Sometimes I am lucky enough to catch myself from falling. 

This happened a few weeks ago when my boyfriend hugged me and I instantly started to cry. Like most Americans, I’d been watching the war in Ukraine unfold mostly over social media. This news has been coupled with anti-LGBT, anti-Black, and anti-women legislation being proposed (and passing) here at home. Very little is within my control. So, I scroll. I donate. I distract myself. I scroll more. With every doom-scroll, I felt myself slipping further and further from OK and entering that place between “informed” and “numb.”

I’m fine now, in that way we’re all fine now. The definition of “fine” has changed, in part, because most of us agree that we are not OK. “Fine” means “alive.” It means “I’m here and healthy enough and looking ahead.” 

The hug from my boyfriend brought buried emotions to the surface, and after I cried away some frustration, I sent a text to one of my oldest friends. She is one of those friends with whom I can go months without speaking and then spend three hours on the phone as if no time has passed. Just sending a text to her, extending that connective thread and having her pick up the other end of it, made me feel lighter. 

The next thing I did was call my grandmother. It was a Tuesday, not a typical day I call her, but I scrolled over to her number almost unconsciously. Before I pressed Dial, I was still carrying the weight of helplessness over world events. Then she answered the phone, and the weight lifted again. Upon realizing it was me, her own voice brightened, and had no idea how much I needed to hear her at that moment.

I asked how she was, and she replied “Oh, I got this pain. You know how it is.” I do. Our conversations almost always revolve around pain. She is 92, and hurts; she lives in a nursing home and is the last of her sixteen brothers and sisters, and she is not OK with any of this. On the phone, however, she is fine. Just a little sore, you know. She laughs. She reminisces. She says, “We had fun, didn’t we?” Everything is past tense when we talk, but it feels like home.

The fog I had been in almost completely lifted as I hung up the phone, and was officially cleared a few days later when my friend, after days of texting, called. Our schedules clash a lot. Mine being freer during the day, hers not becoming flexible until after I have pajamas on. Our conversations are all present tense. Current events, our mental health statuses, what we’re watching, what we’re reading, our jobs, our boyfriends, what we’re having for dinner. We speak openly about the reasons we’re not OK, and all of the reasons why we are, ultimately, fine. Every topic we cover is urgent and equally important.