Last week I woke up, scrolled social media in bed and came across a video of a man in Barcelona playing “My Heart Will Go On” from his balcony, while a neighbor played along with a saxophone nearby. Dozens of onlookers watched and cheered from their isolated balconies. I played the video over and over again, feeling the intensity of the collective pain in our world. Then I bawled as I got of bed, as I put on the same sweatpants I’ve been wearing for a week, and as I made breakfast for my son.
The whole day was like that, a mess of crying from one task to the next. I thought several times, How can you be so depressed while quarantined at home, when so many brave healthcare workers and grocery store clerks and transportation operators are on the frontlines, putting their health at risk every day?
You should be grateful.
It wasn’t until I spoke with my therapist a few days later that I realized I could be grateful for all those working on the frontlines AND depressed about my personal situation at the same exact time. I could be both.
When I was a child, my dad would have “good days” (sober) and “bad days” (drunk), and I quickly learned there was nothing in between.
When I was in high school, I learned that there were “good foods” (low-calorie) and “bad foods” (caloric) and nothing in between.
As I came into adulthood and developed eating disorders and depression, I understood myself to be a “bad” person,” because I did not match up to the narrative of what “good” people look like. Mental illness had stolen from me the ability to be productive and happy and pretty like everyone in magazines or on TV. I knew what it would take to become “good,” but I didn’t have the energy to even take a shower, let alone be all the shiny things our culture demands of us.
It took about a decade of therapy, a lot of time spent with emotional support animals, medication, and a stay in rehab for me to begin to realize that good and bad days, foods, and people simply don’t exist. All the days, all the foods, and all the human beings on earth are far too complex to be summed up into a sad label.
Deep down in my heart, I know this. I know, know, know that the middle path is the true path, that the magic of life is gray, not black and white. But I am a thirty-five-year-old woman on bedrest with a high-risk pregnancy in the middle of a global pandemic, and these circumstances are ramping up my rigid thinking and depressive tendencies.
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