I am feeling really sad today. I don’t know why. I am trying to articulate it in my head so that I can just sit with it and understand it and then hopefully it will go away. I’ve been following Susan David PhD (https://www.susandavid.com) on social media. She is really great and very soothing right now. I strongly recommend checking her out for a daily dose of kindness and compassion. And one of the things she suggests is understanding our negative emotions. They don’t have to be these shameful thoughts that we try to hide. We have to accept our emotions and our feelings. True that. So anyway, I feel sad today. And I feel down. And I feel hopeless. I think the grey skies in London aren’t helping with my low mood today. When we first went into lockdown way back in March, the sun was shining and it was all so novel and new that it felt kind of liberating to not have a busy social schedule to manage. No school drop offs, no activities, no forced socializing. It was amazing. For a natural introvert like me, it was actually heaven. Dare I say it, during lockdown 1.0, I was thriving ( Things I like about lockdown). But having the sun and nice weather made life so much easier. We actually felt like walking in the park and taking our bikes out. It didn’t feel like drudgery. Now, with the grey, heavy skies and the onslaught of rain, going out just feels like work. I miss social interactions ( Things I miss). I miss the business of modern life.
I was talking to my friend ASK a few weeks ago about tae kwon do ( My week; You Phoney Impostor). We are both tae kwon do addicts and our conversation drifted to something else and he said to me, “you’re feeling down today, aren’t you?” I guess my mood swings are so obvious. Kind of embarrassing that I can’t keep my shit together and everybody knows when I’m not right in the head ( Guilt, anxiety and other such pleasantries). But anyway, I acknowledged it and we talked about it for a little bit and he said something that struck a chord. He said we are all feeling shitty and we have nothing to distract ourselves with. We are just stuck indoors with no where to go and nothing to fill our diaries with. And suddenly, it all clicked to me. We can talk all we like about how we should be using this time to get comfortable with ourselves and silence and to shun this horrible consumerist society that we have created. But ultimately, we have been conditioned to crave it. We are social creatures. We need interaction. We need people. We need noise. We don’t need it all the time. We may not need it in the same consumerist and empty way. And we don’t need it in the volumes we used to have. But we do need it. To shut us off from everyone and everything is just mean. It’s just plunging us into an existence that we have not been created for. That our minds can’t handle. I’m lucky. I live with my family. I have constant noise from my kids and I have a companion. But still. We are losing something vital by being shut away. By being stuck inside our homes. We all know that a huge mental health crisis is coming our way. We are powerless against it. I’m trying to find a flip side today. Something positive to make it all ok. And today I can’t. If the rain ever stops, I will go for a run and maybe then my mood will lift.
Sorry to bring you all down with me. But I have had so many lovely messages from so many of you telling me how my blog is making me you feel, even when I deal with the shitty things. And there are so many shitty things to say and talk about, so even though it’s embarrassing to admit that I am struggling and feeling sad, I guess it’s important to have these frank and open conversations so that we don’t feel too emotionally distant even though we are living in the era of social distancing.
By the way, if you like what you are reading, please subscribe. That way you can stay in the know.