means she currently isn’t receiving any health insurance. *gasp* She’s working extra hours in a doctors office around sick people all the time, potentially around people with COVID-19, and she isn’t receiving health insurance. Apparently her coverage doesn’t kick in until next month. She jokingly said she’s been saying in her mind toward the patients, “If I get the corona, I’m coming to you all for money since you contaminated me!”

We laughed—laughed at the sadness and ridiculousness of our healthcare system. Sigh again. I made a sort of joke about how she should call me if she gets the coronavirus and we’ll start a Go Fund Me page for her healthcare bills. It was a moment of connection and camaraderie, and it was nice.

She told me to walk out of the office in my face mask, just to protect everyone.

As I was walking out, I came face to face again (or eyes to eyes since we had face masks on) with the gal who became intensely irritated with me earlier. Her face now made me a bit angry and resentful, which made me feel bad. I hate when people’s faces make me angry. I gave her a thumbs up as I was passing by. I’m not sure how she took it, but my crazed mind thought it would communicate to her that I didn’t have corona, as in “Thumbs up, I’m good. So, you are too! Okay?!”

We’re all experiencing something new and different, mysterious and unsettling.

We’re afraid of each other but need each other more than ever. We don’t want to talk about this stuff. But we want to talk about it all the time, and we need to talk about it. But we also want and need some sense of normalcy.

It’s weird, it’s eerie and we don’t know what to make of it all. And we’re getting mixed messages, and it’s hard to know where to move and not move and which way is forward or if there is a way forward. We want some sense of control, and I don’t think we really know what that means right now. So we’ve gone out and bought all the crap we can to prepare for a full on apocalypse.

I don’t think many of us thought we’d ever really be experiencing a global pandemic. But here we are.

Because this is such an insane time, humans can get pretty stinking confused and weird and unpredictable in a time of crisis. You know when you leave your dog, a dog, any dog home alone sometimes, and you return home to everything torn to shreds, curtains and blinds ripped down and tattered to bits, everything is strewn about, demolished and dismantled. Well, we are the panicked dog tearing everything apart. We’re not sure when you’re coming home, Captain Normal Life. We’re not sure what’s happening and when everything is going to be back to the way it used to be—back to comfortable and familiar.

Apocalypse… now?

Recently, my husband and I were on our usual walk in East Nashville near our home, and while looking around he stated, “It literally looks like we’re in the middle of an apocalypse.” And it does. Businesses all along the road are smashed and flattened, debris piles everywhere and strewn about, broken windows, jagged and ripped metal poles and metal sheets crumpled like paper, tumbled bricks and concrete blocks like legos smashed with a sledge-hammer or perhaps an angry three-year-old, an abandoned car thrown against a wall with shattered glass, bruised and crushed in from random flying massive debris, insulation dangling about, walls and windows boarded up, messily spray painted addresses on the side of partially standing buildings so people still know what place it used to be. Whole buildings and areas are just leveled… like that same giant three year old came through and wiped clear away colorful building blocks and Lincoln Log structures out of sheer spite and frustration. Do they still make Lincoln Logs? Maybe you all have no idea what reference this is. Anyway, it looks like a blasted war zone.

The tornado brought Nashville together. It showed us that we are all the same and we all need each other. When you are reduced down to only yourself, no shelter, only the clothes you fell asleep in, no car, then you see that we are all just people. When we are shaved down to the most raw and necessary parts of what it means to be human, then we can have the most compassion and understanding for others. That’s when we realize we are all in this together.

I think we innately know all of these things, though, even if buried deep within, behind the specific clothes we wear, the job we have and the political party to which we subscribe.

The coronavirus, though it’s making us crazy, is also forcing us to realize that no one is immune to something of this caliber. It does not discriminate between socioeconomic status, race, gender, size of your house or whether you have a Tesla or a 1984 Toyota Corolla.

We have all been brought to the same level, even though we really are always on the same level. But society has deemed a hierarchy of worthiness and importance. Sometimes it takes a pandemic to shake our humanity to the surface.

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We aren’t all having the exact same experience though. Some of us aren’t able to work from home. Some of us don’t have paid sick leave, some of us do, some of us are hourly workers and if we can’t go into work, we’re in a majorly tight spot. We don’t know whether to go into work or stay home and stay safe. Some of us need childcare. Some of us will now be spending the next four or more weeks at home with our children who are normally in school (Good luck and Godspeed). Some of us are geographically stuck somewhere because we aren’t allowed to travel home. Some of us are at home with our spouse who we usually don’t spend so much time with. Some of us live alone and have no one to be with. Many of us are experiencing a lack of social connection because we aren’t allowed to gather together. Some of us are still gathering in places because…well, maybe because we want community and normalcy and… maybe I’m not quite sure why. Some people aren’t worried about it at all. Some people in Italy weren’t worried about it. 368 people died in one day in Italy from COVID-19. Some people think America is immune to pandemics like this. Some people are living in a hut made solely out of toilet paper they’ve been hoarding since December. Some of us introverts are excited about all kinds of time away from people. Some of us are excited to catch up on some reading or binge watching Gilmore Girls or challenging ourselves to watch all the Lord of the Rings movies in a row. Some of us are sick. Some of us know we have COVID-19. Some of us don’t know because the doctors don’t have enough tests so we are living in limbo, avoiding all contact with the outside world. Some of us are doctors and nurses and we are working like mad around the clock. Some of us are cashiers, bank tellers and gas station attendants, and we’re probably scared of you as the customer, but we’re showing up so you can get what you need to survive this time. Some of us work in grocery stores and are doing everything to make sure you have what you need but the madness and lack of inventory is out of our control (please be kind to these people).

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There’s a board game called Pandemic that I’ve attempted to play multiple times with friends in the past, but I always lose concentration/ability to care about the game. I generally lose interest in things when I feel they’re not relatable or real or if feel like whatever thing I’m participating in isn’t benefitting me or moving me forward in life. I’m certainly not saying it’s a good thing at all, it’s just what I feel. I also don’t like sitting still which is likely why board games in general are tough for me, and I don’t generally seek them out. I think it also shows my disdain for rules that feel inconsequential, unnecessary and generally hinder my success and enjoyment of whatever it may be. It also reveals I probably need to work on my focusing skills. Maybe now I’d feel like the game, Pandemic, was more relatable and informative. But I don’t really want to pretend I’m in a pandemic when I’m already experiencing a pandemic. I shall play Jenga instead or maybe Sorry, but probably not Twister, since, you know, there were tornados here.

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Hello, I’m angry.

I was supposed to write something else at this point that was poetic and inspiring and happy, but instead I just became absolutely INFURIATED. I’m outraged and enraged! I’m just so incredibly ferociously incensed by this coronavirus. I am fuming at a virus. That’s right. I said it. I just went to pick up groceries at Kroger’s Curbside pickup. I arrived home and started realizing all the door handles I touched to get in the building, the walls and bags and products and everything. Who had touched them and what had they touched? All these things could have the virus on it. My bag of potatoes could, my cabbage, Larabar and avocado and almonds. Apparently the virus can last nine to 12 hours on surfaces (quoted from my nurse). I could be touching and spreading it everywhere. Likely I’m not, hopefully I’m not, but I could be. All it takes is one little wrong encounter with a rude and clingy virus. That started to really piss me off. Sorry, Mom. I know you don’t like when I say that p-word.

It’s okay to be upset, it’s okay to be overwhelmed. Scream, cry, throw something. Get it out, throw it out there, write about it, sing about it, talk to someone about it. I’m not suggesting we sit and revel and wallow in it forever. But acknowledge it. Acknowledge the pain and the destruction and the loss and the change.

I don’t like being afraid to go places, and don’t like getting in trouble for going places. I don’t like that some of my family is extra afraid of me getting the virus because I have a messed up, suppressed immune system. I don’t like feeling like a weak one. I don’t like feeling out of control, at all. I’m tired of scaring people when I cough. I’m so tired of holding my cough in while I’m walking down the street. I’m tired of not being able/allowed to go to work. I’m just tired, I’m just tired.

We are all dealing with this. We are all being put under the same restrictions, and it’s infuriating and upsetting. Maybe it’s really not that bad. Maybe? In the early 1900’s and even far later, men were asked and often essentially forced to go to war. Many have noted that being forced to stay inside our homes is hardly comparable to being asked to go to war. That is certainly beyond true. But we can still get frustrated. It just feels so out of our control. I’m not mad at anyone. I’m just ticked off at the dang virus.

