Hard Feelings Can Build a Better World
Crane Beach, MA, by Quinn Corte, 2021.
Listen to the audio version below:
I’ve been having a really hard time.
The Funk that I wrote about last month got worse. I’ve been using the word “depression” to describe it, but what I’m experiencing feels more like
anxious grieving,
untethered loneliness, &
hopeless urgency.
From what I’m hearing, I’m not alone.
This month I want to honor the pain and importance of these hard times. I also want to offer some strategies for coping.
Here’s the first thing I want to say. It’s OK to feel terrible, even when your life is beautiful. Let’s just take that guilt out of the equation, shall we? Something doesn’t have to be “wrong” in order for you to struggle. You can love your life and still have a hard time.
Here’s the second important thing to remember. It makes sense if you are not OK, because things are not OK. Let me say that again a little louder for the people in the back. Things. Are. Not. OK.
A few years ago, I had to take a medical leave from work because I was having debilitating dizziness and other horrible symptoms. I went to the doctor and asked him to run every test in the book. He didn’t want to do any tests; he told me it was stress. I threw a tantrum.
I couldn’t see that stress was eating me alive because it was my new baseline. I didn't just wake up one day feeling burned out. Like a lobster in a pot, it happened so gradually that I didn't realize how intense things had been for so long. Looking back, it’s obvious that my body was reacting perfectly to the crisis around me. My body was screaming, “Things are not OK!”
Similarly, the past few weeks my ego has been demanding to understand why I’m so down in the dumps. “It’s summer! You're doing fun things! You should be happy! Things are so good!” But then I just zoom out. I zoom out and I see it all clearly.
Of course I’m having a hard time, because this is a hard time.
We are living through a traumatic period in history. The last few years have put us on edge, ready to respond and adapt to constant surprises. Our bodies have been surviving these threats by staying locked in a prolonged stress response. Meanwhile, our souls are grieving innumerable losses and injustices.
Here are a few other feelings I want to normalize.
It’s OK if you’re feeling lonely, like me. Many of us are desperately longing for in-person community, friendship, touch, companionship, variety, group energy, and even small talk. Humans are social creatures—we’ve been disconnected the last two years, and for centuries. Let’s take this feeling as a call to come together, grieve together, make change together.
It’s OK if you have no capacity to produce right now. I have enough ideas, dreams, and plans to fill a small city, but literally no energy or desire to act on them. All I want to do is play play play, be with others, soak up nature, rest, and write. Everything else—I’m doing the bare-damn-minimum. Frankly, it’s a crime that we have to work right now, on top of everything else.
It’s OK if you’re experiencing more urgency than usual. For me, some of the urgency is existential—I have so much I want to experience and create, but only a finite and unknowable amount of life and energy left. Some of the urgency is toxic—my conditioning makes me feel inadequate when I’m not rushing. And some of the urgency is fuel—I want to fight for liberation now. Urgency is in the air.
It’s OK if you don’t know what to do next. I’ve been feeling totally lost, wondering how to go forward from here. It’s not that I don’t know what I want for my life (and for the world), it’s that I don’t know how to be a person in this pandemic-enduring, climate-crisis-escalating, war-in-the-background, oppression-awakened, post-Roe world. But I’m starting to think it’s exactly right to be in a space of not-knowing. This is uncharted territory.
It’s OK to feel hopeless. What if—bear with me here—what if it’s a good thing that we’re losing hope? What if hope was a set of guardrails keeping us too safe, telling us to keep at it, to persist in doing things the way we have always done them? What if hope was bubble wrap that protected us from truly feeling and accepting that the world is broken? What if losing hope shines a guiding light on what matters most, and casts everything else into shadow?
I’ve always been an optimistic, trusting girl who worked hard to be a good citizen. I’m transforming into a discerning, fierce woman who will fight for wellbeing and abundance for myself, my people, and my planet.
I’m grieving how wrong things are and angry that I have put so much energy into systems that are desperately failing us. But I also feel slightly relieved that society-as-we-know-it is past saving. Maybe we can grieve its death, let it be composted, and start growing an entirely new one.
The pandemic taught us to hold our plans loosely and our loved ones tighter. Let’s not forget those lessons—this is a chance to let go of the world we’ve known and surrender to what’s possible.
What if we can use our hard feelings to build a better world?
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