Pre-birthday Reflections
Facebook was where I would write my not-essays essays.
I call them “not-essays essays” because they were long but 100% off the top of my head and didn’t include any links or anything. They were just thoughts. But when I go back and read the ones from 3+ years ago, I was in a zone and they are not just great reminders but also help me remember why I am who I am today.
This one from 2019 took me a little by surprise. Just a little because I was in one of the worst depressive periods of my life. I was overworked, underpaid, and constantly hustling. I broke that year and I’ve been recovering since. Except that in this society, recovery isn’t something you focus on — it’s something you squeeze in between your other mandatory obligations. All that’s to say that I’m still working it out three years later.
So here I am, three years older, three more years into processing the fact that while I’ve had some joy in my life, it’s been through a lot of incredibly violent and dehumanizing situations. Three more years into realizing that my depression and stress are natural reactions to perpetual harm and embracing the fact that there really isn’t an end to this — just different ways to cope. There are things I do now that I wouldn’t have entertained three years ago, but I also didn’t foresee the addition of a goddamn pandemic that would span 2+ years with no end…