An exorbitant amount of people are without a job right now or are working far less hours or aren’t making any tips. If you’re a small business owner or any business owner really, and very few customers are coming in, it’s beyond difficult to pay your employees and keep the doors open. It’s such a burden for them to bear. To keep the doors open so everyone keeps getting paid or close the doors to protect the employees and the public? I’m currently grappling with some of the above issues myself. And it’s frightening, confusing and ambiguous.

Someone I know is now working full-time at home, attempting to homeschool her child and she’s pregnant and will somehow have to find time to take care of herself. Another friend is a full time nurse who also happens to be far into her pregnancy. What a combination of stresses to manage amongst all this madness.

Social distancing, aka the introverts dream.

There are, of course, people who are in critical condition because of this virus. At the moment I’m writing this, there have been close to 7,500 deaths. I think it’s difficult to grasp what numbers mean anymore after constantly seeing the number of cases and deaths. And because we’re incessantly bombarded with statistics of wars, illnesses, deaths from a myriad of sources. Sometimes it just feels like numbers, not people. But each one is a person who was thinking and breathing just before death. They had parents and siblings and favorite kinds of food and they had weird habits and pet peeves and maybe they loved to eat Kix cereal or they were allergic to peanuts. Perhaps they were someone’s grandmother, father, brother, mother, wife, best friend, niece, nephew, coworker, employee. I think some of us look at the numbers and think, “Well, that’s not that many overall when you think about the whole world.” And I think that’s how our minds have been trained to think, accidentally perhaps, over time, ingesting the news, and watching movies and tv shoes and playing video games that normalize death and destruction. (Please, please know this is not me saying we shouldn’t be watching and playing such things. I think it’s just important to be aware.)

I think it’s difficult to grasp the situation unless it directly affects you in an obvious way, perhaps if you get COVID-19 or someone you know contracts it. We may otherwise now and forever believe that we never needed to worry about this situation. But that’s not everyone’s experience. There are many people suffering from this in various capacities. I think we sometimes forget that our experience is not everyone’s experience. We live in our heads, we are constantly only with ourselves.

Perhaps making the choice not to go somewhere means you won’t spread the germs to that one person, and they won’t spread it to that other one person, and they won’t spread it to that other one person that they would have spread it to and that one person has multiple sclerosis or heart disease or diabetes or cancer. And now, now, they will be spared because you decided to take precaution, just in case, and take one for the team and stay home.

For a time, I actually doubted the legitimacy of how much we should be worried and how much it really mattered for me to stay home and for others to correctly practice “social distancing.” After reading that 368 people died in one day in Italy from this virus, it fully clicked.

Maybe it’s an odd thing to do, but I brought to mind how I felt when people in my life either passed away or where wildly ill or in excruciating pain and what it felt like for me to watch that unfold. I watched my nephew scream in agony and confusion when his bone snapped in half and he had a wound open to his bone.  I thought of the day I showed up to work crying, unable to hold it together because I just heard my Mom lost over half her blood and I didn’t know what was going on. I thought of my Granny passing away last month and what it was like to slowly watch her body shut down over multiple weeks.

There are people who are personally experiencing their body shut down, and there are others watching their husband, brother, father, mother pass away because of the virus. You might be just fine if you get COVID-19, but someone else might not. Maybe you and I will never know if we were an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, and by venturing out and about we spread it to someone who wasn’t able to fight the virus as we were. And then they passed away.

Part of me, the angry part of me that made an appearance yesterday that got ticked off at a virus, wants to say “to hell with it all!” I will go do whatever I want, wherever I want and touch whatever I want. “Lick my face, Coronavirus!” But that’s not productive.

How many deaths have to occur for everyone to take it seriously? How many virus cases need to be documented? I think, once we actually have a multitude of COVID-19 test kits, we’ll more fully be able to see realistic numbers of how many cases are lurking about out there. Again, I could have had COVID-19 this whole time. They wanted to test me, but they couldn’t because I didn’t meet the very specific requirements. (I really don’t think I did, it’s just frustrating not to be able to prove it. )

I think the sooner we fully practice social distancing and quarantining ourselves, the sooner we can mostly nip this in the bud. Then we can get back to normal.

I didn’t plan on inserting my opinion too much in here, but alas, somehow it seeped in.

What now?

Yesterday, for some reason I became extra emotional, I would cry for seemingly no apparent reason. Mostly I was angry. I have the unfortunate trait of tearing up no matter what extreme emotion occurs. Unbounded happiness? Crying my eyes out. Feeling totally connected to the universe? Waterfalls of joy out my eyeballs. Infuriated beyond all measure? Tears of wrath streaming down my fiery face.

After I let that out yesterday, I’m trying to get back to thinking more optimistically, or at least not bleakly. I’m trying to focus on how I have more time to write now. Yes, writing! Also, writing about this truly has helped my mentality. Maybe no one will ever read this, but that’s okay. I did this for me. You should write too!

This has been an emotional time for everyone for obvious reasons and for reasons we don’t always know or see in other people. I have to remind myself of that when I feel a twinge of disdain at how the nurse reacted angrily and unempathetically toward me when I just thought I was doing the right thing (can you still feel me trying to defend myself?). But she didn’t really know that, and who knows what all she’s been dealing with. Unfathomable, I’m sure.

Behind our screens, we sometimes struggle to carefully communicate what we think and feel, why we feel it and how we feel about what someone else said or did. I know it’s common knowledge that when speaking or commenting within social media, we tend to be much more rude, angry, mean and have a lack compassion or empathy. It’s easier to yell about things when there isn’t a human face staring directly at you. Or when someone isn’t there to punch you in the face.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t speak your mind.  Please do. Again, here I am posting a whole novel. I think social media can bring about grand and great change for good.  It can urge our leaders to make change and improve. And some people do need a kick in the pants to change what they’re doing and how they’re reacting. 

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Some of you all likely think I’m overreacting to this whole coronavirus thing, and that’s fine. I live in the middle of Nashville, in a tightly packed area, where the majority of COVID-19 cases have been in Tennessee (at least of those documented, that is). So I might be having a different experience than you.

Someone (who I unfortunately don’t recall) said recently, “We may never know if we overreacted, but we will definitely know if we underreacted.” Perhaps it’s best not to take a chance. I’m sure the people of Italy didn’t expect their situation to get nearly as dire as it has. And now, at the moment of writing this, almost 2,500 people have died from COVID-19 in Italy.

We’re all experiencing a difficult, emotional, confusing, upside down and floopy time. We all need to cut each other slack, cut ourselves some slack and show some compassion and empathy for everyone (again, including ourselves). We all might need therapy after this. But maybe therapy will just mean spending time in community and connecting with others. Because that’s what we’re wired to do.

For now, I’m going to torture my husband with my unicorn hand puppet, Larry the Unicorn, because other than some work, I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. I’m going to write daily. I’m going to reach out to my family and friends (mostly, hopefully, I’ll try. I promise. I’m terrible at promptly texting and answering the phone). I’m going to cook and bake new and weird concoctions #stressbakethedayaway. I’m going to randomly drop to the floor and (sort of) do pushups and burpees and run around my apartment like a frightened animal. I’m going to stare out the window aimlessly and wonder what everyone is doing out there. I’m going to wave and squeal at dogs that walk by my balcony. Maybe I’ll do some more oil painting. I’ll probably cut my hair and dye my hair a different color just because I’m bored. What are you going to do?

This could be a time of reflection. Hmmmm… what have I always wanted to do with my life? Now I have some extra time to ponder and perhaps act on it. I shall do that! When normal life seems to come to a halt, when times of difficulty, change and suffering enter, you rethink how you’re going about your life, who you have in your life, who you need to bring back into your life and what or who you need to remove from your life because they’re not adding positive value. You think about the things you never said, and shouldn’t have said and the things you meant to do. It makes us think about our time on earth and how we’re contributing and not. I wrote about this last month somewhat after my grandmother passed away.

This whole blip of writing was supposed to be about something different and supposed to be short. Whoops. I guess, I just want to share experiences. I like to hear about others’ experience. It makes me feel connected, it makes me feel like everything’s going to be okay. Their experiences, your experiences often make me laugh and feel a bond because it’s a shared human experience. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.

