When a Bad Mood is Telling You Something
French Broad River by Quinn Corte.
Listen to the audio version below:
I’m in a Funk.
Ever since I got back from vacation, I feel positively miserable.
My bad mood has a few different textures. Sometimes my body feels heavy, when all I can do is curl up and stare out the window. Then there are the moments of restless panic, where I feel trapped and can’t sit still. I’ve also gone through anger—the fiery kind that seems to blaze out of nowhere. Other times I’m going about my day with a deep sense of resigned dread, like maybe the world won’t be OK after all.
All I want is to be outside. Being inside feels intolerable—I have an insatiable craving for the wilderness. I long for trees and sunshine and crisp wind and bodies of water. I want to play, walk, snooze, bask, eat, read, lounge, and dream outside. It’s the only thing that feels right.
I’m fulfilling that need. I’ve been lingering on the porch and taking myself on outings as much as humanly possible. But in modern life, there isn’t endless space for leisure and living. One must come inside and tend to the bills and dishes eventually.
And lately, when I switch from “fun” mode to “productive” mode, my Funk rolls back in. Whenever I try to work, do chores, run errands, or focus on anything, my mental health goes buck-wild. I want to jump out of my skin. Or sink to the floor. My inner rebel is having a total meltdown.
To make matters worse, my Capitalism Brain is spinning off its rocker. It’s telling me that if I want more leisure, more access to nature, and more time off, I need to work harder and make more money. So that, eventually, I can enjoy my life more. The insanity of this thought loop makes me want to scream.
Meanwhile, the horrors of the world have been too much for me to hold. I know many of you can relate. The suffering and brokenness of our society is just too damn much to bear. I’ve been digging deep trying to find my hope, my optimism, my trust that we can change the world. But it’s simply not accessible to me right now. I feel defeated to my core.
That’s my truth, y’all. I don’t want to be part of this machine right now. It’s too punishing and too broken, and it just keeps taking and taking from all of us.
I want to play. I want to be joyful. I want to be near the people I love. I want to feel alive; to be a human being instead of a zombie. I want swimming and strawberries and ocean breezes. I want to enjoy the feeling of my body on the earth.
There’s a huge part of me that thinks I need to fix this Funk. There’s a voice that says something is wrong with me because I can’t pull it together. My inner critic wants to diagnose me; to prescribe techniques and therapy and remedies.
But my Funk is sacred. In a world filled with "I'm fine," my Funk is the only one telling the truth around here.
This bad mood is telling me that I'm not fine. That the way we live is not only unbearable but deeply wrong. We’ve been slogging through the most unspeakable atrocities, trying to maintain business as usual. We demonize our feelings and glorify pushing forward. My Funk is saying, “NO MORE.”
The world is deeply unwell, and my soul is feeling it. No amount of phone calls to Congress, making more money, or massages can fix this Funk. I don’t want to fix this Funk. This Funk is a compass pointing to the truth.
So what does my self-care look like right now? It looks being righteously angry, depressed, and scared. It looks like putting off my entire to-do list without beating myself up, for as long as I need. And it looks like preparing my favorite snacks, putting on my summer cut-offs, and taking my sweet self outside…to let the Earth hold me.
Bad moods always pass. Maybe we should allow them to speak before they go.
You might also like…