Keep Your Head Up, Keep Your Heart Strong
I want to write you a post gentle like a hug from the person you love best in the world, sweet like a birthday cake baked for you by someone who treasures every day of your existence and wants you to know it. I want to make something soft for you because I want someone to make something soft for me. Everything is so scary and so overwhelming and so exhausting right now, and I'm sure I'm not the only one whose brain never stops screaming and the only way I know how to deal with that is through words. But sometimes there aren't words formidable enough to stand against everything trying to kill us. Sometimes being formidable isn't what saves us. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't.
I have been severely sleep-deprived recently, even by my own standards which have been skewed by a lifetime of sleeping poorly, and on Sunday I just couldn't keep going. I pushed myself so hard to do all the Sunday tasks, of which there are many, and I wanted to push a little farther and get in a walk because unfortunately I have discovered the benefits of physical movement over the past year and I feel the lack of it now. But I couldn't. I hit a wall and there was nowhere to go but to bed. So instead of walking, I made myself an evening coffee, something I'm able to do because coffee doesn't energize me and instead mellows me out and provides me with more restful sleep, and I brought four pillows to bed with me to prop myself up, and all three cats joined me and I read a book while I drank it. Specifically, I read Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo. It was so nice, and it felt so luxurious without actually being all that luxurious, because it's not something I often allow myself.
I have a rule that I don't get back into bed after I get out of it in the morning, since otherwise I can spend days in bed, and I usually stick to a single cup of coffee a day, This was a rare treat for me, one I allowed myself because I couldn't stand to do anything else. Because I needed to feel something good, something soft. I needed to rest. Self-care doesn't always look like this. Sometimes it's forcing yourself to do the hard things and be in the world whether you want to or not. It doesn't always, but sometimes it does. On Sunday it did.
Maybe you've also been forcing yourself to power through, keep going, get shit done because there's so much shit that needs doing. There always is and there always will be, and you're the only one who can do it. But if it's true that there will always be more to do, and it is, then why not take some time to be still? Why not give yourself the gift of your own quiet company, be with yourself while you read a book or take a nap or burrow into a blanket nest and simply breathe? You deserve it, and more importantly, you need it. No one can keep pushing forward forever without a break. You'll burn out and break down if you try. You're only human, as we're all only human, and that humanity is precious and it's worth protecting.
What I'm saying is that this is an awful time for the world and a terrifying time for politics and we'll all go insane if we spend our entire lives fixating on that. Looking away even for a second feels undeserved, to me and I think to many others, but it's not. It's self-preservation. It's the only way to keep going and to keep fighting. We have to remind ourselves that we're people and we have to allow ourselves moments of rest and comfort.
That doesn't look the same to everyone, so maybe talking about my specific methods of accessing it isn't particularly useful, but I'm going to do it anyway. And there are some things that seem universal. Piles of soft blankets and soft pillows, candles that smell like pumpkin and apple cider and bonfires and pine and gingerbread and cinnamon (I'm partial to woodwick candles, personally), simmering pots of chili and stew slow-cooked throughout the day to warm your entire house, bread baked to do the same, inviting loved ones into your space to talk and hug and eat and watch things that take your mind off the horrors of the world. Cuddles from animals. Moving your body. Sunshine, even if it feels like fall is a season that just no longer exists and we're going to skip right over it and into winter.
The more specific things, for me, include slasher movies, which I've already written about before, and aggressively silly horror novels like the aforementioned Clown in a Cornfield series by Adam Cesare, which I tore through in a few days and had such a great time with. Also music, like my Antidepressants playlist, an unhinged mix of songs that are actually uplifting and hopeful and songs that make me laugh or make me want to dance. I've been adding to this playlist for at least eight or nine years now and it's a mess, with no unifying theme or genre. I love it and I lean heavily on it during times like these. And books in general, not just horror novels. I should make a Goodreads shelf for comfort reads, but in the absence of that, here are just a few. Everything Ciara Smyth writes qualifies, but I find Not My Problem especially comforting. The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding is truly just a hug for your heart, very low stakes and sweet and fluffy. The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes and If You Still Recognize Me by Cynthia So feel like a pair to me even though they have different themes and moods. Sapphic young adult is apparently what does it for me when I want comfort. But also, Anne of Green Gables. Do I even need to get into it? I'm also very fond of Anne of the Island, because, I mean, who could want more than to live in a cottage with your best friends and a cat and have few significant responsibilities except falling in and out of love with inconsequential boys and going to college? And Little Women. Too much preaching and some weird relationship configurations by the end, but otherwise a pretty perfect book.
And comedy shows. New Girl, always, endlessly, on rotation for the rest of my life, but again I don't really think I need to say more about that than I already have. More recently, I've watched both Girls5eva and English Teacher and absolutely loved both. I deserve more English Teacher, honestly. I didn't get nearly enough time with the characters and it's so, so funny.
Making things, too. Whatever you make, art or music or crafts or food or anything in between. Adding something to the world that didn't exist before, that wouldn't exist without you, putting something beautiful or nourishing or fun into the hands of people who desperately need things to hold on to. This is something that can fuel you and also other people, and it's defiance in the face of a system that would rather you were crushed, and that's as much as we can hope for.
I don't know, y'all. I've written so many words this year about how to keep going, how to sustain ourselves in a world where we're constantly being depleted in various ways, how to make living feel worth it when there's so much death and so much that makes us long for death. It never feels like enough because there's never an end to the amount of things that make these words feel necessary. I'm scared and tired and sad and everyone else I know is too, and I'm just trying to survive until maybe, one day, the better world that's possible actually exists and I can thrive. I'm not a revolutionary, not meant for the frontlines or for big, world-altering gestures. That's not my place and I don't want it to be. All I can do is this, try to remind you and myself that there are small, sweet things, that indulging in them is not nothing, that filling your life with reasons to stay alive is just as important as diving into the thick of things and drawing blood. I believe that. I have to believe that.
And so, as the election looms and as people die and as inhumane cruelties continue to be legally visited on the most vulnerable of us, I'll still be reading books, and lighting candles, and dancing through my house to the dumbest Tenacious D songs you've ever heard and the best hip-hop songs, and loving and laughing with my people. I'll do these things so that when the worst happens, I'll still be here, saying fuck you to those in power and holding out my hands to those they trample to get there, offering them something warm to sustain them for the next battle, and the next, and the next. There will always be a next, unfortunately, and that kind of relentlessness can't be survived unless we make the world a place that feels worth living in. These are small ways to do that, but they're still ways. They're all I've got.