I was told that you can hold a scream for a maximum of about 20 seconds. You also should be washing your hands for approximately 20 seconds to fight coronavirus. In order to ensure you wash your hands the proper amount of time and if you’re stressed out, you know what to do.

Standing by her deathbed: She's ‘The Thread That Runs So True’

Margaret Plumlee Cagle, my Granny, at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN, 1942/43

**Preface: I finished writing this just before my Granny Cagle passed. She passed away early this morning, February 15, 2020. I haven’t gone back to edit this, so I speak as though she’s still alive.**

What does a “life well-lived” mean?  What does it mean to live a “successful” life? I’ve been pondering this as my Granny, Margaret Cagle, has been approaching her final days and minutes. If we base it off of the commercialized world, a well-lived life is seen in someone who has traveled the world, experienced various cultures, owns a grand house with grand furnishings, perhaps made millions of dollars, invented something, started a business or has a massive amount of schooling under his or her belt.

I dare say many of us, if we realllly think about it, know what it truly means to witness or fulfill a “life well-lived.” That is, when we feel loved, we love many others, we have purpose, we are leaving or have left our mark in some capacity, even if it doesn’t look the way we planned or the way society deems it should look. Even if it’s just setting an example of determination, gratitude, honesty or departing the best meat loaf recipe to your children and grandchildren. Thanks, Granny.

My Grandmother left her mark in numerous capacities—on her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, her students and almost everyone she encountered.

She was a mother, a daughter, a human, a mathematician, a teacher, a Christian, a friend, a gardener, an athlete, a farmer, a cook, a tutor, a singer, a student and I could just keep on listing. None of us should define ourselves by one word, and she certainly didn’t. We’re always evolving, always changing and (hopefully) improving. I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to grow up and be like my Granny (and still want to). There just didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t do or wouldn’t try. She is a life-long learner, but also a life-long teacher.

Granny felt like some untouchable hero, an idol—a famous person to me.  How could anyone be as impressive as Granny? I didn’t sense this in exactly the normal way a child might idolize their parent or grandparent, but in the way you might feel about a total stranger you revere, like a celebrity or renowned inventor. This feeling sustained over the years and did not dwindle as I aged. Despite her celebrity status in my eyes, she also always felt ‘on my level’ in some way—always present and available. Sometimes literally physically on our level, as she would poke and prod the dirt in her garden, teach us how to dig up potatoes, pick beans and plant flowers. She’d also throw softballs and maybe do a few cartwheels. She would arm-wrestle her children, and give piggy-back rides to grandchildren and great grand-children until at least 80 years old. She would often be holding a video camera in hand, documenting all of us. I wish I had done a better job documenting her.

She never stopped learning, she never stopped pushing to do more and be more, and to be there for others, to teach others and to be taught by others.  She received her masters degree when she was almost 60 years-old, coincidentally on the same day, one of her daughters, Margie (aka Margaret, aka my Mom) received her undergraduate degree. Margaret Cagle and Margaret Cagle graduating on the same day. The school ended up mismatching some information about each one of them in the ceremony.

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This blip of writing was supposed to be about how I’m searching for meaning in my Grandmother’s looming death.  Everything I say just doesn’t seem to come out right. It all feels icky and sticky and cliche.  I can’t get it off of me.  At the moment I am writing this, the nurse says she could pass at any moment. I thought she was going to pass days ago.  We all did. Anyone would have thought that based on her state. She hasn’t had any food or basically any water in a week.

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My Granny was born on January 8th, 1923. Yes, do the math. That makes her 97 years old. She began high school at 12-years-old, college at Tennessee Tech University at 16, and before she was 20 she taught college math courses, including a trigonometry course for a United States Air Force unit. (I think many of the school gals were jealous of her teaching the young Air Force men). I wish I could have seen my barely five-feet-tall Granny in action. I’m sure her hair was poofed sky-high, and she sported high-heeled pumps with a swatch of bold lipstick on her lips.

After two years of college, she was unable to afford schooling any longer, so she left to teach school back home. Not so fast, Granny.

T.J. Farr, the dean of the College of Education at Tech personally visited my Granny’s home to convince her to return and guarantee her a job to help fund her education at Tech. (Fun Fact: Farr has a historic building named after him on Tech’s campus that I frequented when I attended Tech myself. I literally never connected it in my head until just now that T.J. Farr was of course that T.J. Farr).

In an essay she wrote about herself later while applying for a teaching certificate at age 55, she explained, “Being the eldest of five children, I always keenly felt that position in the family. In addition, my sister was considered prettier than I, and this spurred me to make my mark as a scholar.” Ha, oh Granny. Though the later statement in this is entirely not true, even if people did say such a thing (as I can unbiasedly say she’s always been a beautiful gal), she indeed took her education immensely seriously and never stopped learning throughout her life.

She worked at Langley Air Force Base (the location of the movie “Hidden Figures”) on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as a mathematician. She also later worked at Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. during the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb for those who are unaware). My Grandfather, her husband, also worked there, and specifically on The Manhattan Project, among other assignments.

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I’ve never sat by someone literally on their deathbed.  Their body shutting down, they don’t look like themselves, they look like some leftover part of what or who they were, eyes affixed to the ceiling or some invisible object in the upper corner. I never knew exactly what happened to the human body as it is truly, rapidly approaching its end.  I don’t like saying any of this. I don’t want to describe it all because I feel like that would be disrespectful to my genuinely always beautiful and classy grandmother.

I mean, you just can’t have people over if your hair isn’t fixed and you don’t have the proper lipstick on. To quote myself from a post recently, “Whenever I’d visit my Granny while growing up, I could always tell which coffee cup was hers, as the rim was draped in half-moon swoops of deep pinky reddish lipstick.” So, we’ll leave some pieces out.

Maybe this process is all okay. This is just part of life. Death is inevitably apart of life. I mean, unless Elon Musk comes up with some magic pill for us to live forever, likely on Mars. But I think we tend to hide from, avoid, and throw hush-hush tones and a comfy blanket over death and the dying. I think that’s why we don’t like going to nursing homes and sometimes we accidentally abandon those who we’ve placed there or who we know there. Maybe it reminds of us what is to come for ourselves or other loved ones. Maybe we think they don’t have much left to offer us.

We should not discount those who are “dying.” Do not think they haven’t anything to offer you or that you don’t have anything to offer them. I read that hearing is usually one of the last senses to go, so talk to them. Sing. Play music. We certainly have been doing so with my Granny, even if a bit off-key. I just received word that a couple folks who have been family-friends for years upon years came over with a guitar and sang songs to Granny. Magical.

The sense of touch usually remains near the end as well. Hold their hand, touch their face, make them feel human.

Also, not to be morbid, but we’re all dying, we’re just all at different stages. So, there you go. Something we all have in common. Welcome to life as a human: you’re dying. Now you have something to talk about with strangers.

Alright, we’re going on too many tangents here.

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Things can still be funny when a loved one is dying though. One of my aunt’s said to my Granny while standing at the side of her bed, “We love you to death!” And then she gasped and covered her mouth. “Why did I say that?! What a dumb thing to say!” she thought, when someone is literally dying. “To death.” My Granny would laugh at that, and I’m sure she did laugh in her head at my silly Aunt.

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In times like this, when you’re watching a loved one die, you want to gain something positive. You want to gain some huge grand wisdom, change your life, change someone else’s life. Some something. Maybe we’re always searching for something to kick us in the pants to get us to do the thing that we’ve always known we should do. To say the thing we’ve always meant to say. I know there is much to glean from experiencing someone actively dying in front of you. Someone you know and loved and idolized.

I’ve been rereading a book that was one of my Granny’s favorites: “The Thread That Runs So True” by Jesse Stuart. It’s a true story, written autobiographically about a mountain school teacher, set in (I think) the 1920’s and maybe 30’s. It speaks of what education truly represents—it’s more than just learning some facts and going through the motions of a basic classroom, it’s about character, life-long learning, applying what we learn to our lives, being in community with others, finding ways to make learning fun, to play as we learn and learn as we play, to rediscover the joy and excitement of learning.

Stuart talks about a game called “The Needle’s Eye” in which the school kids chant, “The needle’s eye that does supply, The thread that runs so true, Many a beau, have I let go, Because I wanted you.” I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what to gain from that. Later, Stuart describes that “the thread that runs so true” at school is “play.” The “needle” is the teacher and he or she provides “the thread that runs so true.” “Play. Play. Play that ran so true among little children. little foxes, little lambs. Yes, play among big children and grownups! …Their work should be play. I should make them think they were playing while they learned to read, while they learned to count! That was it! I had it. Play.”

