Every day now is so much the same, has been the same for weeks. Here we go starting week nine of quarantine, and what a time I picked to start writing every day! Right now everything I write has to come only out of my head because nothing is happening. I cannot discuss this or that thing that happened today, except for what’s happened at home, which is a slight-but-not-interesting-enough variation of what’s happened every day for two months.

So the gist here is that I feel like I have nothing to write about, nothing to say, and yet I’ve tasked myself with posting every day. But that’s not really the problem. That just is. Who cares if I have nothing to say today? Well, I do. That’s the problem. Those three bothersome brainmates come around again:

What if I keep having nothing to say for a long time?

If I have nothing to say, then people won’t want to read my blog because they’ll be bored to tears.

I should always have something to say.

Yeah. Not doing me any good, I know. What would do me some good is squashing those three handwringers into very tiny rooms in my brain (because I can’t get rid of them for good) and giving bigger rooms to Oh Well; I Can; and C’mon, Get a Grip, This Isn’t Going to Kill You. I have a much better time when I’m hanging out with those brainmates, although that last one has some room to grow in the empathy department.

I’ll keep you posted on how this living rearrangement is going. I don’t think What If, If Then, and Should are going to take it lightly, but I’m prepared to be firm.

All around her the empty spaces filled in,

faster and faster and more completely.

So fast and so intensely that

the process blurred.

The blurring wasn’t okay with her.

She wanted to watch it happen,

wanted to imprint every detail of every drop

on her memory,

to be recalled with the same intensity

the second, third, fourth times as the first.

Because of course she was worried

about evaporation.

And how empty the spaces might get

and how they would get filled up again.

After all, you just never knew about

these things.

But even as she willed her eyes and brain

to work harder, she noticed a fading of

the filling in. So she closed her eyes and just

breathed instead.

Too many windows

make life less interesting.

How much glass is best?

What if you shatter,

and all the bits of you run

far away, laughing?

The pieces scatter,

and for the first time, I don’t

rush to pick them up.

*I wrote these haiku separately, on different days, and only just now thought to put them together. I kinda like them like this.

A few days ago I wrote about my brainmates What If and If Then, but I neglected to mention their buddy Should. So Should came for a visit today to remind me how unhappy it was that I left it out. And it was rather insensitive of me, considering how much Should tries to help me–emphasis on the word tries.

You see, Should intends to help by doing its best to make me follow the rules. (Even if, as I also wrote about previously, the rules exist only in my head.) Sometimes Should is genuinely useful, like when it reminds me to do things that I actually need to do or not do: You should brush your teeth. You should not eat that second slice of cake. You should take a second to calm down before you yell at your kid. But Should often tells me to do or feel things that are definitely not useful: You should be sad about this because everyone else is. You should get together with that person you don’t really like because it would make the person happy. You should do three loads of laundry today because your family is counting on you to provide them with clean clothes even though it’ll make you crazy grouchy if you try to cram that in to your already full day and that’s not what we need now, is it? And on and on and on it goes.

As you might imagine, Should doing its thing that much is a big problem. I’ve tried telling it to stop, but it’s learned to tune that word out. So I’m learning to be a little more specific, and to ask it questions. Why should I feel sad just because it seems like a lot of other people are? Are there really as many people feeling sad about this as I think? And even if I feel differently, what’s wrong with that? There aren’t any rules that say how to feel about this. Should doesn’t like it when I ask those questions. Ah, c’mon! Why you gotta do that? Those questions are too hard, it says. So it shuts up for a little bit, and I get some peace and quiet. And then I ask myself, What should I do with this peace and quiet?

Oh no.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to write about us. Americans and our extreme division. Because it breaks my heart. But I want to do it in a way that doesn’t create more division. And yet I might want to slip an opinion in there, or if I have particularly feisty one, it might just slip in there on its own. And it often feels to me these days as though expressing an opinion at all is to necessarily to divide yourself from others.

And so. How to express so much frustration, anger, disbelief, fear, sadness without fortifying those walls that keep us from seeing and knowing each other? And without losing sight of what’s important: the fight for a more just, equitable, loving, sustainable, healthy world? (Because I believe we all want that, even if we don’t realize it. We may disagree on how to achieve it, and some people may not appear to want it because they’ve been sad, scared, and angry for too long, but we want it nonetheless.)

Two of those words I wrote in that last sentence are key to this kind of expression, I think: fight for. A friend said a while ago that she wasn’t fighting against anyone or anything, that she was just fighting for certain things. And I loved that. Then we don’t have to name an enemy. Because let’s be honest–we’re all too busy and tired to have enemies. If we focus on what we’re for instead of what we’re against, it feels so much better. We don’t have to carry the heaviness of hostility and resentment around all the time.

That isn’t to say, of course, that we’ll never have to say something that will make another person upset. Speaking out for what we’re working toward will vex others at times. It just will. But if we’ve spoken with kindness and respect, we’ve done all we can. And our words and our tone really do make a difference. We can wound, or we can heal. We can fight against or fight for. Antagonism will inevitably find its way into our lives sometimes no matter what we do, but we don’t have to add more. And what a relief that we have that choice.

We Maryland residents found out today that (in-person) schools are canceled for the rest of the year, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I’m certainly glad to finally know for sure; Maryland was the forty-seventh state to announce that kids are not going back this school year, and I was getting really antsy waiting for the decision. I pretty much knew we wouldn’t go back, but the uncertainty was hard. So much is uncertain in this pandemic, and I just wanted to know this one big thing for sure.

