The Raw Real

Every morning before I write my blog, I pray. I know that I have daily readers. I have heard through the grapevine, that my blog gives my readers inspiration. In my earliest days of blogging, when I only had a sprinkling of readers, I would question, out loud, what my motivation was to write on a public forum like this. At that time, my husband said that there were a lot of ministers out there with smaller congregations than the amount of daily readers I had. He asked me if a minister would give up on their small, faithful congregation. That statement struck me and stuck with me. Now, I get that I am no minister. I am not nearly qualified enough, nor learned enough, nor pure enough to be a preacher. Truthfully, I’ve never felt called to be in the ministry. I’m not particularly religious. I have a very broad spectrum view of God, and yet I do have a deep, abiding faith in my big, broad God. I have a deeply personal relationship with my faith and a very individualized spirituality that works well for the both of us, me and the Universe. Our relationship is securely intact.

What am I getting at here? Sometimes through this whole coronavirus thing, I want to be a constant source of inspiration. I want to be a positive, powerful, uplifting inspiration to my family, to my friends and to my readers. I want to find just the right words that are going to make everything alright. I want to find the perfect meme that turns this all into one big ridiculous joke that we can all laugh at, and then go on our merry ways, like this pandemic is just one big, giant, aggravating disappointment. But right now, many, many tears are flowing down my face. I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m tired. Yesterday, I was just overwhelmed with it all. Yesterday, I walked 6.5 miles, to the point, where even Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, who’s usually in the lead and pulling my arm out of its socket, was being dragged along, behind me, looking completely exasperated and utterly bewildered, tethered to a fast moving, mad woman. I didn’t walk in the many pretty green spaces which we have all around us here. Most of our parks are now closed, but I wouldn’t have gone to a park, or even a leafy neighborhood, anyway. I purposely walked beside one of our uglier, busier highways – a place which I would typically avoid at all costs, especially in spring time, which is when we have our peak level of visitors, here in Florida. I walked along the unsightly, hot, smelly highway for the sheer relief of seeing some cars. I walked there to remind myself that there was still a faint stream of life, flowing through our community. Our town still has a pulse – a weak one, but it is still alive. Where there’s life, there is hope.

Today, I choose to be painfully honest with you all, as to where my mental space is right now. I’m not feeling particularly inspirational, nor cheerful. Everything that is supposed to be funny, just pisses me off. I’m letting the feelings flow, because I know that they will pass. If I bottle the negative feelings up, and pretend that they don’t exist, they will stay inside of me and fester. The festering feelings will turn into rot and I don’t need rot competing with my healthy body and immune system. I can’t let rot sit in my body, allowing my body to become vulnerable to this terrible, insidious virus.

I want to be an inspiration to myself and to you, my readers/friends. But more so, I have always promised to be painfully honest and vulnerable, in my sharing with you. I have sworn to myself that in this second half of my adulting, I would be, if nothing else, as authentic as I can possibly be, in all areas and relationships, in my life.

As I finish up writing this blog post, I feel better already. The release of my feelings, in the most honest of ways, has been very intense, yet very freeing. My load has been lightened. I don’t want to pass that ugly, heavy load on to you. I question whether I should just keep this post in the private archives, and to look for some more inspirational stories or funny memes to share instead, but I don’t think that is the right answer. I hope that by me, hashing up my internal turbulence and spitting it all out, that it gives you permission to do the same with your feelings. Get it all out. However you have to do it, as long as it is not harmful to you or to others, get it all out. Write it out, yell it out, stomp it out, run it out, scream it out, cry it out. Whatever you need to do, to safely release your private storm, it is okay. What we are dealing with here, is a lot. It is A LOT. It will pass. Good changes will come out of it. We’ll be okay and maybe even better for it, but for now, this coronavirus is a lot to deal with. It’s okay to admit that to yourself, and to your loved ones, and to God. God can take it. Just like when we were little kids having horrific temper tantrums and caught in the swirl of all of our emotion, those elders, those loving ones, in charge of our care, even if they were giving us ample physical space, were still surrounding us with love. The Love never stops. God loves us through all of this and understands that sometimes we are going to be on the floor, kicking and screaming, and crying and pounding our fists. Still, the Love never stops. It will sustain us.

This situation is overwhelming. It is scary. It has taken so much from us already and it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Give yourself permission to feel the disappointment, the fear, the fury. Give yourself permission to question angrily “the whos and the whats, the whys, wheres and hows.” And then, when the tantrum is over, settle into some quiet. Catch your breath and if little else, blanket yourself in the warm, secure knowing that the Love never stops loving you. Love never, ever stops.