Granny is the “Needle” of our family and she provided “The Thread That Runs So True.” She is the example, the leader, the rock, the movie-star, the birthplace of so much of what we are. She taught all of us through her ways of playing, of making parts of life into a game, into a play, into a jungle gym, learning by hands-on, teaching by example. Teaching as she cooked, as she dug in her garden, as she treated absolutely everyone on equal ground, as she sang throughout the house, as she talked to herself as she went about her day, as she went to church, as she arm-wrestled her children, as she gave to others, as she got pulled over for a speeding while dressed as Mary Magdalene on the way to Vacation Bible School, when she took others into her household even though she already had six children—welcoming people from other countries, people from church, her children’s friends, her friend’s children, strangers and various animals, including all the snakes her daughter Margie (my Mom) kept as pets.

I think the whole town would have come to visit her had they known she was passing away. I think people from many states and other countries would have come to visit her, to gain last bits of wisdom from the small-sized woman who lived an extra-large life.

Granny hasn’t been able to say anything in the last week. But even without words, an exemplary amount was imparted, by watching those who came to visit—how they were affected by her in the past and present. By seeing an ex-police officer and Marine hold her hand and cry uncontrollably, which I think was a surprise even to himself. When she would stir or try to say anything, the room would go silent and still, and we’d lean over the bed, holding still, staying close, just watching her and listening to whatever she might be trying to say or where she was trying to move or what she was trying to see. She had the floor, she had our attention.

I have a grand amount to say about my grandmother. I want to interview all her children and others close to her. But I haven’t done those things yet. I just want to say something, so I’m posting this now—maybe to work through how I feel about all this. It’s affected me more than I anticipated. People keep saying, “Well, at least she’s 97 and lived a good, long life.” This, indeed, is true, but I don’t think it takes away from the unbounded loss that her passing will be. But she’ll still be with us, of course. A teacher never really leaves the earth. She’s imparted too much on everyone that’s still living, and they, too, will pass that on.

Death has a way of making you think about living. A way that we likely wish we had everyday of our lives. It makes us think about how we’re living and if we’re truly living. What does it even mean to live? What is a life well-lived and are you doing just that? If not, how will you change going forward? What do you need to do to remind yourself to live, live, live? To do the things you know you want to, need to, must do, crave to and can’t fully feel like you’ve lived without doing? Or maybe you don’t need to worry about such things. Maybe you just need to be more present to the people around you and be more present to yourself. Maybe you just need to notice the fabric of your clothes, how it scratches or how sweet and comforting it feels on your skin, how your coffee tastes like the dirt in a flower pot or the most decadent silky beverage you’ve ever partaken.

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Do you ever have one of those moments where life feels like it sincerely slowwwws down? Not when you’re flying around in a car crash kind-of-thing, but just a random moment. When you’re sitting in a coffee shop (like I am right now)… When it doesn’t seem real. When you look around and see a child skipping outside the window, with her Minnie Mouse dress dancing in the wind as she skips gleefully down the sidewalk (this was really happening as I typed), her hand in her mother’s, blonde hair tousling as her tiny body bobbed up and down in the evening air, her hair-bow bouncing right along. And you’re at a table in the cafe in the very back that you strategically chose so you could see everyone but no one could see you (you think that, anyway). You see people eating chips slowly, grabbing, crunching, scrolling on their computers perusing homes for-sale, the yellow-haired college student in a sweatshirt five-sizes-too-big who was just sitting beside you that went to the bathroom meanders through the crooked tables. She seems to be moving so slowly that she’s oozing like goo through the sea bed of people and scuffed scratched furniture. People are laughing, that slow laugh you see in movies, when the camera pans slowly across the faces, heads tossed back, rows of teeth out unabashedly while sentimental and uplifting music plays in the air, no words—just taking in what it means to have true human connection and happiness. And then you see people staring at their computers, looking at their phones, looking at each other and not, avoiding eye contact. Headphones, bluetooth, screens, screens, phone, tablet, phone. You feel melancholy and joy simultaneously.

(I promise I’ll get back to Granny stuff soon. I think death has a way of bringing you to the present.)

Everything feels poetic. The spilled coffee on the napkin, the shape it made, the condensation on the multi-windowpanes with droplets flowing down, making it look like some kind of snowy window evening photo, the sun setting in the background with layers of cozy pastel colors, winter-bare trees partially visible through the pencil-thin pathways of the falling dewy drops down the glass, the naked oak branches slightly moving, a few crumpled leaves dancing as they hold onto the spindly stick arms. These images make you want to sip on a steaming mug of apple cider that your grandmother made. It looks like a window you’d see in a Norman Rockwell print on a calendar that’s four years out of date hanging in your garage in that corner you used to frequent when you did the sort of things that necessitated you venturing into the tool’y, work’y area when you did garage’y things.

This moment was topped off with me cupping my coffee mug, taking a slight sip of the fire’y liquid, setting it down and noticing the lipstick mark, the half-moon swoop of pinky reddish lipstick staring back at me. Today I chose to wear lipstick and be classy like Granny.

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Today, is the day after I wrote the previous bit. It is February 14th. Just another day, eh? Today, things don’t feel so poetic, for no particular reason. I keep sneezing in the coffee shop and want to blow my nose like a freight train sounds, but I’m surrounded by a pool of people. There are two children running allllll around. Oh. my. gracious. I don’t say that in a cute way. Shush, chil’ren. One is a skinny little fella in a skeleton pajama outfit. His pants fell down while he was running. Yes, I know, I know, it’s funny. Especially since he was totally unfazed, BUT I’m trying to concentrate on sounding smart and well-read and cool and poetic!

Okay, it suddenly felt poetic again. In the way that messy times in life feel comical and absurd and lovely. The two little boys thrust open the door to the outside world (Mom staring at her phone. Womp womp, not noticing). Without shoes, they went outside, the skeleton boy acting the most unwaveringly alive and unabashedly himself. It’s freezing out and his bare feet are toe tapping the cold brick as he flies. But the sun is raining it’s warmth on the clay. His smooshed, tangled, shaggy golden hair is dancing ever-so-slightly in the wind as he prances and floats in the Friday morning air.

(Hi. As you can see, I like to write in real time as things unfold in my brain.)

I just had the urge to run outside with my arms strewn out on each side as far as they can go in airplane mode, zooming around this way and that, diagonal wings, back and forth, flying across the pavement. If my pants fell down, I think I’d mind though. And so would everyone else.

Granny would have run out there with them.

Somehow I find it odd that no one else is really noticing this… or trying to notice. The people around me aren’t experiencing what I am. Screen, screen, screen, headphones, headphones, phone, phone screen, phone. Text tweet. Repeat.

The two tykes have returned indoors. One little boy is saying “Byyyye!” to the other while doing this cute little back and forth half circle motion with his miniature left hand. I’m just realizing the parent’s of these lil’ hoodlums don’t know each other, and these boys certainly didn’t know each other before this encounter. Yet they just magically ran around the cafe and outside on the sunshine’d brick road, gliding through the wonky metal jungle gym of chairs and tables creating a world of their own.

This is “The Thread That Runs So True.” This is PLAY.

I suppose if I have gleaned nothing else from this time as my Granny is passing from this Earth to another realm, I’m noticing things just a liiiittle bit more, even if it’s just for a few days. Even if it’s just because I’m not working. I was supposed to be in California this week for vacation, but I canceled the trip at the last second because we were all certain my grandmother would pass almost immediately. It’s been six days now and she’s still with us in some capacity, but it could quite literally be any minute, any second now. Maybe right now as I’m typing this she us taking her last breath. They (the nurses) have been saying this for days. “Any time now.” And it’s true. It has been true the whole time. We don’t understand how she’s pushed on through this. Maybe when you read this, she will have fully passed away from this part of human life on Earth. I’m in the confusing juxtaposition of wanting her never to leave and wanting her to exit the struggle and suffering.

I don’t know how to end this, and I haven’t finished this.

My grandmother almost died when she was five-years-old. She had bacterial meningitis. All her hair fell out, and she was oddly yellow from jaundice and her skin was disturbingly dry and cracked. She was predicted to most certainly die. Her grandfather went outside and kicked fence posts because he thought they’d lost her. Since she would die anyway, they thought, one of the doctors decided to do a double or triple dose of a new and potentially harmful drug.