I am sad for the kids and their teachers, for all the school employees who thrive on seeing the students and their colleagues every day. When you sign up to be a classroom teacher, you certainly don’t envision yourself sitting in front of your computer, looking at a bunch young faces in only two dimensions. And while some kids may enjoy the freedom of working at home on their own schedule, many of them are missing their friends, their teachers, and the routine of the school day.

So many forced social experiments are going on right now, and I know that’s as it had to be, but they are difficult to sit through, and the results may be difficult to deal with also. How much will education change after this experiment is over? Will we like the changes? I just hope that we take the right lessons from this time and apply them in ways that give all kids (and adults that work in the education field) the chance to have a richer and more fulfilling school experience.

I’ve forgotten a lot of what my therapists have told me, but about ten years ago a therapist said something to me that I’ve remembered ever since. You ready for something profound? “You can’t have everything,” she said. Yes, really, that’s it. It sounds simple and obvious, I know, but it must’ve been some kind of brilliant beam of light into a cold dark place in my mind, because here I am writing about after all this time.

We all know it in our heads, don’t we? Of course we can’t have everything. Even if we had money for all the things, there’s not enough time. We are constantly making choices, so many that we forget we’re making them, that if we tried to keep a complete list of them, we’d do nothing but write (or type). Do I stay in bed a few more minutes or get up like I know I should? Do I have what I want for breakfast or something a little healthier? Do I go to the bathroom now and interrupt my work, or do I wait until I’m at a good stopping point? Do I work more hours so I can earn more money (because God knows we need the money) or do I go watch that movie with my family (because God knows the kids won’t be kids forever)?

You get the idea. I don’t even think I realized how very much of our lives we spend making choices until I started writing this. No wonder humans are so stressed out all the time. Some of us have more choices than others, of course. We’re lucky if we can choose from ten things to have for breakfast, or if we can choose whether we want to go to this country or that country for vacation (I do not have that particular choice, but maybe someday). Still, though, we must always choose.

Somewhere along my growing-up path, I got it in my head that I could/should/would have it all. And of course–there are so many wonderful, beautiful people/places/things/ideas in the world. But I’m happier now understanding that I just can’t. Instead, I get to focus on what’s really important to me. I still have to make all kinds of choices, but some have been cut out, and some that are left are easier to make (although not necessarily easier to follow through with).

As with much of life, having to choose is brutiful, to borrow Glennon Doyle’s term. Every time we make a choice, we have to give something up, which can be painful, but we also get the chance to reaffirm what matters to us. And so, one small choice at a time, we whittle our lives into an oeuvre of meaningful pieces that we are proud to behold.

Darkness fast descending.

Quickly! Put up a light bright

enough to matter.

No enemy lies

so still as that which beckons

with a tiny voice.

Maybe wonder stays

forever near the margins.

You have to go there.

I was trying to write every day for at least thirty days, but at the time I had set aside to write last night, I had a pounding headache. I briefly thought, But I know other people are productive when they don’t feel well. I can do that too. And then I realized (remembered?) that it’s okay if I don’t try to be productive when I’m not feeling well. There is no rule that says if one doesn’t produce during difficult times, one is a lame and hopeless human being. Doesn’t exist.

I was gonna write about coronavirus again today, but apparently now I’m going to write about rules–their existence or nonexistence, whether they should be followed or not followed. These are my initial thoughts: nonexistent rules should definitely not be followed. Existent rules should be followed depending on what they are. The golden rule that we should treat other people the way we want to be treated? One of the top three most important rules to follow, for sure. Some other rules should probably not be followed, none of which I can think of right now. (I think I just broke a rule of writing–that I should give an example or somehow back-up a claim I’m making. Oops, but oh well. Not hurting anyone if I don’t follow it.)

Trying to follow nonexistent rules (AKA rules that only exist in our heads) usually gets us in big trouble. I know from experience; I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to follow such rules, of which there have been many. It has been exhausting. Here are some of the biggies:

• Emotionally healthy people should always know how to handle their feelings.
• If you are in love with someone, you should always want to talk to and be around that person, without exception.
• If you are smart, you will get good grades.
• If you are good at something, you will always do it well, and you will just know how to do it without any practice or training.

I know, I know. My thinking was just a wee bit black and white and emotionally immature, even well into my adult years. (Ooh, and looky–it’s that pesky If Then again. See my previous post about that if you don’t know what I mean.) I think that our society also tries to pass these posers off as actual rules, but I know better now, thank goodness.

It turns out that breaking these rules is exhausting too, but the exhaustion wanes, and it’s certainly worth it in the end. So which rules are worth following, besides the golden one? The most important ones I got from other people: Love yourself so that you can love others. Be kind and brave. Show up, even when you don’t know what you’re doing. And one more: Treat yourself the way you would treat those you think are the most important people in the world. Do the last one so you can do the others as long and as well as possible.

As I hesitated before beginning to write this post about all the tension we carry in our bodies, I noticed that my jaw was clenched. It is now unclenched, but I bet it won’t stay that way for long. I hold about fifty tons of tension in my body at any given time, and although I’m trying to notice it more and let it go, I don’t succeed at doing so most of the time.

I bet all the tension I hold in my body could power a small city. Clenched jaw, tight shoulders, clamped stomach–an untapped gold mine! I wish I really could offload my tension for a good cause, because I’ve increasingly come to realize that it’s not as benign as it might seem. I can’t even see what it’s doing to the inside of my body, but I know it makes me more exhausted and anxious on the outside. When my body is so tense, it takes very little to push my anxiety level over into panic territory. And then I have all kinds of other fun symptoms to go along with my tension. More on those later. I have to stop for now, because a little talk about tension goes a long way, and I want to go do something to relax a bit. Don’t forget to breathe, y’all!