And she lived.

She was meant to live. Even now, at 97, she’s holding onto life just a litter longer.

She was a teacher, mentor and almost like a mom to all who encountered her.  She was Ma Cagle. Mrs. Cagle. Granny Cagle to any and to all.

This is a quote from the book “The Thread That Runs So True” that inspired Granny’s life of teaching. She also quoted this in an essay about herself:

“I thought if every teacher in every school in America--rural, village, city, township, church, public, or private, could inspire his pupils with all the power he had, if he could teach them as they had never been taught before to live, to work, to play, and to share, if he could put ambition into their brains and hearts, that would be a great way to make a generation of the greatest citizenry America ever had.”

Granny was a teacher, and I think we’re all teachers in some capacity. Maybe we just don’t realize it or we don’t see the tiny, seemingly insignificant little things we impart on others every day, every hour, every minute as our lives unfold around other living bodies. What are you imparting on others? Margaret Cagle, my Granny, continues to “put ambition into [my] brain and heart.”

"I woke up and wanted to be dead." My Reencounter with Kroger Man

I believe a large swath of people‘s discontent, depression or anxiety arises when they feel they don’t have a purpose, they aren’t productive humans or they don’t really feel meaning in the way they live their life. They aren’t fulfilling or satisfying what they feel they’re meant to do or most equipped to do. I also believe a huge portion of these feelings stem from a lack of community and connection.

I feel like I encounter such a multitude of people who are dissatisfied with something. I don’t mean complain’y. But there’s some unrest, some grand discontent, something missing in their lives—within them. They feel like they don’t know what they’re doing or why they’re doing what they do, and they can’t find their “purpose.” (I include myself in this, depending on the day). They aren’t fulfilled or satisfied, or they just can’t quite find their thing. Maybe their anxious, depressed. They’re searching for some greater meaning to it all.

Sometimes (or ofttimes) it feels like it’s a privilege to have such a worry, instead of worrying about whether or not we’re going to be eaten by a bear or if we’re going to be able to forage enough food for the day or winter. (Although there are some peeps out there who likely still have these worries. But anywho.)

Recently, I reencountered a man I’ve seen thousands of times over the past 18 years working at Kroger in (I go to Kroger ALOT) but now he works at Goodwill in Murfreesboro, TN where I spotted him again. His hair seems to always have been salt-and-peppery, and he’s always appeared the same age. His eyes appear dark until you move closer, and there’s a lightness about them, kind of like a blueish marble. His glasses are chunky black now, but I think they used to be the thin kind, with mostly glass and wiry rims.
I was standing in line waiting to buy my perfectly-picked thrift store goods, and I could tell the customers ahead of me were having some awkward or frustrating conversation with the cashier (who I had already recognized as Kroger Man).

When finally I arrived to check out, I asked, “What has your day been like?” (I purposely ask this form of question to everyone as it usually elicits a more exciting convo than “How are you?” which normally results in a one-word, socially-programmed, non-sincere answer, that is: “Fine.”)

His response for me was, “I woke up and wanted to be dead.”

I gasp internally and scan through hundreds of potential responses, overthinking, overturning them all except: “I hope that changes.” Bluntly and rapidly he declares, “I don’t think it will,” slinging the words at me without glancing up, just moving his hands robotically scanning my gently-used items. I asked if he had talked to anyone about it, and he said they just made him feel worse. He didn’t want to pay someone to make him feel worse, he explained. I mentioned that people had suggested I talk to someone too, trying to connect with him, but that I also didn’t feel like spending the money or time on it either (although that’s not totally true).

I asked what he used to like to do that made him happy.

“I can’t even remember anymore,” Kroger Man said.

I was wracking my brain to hand pick the “right” words to say because I wanted something to change in him. I wanted to pull him out of this for even a second. I wanted to “break through” to him. Whatever that might mean, not that I feel like I have some power to do so, but it doesn’t keep me from wanting to.

Before I continue, I found it slightly odd reencountering this man and to have such a conversation. About eight years ago I wanted to interview him. I was writing for Middle Tennessee State University’s newspaper at the time, and in class, one of my journalism professors brought up this fellow in Kroger who’s worked there for years upon years, and he noticed the man painted his fingernails consistently, all kinds of colors, maybe with sparkles. He wondered what Kroger Man’s story was, and I began to wonder as well. This was the same man I was encountering at Goodwill. I had planned to interview him for an article way back when, but I never got around to it, as so happens in life.

And here I am talking to Kroger Man about how he wants to be dead, seven and a half years later.

(*Note: he’s obviously much more than just ‘Kroger Man,’ but that’s what he’ll be called here.)

I asked where he was from, and he said he’s lived around Murfreesboro since he was three. He sardonically chuckled and said maybe he should’ve moved along time ago, when he was little. I asked “What’s your most favorite place you’ve been?” and without any hesitation he said: Vegas. The word flung at me like a frisbee, but with assurance and excitement.

I sank a little inside, thinking: Blurgh, I’m trying to connect with this guy on some deeper level and all he wants to talk about is strippers and gambling.
He immediately explained, as if to read my judgmental mind, “It’s not because the strip clubs or the gambling.” Oops. “It’s all the people watching. And there’s always, always something going on. You can wake up at 3 a.m. and there’s something to do, something to watch and be a part of. People don’t realize there’s a good part of Vegas,” he said.

He lit up. Completely. The life of Vegas, the human connection, the activity and community is what he most enjoyed. I wanted to convince him that you don’t have to go to Vegas to find this.

He began talking more. He worked for Kroger for 37 years, forever in customer service and retail. I told him I had been in customer service/food and service much of my life in some capacity. I could tell he felt some sort of camaraderie, but he also appeared to look as though he was thinking ‘I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into!’ Not in a rude way, but in a concerned kind of way. He said to me, “If you’re going to stick with this, make sure it’s something that makes you feel productive.”

Bam. This connected with what I was going through and constantly thinking through daily at this point in time (and sometimes now).

Because I was asking questions and he was engaging in talking and smiling, he miss-typed something in the register and had to correct it. I apologized for talking and asking too many questions, but he said “no, no, don’t apologize you’re cheering me up! You should come back in a couple hours and talk again!”

His face had previously been scrunched up, as though in pain, but now it was loose and his eyes were lighting up. The blue marbles were alive!

Selfishly I was proud and impressed with myself for bringing that out in him. I want to be able to do that for more people. I’m certainly not saying it was solely because of me and my questions that brought him lightness, it may have just been the right moment, the right words at the right time. But I want to find ways to bring that happiness and light out in others, whether via me or other people.

I want people to feel productive, to have meaning and feel noticed, heard, seen and to have community.
I think a lot of us are going through our lives not quite sure what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. And we don’t really feel like we have meaning or purpose. We’re just a cog in the wheel, as they say. The cog in the something? I can’t actually remember the saying right now. A cog in the machine? That might make more sense.

I cried as I was walking out of the store, and I cried when I first spoke this into my phone notes driving down the road. I often lose this feeling—feeling extremely alive and connected to people, to strangers, to the world, to the universe. To God or spirituality or energy or whatever is your cup of tea.

But I find and feel it in these fleeting moments, and I have to hold on, and remind myself daily, hourly.

_________

People sometimes ask me what I ultimately want to do in life, that is, what “would be your ideal job?” I often respond with something that has to do with writing. Maybe something about how I like to ask questions and bring people together, blah blah blah. And then I get uncomfortable, don’t know what to say and begin asking them questions. (to distract from the fact that I often don’t know how to put that into words, or frankly I’m just not sure, or perhaps not sure how to go about it).

What I ardently want is to help people find meaning and purpose in their life, to find community, to feel noticed, cared about, seen, heard and loved. It all sounds warm and fuzzy when I write it out, and it certainly doesn’t sound like a “job.” I don’t like to say it aloud because it rather sounds ridiculous at times. Many of my friends and acquaintances and family members are the banker, lawyer, seemingly “by-the-books” kind of people. (Sorry guys. Hello!) I don’t really want to say things like this to them because I feel like they’ll just nod in quiet judgement. Classic, hippie, dreamer, Mary-Margaret. Sounds like a good way to be broke.

This description of what I crave to do probably doesn’t have to be my “job,” per se. As there are a multitude of ways to accomplish this, in various capacities with various peoples and populations, whether it’s your job or just how you choose to act and treat people on a daily, hourly basis. I just have to find the specific way I want to go about it. Or maybe I already do this in some capacity, I just don’t realize it. Or it hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would, as life goes. Sigh.

_________

Obviously, I don’t really know how to fix everyone’s discontent, depression and lack of connection. This has been a struggle of my own, though I don’t like to admit it. Sometimes it makes me feel selfish or weak—thinking about what my “purpose” is. Why can’t I just be satisfied?

I may not know how to fix it, but I do believe talking about all of this is crucial. It’s necessary. Talk about what you’re interested and what lights you up. Speak up if you’re dissatisfied in your everyday life. Do something about it. Make a change. Say something. I’m not saying it’s easy. And I know there are people in situations that feel irrevocable and drowning. Maybe they really can’t say something or make a change. But many of us can. And those of us who can do something may be able to help those who are unable to do so.

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In today’s world, we often become so caught up in “what do you do?” and “where did you go to school,” a myriad of status symbols, shiny cars and gargantuan houses. "My clothes were hand sewn by Egyptian hamsters in the Himalayan Mountains. Only $825 for a pair of socks.”

I just feels like many people are floating through life missing out on what it’s all about (this goes for me too ofttimes). It usually takes someone’s death or a tragic experience—it takes pain to make us change our mindset and our life. Don’t let it get to that. If something tragic has happened, maybe your realizations are unfolding as these words trickle out onto the page. Maybe you’ve already figured out life and you’re just seeing what crazy brouhaha Mary-Margaret has to say today. (Thank you.)

This writing won’t connect with a great many people, as a great many people don’t think about such things or don’t need to. They are satisfied. Or maybe they’re just sliding through life unaware of, well, life—unaware of what’s unfolding around them.

In society today, we essentially have all our needs met. (Not everyone, but a great majority.) We can easily access food—we don’t have to go hunt, capture or spend many months growing our food. We walk into fluorescent-lit buildings and grab what we need without much thought.

We don’t really have to walk anywhere if we don’t want to, we don’t have to get up to turn on lights or the tv because we can use voice commands. With a tap of a button on our phone or computer we have food, drink, any kind of goods delivered to us that day, or that hour, any time. We don’t have to leave our homes, we don’t have to speak to other people to do really anything if we don’t want to.

We don’t have to find creative ways to entertain ourself or seek others for entertainment and connection, as we have an exponential amount of any form of entertainment at the click of a button. We can watch, read, experience and listen to anything at any time. We never have to “endure” silence. We would never dare to just stand in the checkout line. Yes, just stand there, waiting, without looking at our phone, without checking emails, texts or game scores and without scrolling through the 47 pictures we took of our food at that restaurant last night. Gotta get the right filter to make those three baby carrots and that whipped beet dressing look juuuust right. We forget to engage with the humans all around us—in the checkout line, behind the register, at the coffee shop, our coworkers, our friends, our families, our significant other.

For the majority of us, we no longer really have to worry about “staying alive.” We aren’t hiding from saber-tooth tigers or building shelters to protect us from an oncoming storm. Our human needs are met. So what’s left? How do we find purpose and meaning in our life when now all that’s left to fulfill is the emotional part?

We have to be intentional about how we spend our time, our money, how we prioritize. We need to be intentional about being in community with others, actually connecting with other human beings. I have a bad habit of boxing myself off from the world because it’s often just easier to just stay in, stick with what’s comfortable and be alone.

I don’t know how to “fix” it all, but I think it all starts with awareness. We have to acknowledge all of this and talk about it with each other. We have to surround ourselves with people who build us up, encourage us, challenge us to do more and be more—to do what we really are made for and desire. We have to be willing to be vulnerable with our fellow human beings. We have to listen to one another, stop judging each other, stop assessing someone’s ranking in society based on their job title. What you “do” isn’t defined by your job title—rather, it’s what you do in all those other spaces, the tiny cracks and slivers surrounding every part of your life, it’s how you go about doing anything in life and your intention behind it, it’s how you treat yourself, others and the world around you.

I think about Kroger Man often. I’ve returned to this Goodwill multiple times, but I haven’t seen him again. I’ve tried to look him up online, but fell short. I don’t think about him because I pity him or just because I worry about him (though I do worry sometimes). I think about him because I connected with him. And I, too, needed and wanted the human connection that day, and on multiple days. I want him to know that I was intrigued and entertained and surprised by him in the best way when he began to speak, and when he lit up about what interested him.

I don’t know that he’ll ever see this, and the interaction was likely not as big of a deal for him as it was for me, but I just want him to know that he made an impact on me. And his advice about “feeling productive” helped me make a big decision in life recently.

If anyone knows who Kroger Man is and knows how to connect me with him, please reach out to me. I want to finally, finally interview him almost eight years later.

Or please share this so more eyes can see this.

________

Ending note: I had stopped writing for a while as I’d subconsciously or maybe consciously convinced myself that I didn’t have anything noteworthy or new to say. I was potentially making a fool of myself. Everything has been written that needed to be written, I thought. And in some ways that’s probably true. You can find anything and everything, it’s just a matter of being exposed to it. However, it’s also not true. Because I don’t really write for others, not really. And I think that actually might be true for a great many writers. I write to help myself figure things out, to think through issues, questions and struggles. I write to let something out, to get it out of my body and let it live on the page (or a screen). I may have said this before in other writing, but in high school, my A.P. English teacher said to the whole class (though she likely wouldn’t remember), “Mary-Margaret thinks in her writing. That’s where she works through things and speaks.” I was a shy gal, so that’s the main place people could learn about my thoughts and opinions. So I write for myself. I write because I have to.

This certainly isn’t to say some part of me doesn’t hope my writing impacts someone, even in some small way. I do hope that, but I don’t count on it. I’ve felt camaraderie and connection to writers and other artists through the vulnerability and struggle they reveal in their art. We’re all writers and we’re all creators in some way. We all have our own way of doing and saying things.

Your words or your specific actions may be the exact way someone needs to experience or hear something to help them in some way and to make a change in their life. It may make them feel connected, understood and seen.

My plan is to write on this incomplete website/blog of mine more often, post some interviews and articles, videos—just for kicks, for thinking, for questioning and for building community. Bye for now. Maybe we can talk to each other in the checkout line soon.

Response to the Responses on My Depression Article

Recently I posted an article titled Depression, or whatever you want to call it. Considering the feed back I personally received and the feedback some of my family received about me/it after the post, it appears I concerned and completely surprised some people. Apparently, many did not expect depression in someone “like me,” which reveals there are likely far more people with depression around all of us, we may just not know. Many or almost all who reached out to me after reading the post discussed or explained their experience with depression, melancholy or extreme anxiety. Again, clearly revealing many of us move through this in silence.

I may have ruffled some feathers by posting about a topic that can make people uncomfortable. However, I think if we aren’t sometimes ruffling feathers, we probably aren’t fully speaking our truth. (I really dislike the cliche phrase “speaking your truth.” Also, I now want to understand the origin of “to ruffle feathers.”)

I want to note this “depression” is not an every second of every day experience for me (though it may be for others). Maybe some days it is all-encompassing. I weave in and out of it, and it weaves in and out of me. Sometimes it lingers longer, which is what has occurred lately and why I chose to finally write about it after years of mostly keeping it in the dark.

Overall, I have received an extraordinarily positive response, as a great many people have been supportive and helpful. Most of all, this has made me fully comprehend I am not alone in this. And I knew that, and I think to some degree we all know that many people grapple with depression, but we just have to be reminded. I believe that keeping experiences and feelings like this constantly in the dark is completely detrimental to one’s well-being and the well-being of society. I’m not suggesting we discuss this all the time or dwell on it, but I believe acknowledging it is the first step in beginning to overcome and move through this state of being.

Even though some of us know we’re not alone in this feeling/headspace, it doesn’t mean we should just accept it and “deal” with it. We still need to find ways to actively combat this. I honestly don’t quite know what all those ways are. I’m still figuring it out, and I think we will be for a while. However, I think there are always ways to make steps toward reaching a more healthy and sustainable state of mind. I believe those include: reaching out to others, being open and vulnerable, building community with others, exercising on a very regular basis (literally the biochemical effect on the brain is awesome), eating (actually) healthy food, sleeping enough, among a myriad of other things.

All these are well and good, but I know they are easier said than done.

Some people seem to think this is something in which you just magically “feel better.” Some think perhaps I just need to go on a run and I’ll be cured. It’s more than that. Running does help, eating well does help, but it’s a process.

I’m personally trying to figure out how to build more community in my life, even though I already interact with a multitude of people each day through work, etc. I know everyone discusses how terribly they sleep, and I’m sure they do, but… I truly, truly sleep horrifically, and I believe this has an enormous impact on my mental state, but I haven’t been able to correct this no matter what I do.

When in a depressive state, it’s difficult to get yourself out the door or even out of bed for a workout. I think we just have to focus on the micro-steps. And move from there. “Okay, 1. sit up in bed…. 2. put legs over side of bed… 3. stand up… 4. walk to bathroom… 5. walk to coffee pot (or tea pot, if that’s your thing)… 6. sing “All I Do Is win" by DJ Khaled, etc. (Fun Fact: Strangely, this song pops into my head almost every morning for no apparent reason. I don’t think I’ve heard the song in years, other than within my brain. I guess all I want to do is win, win, win no matter what.)

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On the ‘being open and vulnerable’ part, I feel I should note I’m not suggesting you profess your depression publicly online or to just anyone you encounter (I know, I know. I’m a hypocrite). I think the best way to feel heard and understood is to reach out to people you know and who have earned your trust. Perhaps you’re meant to speak to a therapist, though. In truth, every human is quite insane on some level, so we probably all could gain insight from an outside, objective party (i.e. therapist/psychiatrist). Friends and loved ones don’t always have the capacity and breadth to help, and that’s a-okay.

I’ve been thinking about my possible “over-sharing.” I’ve wondered if I shouldn’t have shared as much about my depression to “the public”—to my friends, my family, acquaintances, coworkers, maybe even my employer. Everyone can see what I’ve written. And I’ve been instructed by some to take it down, at least eventually.

I read some words by author/artist Mari Andrew, explaining that you shouldn’t publicly share anything unless you’ve healed from it. I read this before I posted the article on my depression, and because I highly respect and admire Mari Andrew (and i suggest you check out her stuff), I began to highly question whether I should post what I wrote. But I did it anyway, of course.

I think it’s clear I haven’t fully moved past this depression, and I don’t think I ever will entirely. Perhaps, someday, though. Either way I will be fine. I’ve lived a fulfilling, meaningful and satisfying life thus far not despite it, but, I think in-part, because of it. I honestly wouldn’t want to take away the deep feelings and sometimes excruciating longing for something, for understanding, for figuring “it” out that accompanies depression. (Let me just note I’m not totally comfortable with the word depression. I just haven’t coined my own term for it yet). I’m certainly not suggesting everyone should have depression. That sounds absurd. But I think it’s how my mind works through things. It’s like a sloughing off of skin. Sometimes I have to go through this to get through to a newer or better me. (I feel like I’m talking about this all rather romantically, likely because I’m not so much in the muck of depression right now.  But I think it helps to appreciate it for what it is or can be.)

Maybe I have over-shared, maybe I have been too vulnerable with too many people. As I do believe that is certainly something we do sometimes (especially those pesky, gosh-darn millennials, eh?!). We can over-share to the wrong people. We have to choose the right people to share the deepest pieces of ourself. I guess I felt like I had to share this piece of me with a large community because I wanted to let people know, to help them understand and realize there are a great many of us going through something, moving through depression, stuck in a heavy state, anxiety, stress, melancholy, etc. 

Many people have had the courage and vulnerability to let others know (in a public way) what they have or are experiencing. It’s those trailblazers that made me feel like I could and should tell people. Certain people haven’t been reached by others who have spoken about depression, anxiety and other such difficult mental states. But maybe I can reach someone that has never been reached before and feels alone and uncertain and unable to crawl out of whatever cave they are in.

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Perhaps I haven’t healed from depression, per se, but I have healed from the need to hide it, shove it away, where it would only fester and grow. I heard the words “shame can’t survive the light” from Brene Brown (and I know others have said this as well). Once things are brought into the light and acknowledged, a sigh of relief releases. This is what I’ve done, and I’ve since had many people tell me of their experience. Maybe that is a sigh of relief for them, like there was a “head nod” of recognition, as in “I get you” and “I’ve been there,” which is really what we all want to hear when we’re experiencing a difficult time. It makes us feel less alone and more apart of a community. It feels good and comforting to be understood.

I actually think many or most people experience depression or something very similar to it at some point in their life, even though they may not know what it is or what to label it as. And maybe it doesn’t have one specific label.

As I sit here spitting out words about depression, my goal is not to constantly discuss the actual matter of having depression. I don’t think that’s beneficial. And I quite honestly don’t want to acquire the nickname “that depression girl.” Not the best. I think speaking on it certainly has it’s place, and it’s a necessary step. But we have to be proactive in other ways in our life in order to move through this.

I don’t want to act like I know how to do this at all. I’m struggling. I have good days, I have exemplary moments, but I’m still trying to figure this out. I still have days where my brain feels like a wrist watch geared backwards that’s trying to be a toaster. And the watch doesn’t have batteries and the toaster isn’t plugged in.

Exactly.

I believe I’ve made some people feel uncomfortable, as I said. But I don’t want people to be “weird” around me or anyone else they know who experiences darker states of mind (gah, I hate all these cliche-sounding phrases). I wanted to reveal that many of us struggle, and it became all the more true for me when a multitude of people reached out to tell me about their similar experience after reading the post.

Ultimately, this isn’t really about “depression” for me—my writing, that is. I say this possibly too often, but almost everything I write about, anything I discuss—it’s about fully realizing we all have the same innate needs and we’re all human beings. It sounds obvious, but I think we sometimes forget. It’s about providing space for what might feel different or uncomfortable. We must build connections, bridges and understanding. We need to realize and acknowledge what we need, what’s happening to us, being aware, being honest with ourselves, connecting with others, realizing we need others and need belonging.

I think, or I have to believe, there are ways we can take control of our life in some way, even though we can’t control how others act. But we can control how we react. There are ideas, goals, daily habits and other ways of living that we can work toward and apply daily.

Everything can feel out of control, as the world sometimes seems like a ginormous mishmash mess of confusion, and maybe it is at times. But there is a massive amount of good out there, and I think we have to hold on to it, search for it, grab it and build more of it.

Also, there’s plenty of fun music to sing and dance to. So, just go dance. I was kicked off a wedding dance floor once. I challenge you to, as well.

My tunes for the day:

Joy to the World by Three Dog Night

Hold On, I’m Coming by Sam and Dave

If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out by Cat Stevens

Oh and of course, All I Do Is Win by DJ Khaled

Mary-Margaret Weatherford

mmweatherford5952@gmail.com

Bigger plans coming for Life Between Walls, donate here so we can all grow and learn! Thank you! Cheers!

Depression, or whatever you want to call it.

A snippet of what happens to me in this headspace.

I’m crying, but not because there’s really anything or anyone I’m crying about, other than me—it’s me. I cry because it’s as though I’m not feeling anything or not feeling the right way or feeling how I think I should feel. I’m not crying because I’m sad about something or mad about something, I’m crying because I don’t even know how I feel or how to scrounge up the feelings and thoughts to determine my place as a human. I even try to think about upsetting things, disastrous things, about what it means to be human. At times, I feel as though I’ve lost my humanity.

Sometimes I can find and regain my humanity. Writing helps.

This headspace doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t exactly know where it comes from. And that drives me mad.

This article is a jumbled mishmash of thoughts, but isn’t that how all of our thoughts are within our brain really?

When I am immersed in “this,” it often becomes difficult to be interested in what people are discussing or laughing about or what they care about. I have trouble understanding “why.” Why don’t I think this is funny, why are they thinking this is interesting? Why don’t I feel what they feel?

Often in this state, I only care about the necessities, and I only bother myself with what feels extraordinarily important and pressing. I want to address homelessness, hunger, purpose, finding jobs for those who need them, love and community. I want to talk about the heavy issues, the things which feel like the only things that matter, and I often do feel that those are topics we should discuss on a regular basis. I feel like certain things we worry and care about and spend our time on are frivolous, unnecessary and sometimes selfish. (Perhaps this is the depression speaking? Maybe not.)

Sometimes I like myself in these moods. It feels real, raw and unkempt. Sometimes it moves from a lack of feeling, to feeling absolutely everything to the most grand extent, but often that includes feeling as though an enormous football field-size brick is atop me. I have some of the highest highs, but with that come some of the darkest lows.

I first saw inklings of this in my six grade year, and I guess I always felt a little different from everyone else, and I think everyone feels like a weirdo to some degree. It wasn’t even necessarily feeling different, it just felt like I was always an imposter. I always thought I didn’t belong. I always felt like I was the weakest person in the room, the most stupid and unintelligent, no matter what my ranking, what accolade I received or compliment I was given.

Writing about this topic—revealing these vulnerabilities—isn’t something that gets you jobs, promotions or awards. In fact, I think it could get you fired or cause an employer to reconsider hiring you. But I think that’s the exact worst thing you could do to someone experiencing depression. You take away their work, one of their purposes, feeling needed and important—you crush them. I think the experience of depression, anxiety, loss of connection and belonging are things which make us human. I’m talking about this because I think so many of us experience something of this nature at some point in our life. But we as a society aren’t really talking about it—we’re not allowing it to be a normal part of conversation, at least not enough. 

Over the years—hundreds of years, thousands of years—people have dealt with anxiety, depression, isolation and loneliness. However, I believe the framework of our society now—the way we live our lives, the way we work and communicate and social media—is setting us up for this disconnection and lack of belonging. I think we’re more connected in a great many ways but we’re also more isolated than ever, and we’re losing true community.

I think America is particularly interested in adventuring out alone, going it alone, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, make it happen, fight your own battle, then you will be successful, notable and praised. I’ve certainly played into this, which is why I relish and crave adventuring into the woods alone for days and weeks or taking a solo road trip for months on end. (Let me note that I think it is important to have the ability to be alone and independent, but that is entirely different than intentionally separating yourself from others so as to never have to ask for help and never be vulnerable or uncomfortable.)

Humans are meant to be in community and to accomplish work together.

As I said, this began years ago. I’m 28 now, but I really began to notice it when I was 11 or 12, moving from Signal Mountain to Murfreesboro, Tenn., changing schools the second time in a little over two years. This “thing” I was experiencing grew and changed shape, morphing in various ways, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes stagnant. I often regret not having spoken about it in earlier days, in high school or early college. I regret not discussing it in multiple relationships, friendships and with family members.

(Just to throw this in: I want to note that this is not an all-encompassing, constant experience. I have a great many wonderful days, and I’m able to step out of this headspace.)

I’ve been able to hide these feelings (or lack thereof), push them away or not acknowledge it when needed. Almost every job I’ve held required constant interaction with people, and I’ve pulled it off. That’s been one of my fortes and what I’ve been complimented on the most over the years—the connections I build with others, the way I interact and communicate and make people feel noticed and needed. I’m not tooting my own horn, but I believe that because I often venture into the depths of my brain and emotions, it helps me search, analyze and understand what others are feeling or experiencing in some way.

I’m certainly not always perfect in feeling what others need, in empathizing, not nearly, but I think grappling with this headspace opens me to more meaningful and present conversations. I relish connecting with people, hearing about their experiences, being inspired by what they’ve done, learning from them and gaining insight into what it means to be human.

At the heart of it, we are the only ones who truly know ourselves and what we need. However, I think sometimes it can take another human being to begin the discovery of this. Understanding exactly what you need can be elusive and mysterious. Sometimes others can see what I need before I ever have an inkling, and I think that’s why we need others and need community. We need to connect and interact even if we don’t want to, even if we think we don’t need to. We need to build bonds, empathy, connection and understanding. We need to listen to one another, be there for one another and realize that we also need to allow people to be there for us.

It’s OK to need someone, it’s OK to need help, it’s OK to need to talk and it’s OK to have a bad day and cry. I think hiding your feelings or pretending you’re always happy and optimistic is not the true path to happiness or transcendence. I know they say ‘fake it till you make it,’ but I think this can drive you mad, in the most unhealthy way. I have driven people away or perhaps, rather, I’ve run away, as I’ve had extreme difficulty in being vulnerable, allowing people to see who I am, what I feel and need and what I grapple with daily.

I’ve kept people at a distance. Oftentimes I don’t want to hang out (or I think I don’t). I don’t respond to texts or it takes me days to do so. Phone calls make me cringe. It all seems daunting and overwhelming. Might I add that I am aware this sounds insane, and I know I’m being irrational. But I still feel what I feel even though I know I shouldn’t. It’s such a confusing cacophony of thoughts.

It’s as though I know I’m “supposed” to be enjoying certain things, I’m supposed to be happy, I’m supposed to feel connected, I’m supposed to want to do something… but I just don’t. I don’t really feel joy, I don’t really feel excited or have a true desire to do something or experience something.

I become exhausted after days of pretending to feel how I think I should feel.

In this headspace, I feel I don’t belong and feel that everyone around me thinks and recognizes this as well.

I become acutely aware when I’m not (or think I’m not) included on something, a joke or story at work, an event.

(Again, I’m not suggesting this is every second of every day, even if I’m right in the middle of a particular funk. I can have moments of satisfaction and excitement.)

I’m always grateful, but I’m not always joyful.

I believe some people think depression is just of the Millennial age (and maybe Generation Z, as the youngsters are called), that perhaps we are just weaker in mind and spirit. But I think it would be entirely incorrect to assume so. For one, I believe anxiety and depression have been a large part of the human experience for all of time. However, I believe it is becoming more rampant because of our movement away from a more communal society. I’m not suggesting we all live in communes, share everything and sing Kumbaya as we hold hands in a circle, whilst donning flow’y white garb (although that’s totally cool if that’s your thing). I am suggesting that we have lost the innate and necessary community and connection that societies previously held.

In the United States, depression is the number one cause of disability and the number two cause of death in persons age 15 through 44. Suicide is within the top ten causes of death among all ages.

Sometimes it feels like depression, this headspace, comes along when I actually need to slow down, allow myself time to think and process, rest and reconnect. But I don’t like to rest. It makes me feel weak. I don’t like to admit any of this. I do want to be known as empathetic, compassionate and understanding, but I want to be known as strong. I don’t want to be known as broken. Something in my makeup feels broken when I’m slathered in the depths of depression (or whatever this experience may be deemed). But that’s the exact incorrect way to view this. And I’m slowly, ever-so-gradually coming to terms with this. Being human is to be broken. We live in a broken world—it has been shattered, ripped, sliced, crushed and pummeled. We as a people have been fractured (and might I add the earth is also experiencing destruction, much or all to our blame).

But, as cliche as it sounds, I don’t believe we become strong by never undergoing struggles. The physical human is not innately strong. We as a people become more resilient and strengthened after experiencing difficulties, losses and tragedies. Something in us may be broken, but I believe that opens us up for something more. A crack in the surface allows something new to build and grow.

These all sound like such cliche and mushy things, and I’m struggling to write this down. I’m cringing and even rolling my eyes at many of these words.

When not in a specific depressive state, I tend to feel in extremes. I feel irrevocable and immense joy and elation, as though it or I can never be touched. At times, I feel pierced and mangled by some devastation or tragedy.

Part of me has an unending optimism, as I absolutely refuse to succumb to a defeatist mentality. What’s the point? Why not hope, why not believe? Even if it feels naive. If you’ve accepted defeat, then that’s what you’ll receive. I have been referred to as “annoyingly optimistic” in the past. I’ve also been accused of being “overly empathetic.”

But we have to have this mindset in today’s society. We have to believe in what we can do as a people, and we have to believe in one another. I think we all have experienced, are experiencing or will experience something that breaks us. We all must be willing to be vulnerable. And we need to listen to others, really listen. I get caught up in trying to determine what is most important in life, what I should be focusing on, what I should do to make money. But I think the human experience comes down to this: connection. We are not meant to go it alone—we are meant to be in community, to connect with others and to help one another. We all crave belonging and we all need it, even if we don’t want to admit it. We’re all in struggle in some way, and you never can quite know what someone else is experiencing. So be kind, connect and listen. And tell your story.

Cheers,

Mary-Margaret Weatherford

mmweatherford5952@gmail.com

Reference:

https://nndc.org/facts/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7IDiBRCLARIsABIPohga1yre0QN8pVwi3U6ehb5gEXztZKpHto5G3A9L3zh7LwOL0PlnaPMaAuOSEALw_wcB

Also, check out this TED talk on depression.