The Experiment – A 365 Day Search For Happiness

There is no way any of this will be done quickly. We are all, in this town, with the stuffing kicked out of us by Hurricane Florence, picking up the pieces one tiny bit at a time.

There are hours upon hours waiting on hold on phones. There is getting on lists for assistance that may not come for weeks. There is constantly looking around at the damage and feeling as though you can’t breathe and may lose your mind and the only way to do any of this is in such tiny increments they seem invisible. Forward movement is so slow and so small there is almost nothing you can visibly track, but you have to know, you have to hold on in your heart, to the fact that you have done what you could do each day no matter how small.

I have spent the whole morning on hold. I got one tiny thing done. I am doing this blog post now because I have to leave in an hour to go to therapy, and then an errand, and then my sweet daughter Rachel will be here tonight and I will make us dinner and we are going to watch — much to our overwhelming delight — our favorite show in the whole wide world that came back on for the new season last night and which we watch together but because I don’t have cable t.v. any longer for the last year and a half we watch it the next night on Hulu. Tonight we watch the first episode of Season 3 of This Is Us and we will doubtless both cry during the show and then tell each other how madly we love it and talk about it on and on after the show is over. We are MAD about this show.

It’s these little things that save you at a time like this. With endless phone calls, more trees than you can count that need to come down for thousands of dollars you don’t have, a fence so broken you can’t use your back yard, your darling little elderly pugs confused having to walk on leashes in harnesses, and almost daily finding more things broken that need to be repaired, if you stop to add it up every day you will just simply lose your mind. One thing, one moment, one day at a time. Today it is this blog post, and therapy, and an errand, and my darling Rachel (Not to mention the 2 hours on the phone getting help this morning.). That will be my day today. My first day in perhaps a thousand to make my life right again, or as right as it will ever be here after all the devastation.

A dear friend wrote in last night after my first blog post back since the hurricane. She spoke of the fact that there is no going back, there is no making things how they once were, there is only recovering as best you can and building a new life. This is hard. We, as humans, want to slide back into familiar tracks. In the last 2 weeks those tracks were blown away, they disappeared. There is nothing familiar anymore. At 64 it is hard to wrap my mind around this. I can’t. There is no recreating what there once was. There is letting go of what you once knew, and making your way in this whole new world as bravely as you can. Bit by bit, inch by inch, piece by piece. That’s what I am doing, that’s what everyone in this town is doing.

And I am learning so much, so much more than I can say in one blog post, in fact I will be taking the whole next year to think about these things and share my thoughts. At the bottom what this is about is that no matter what you have gone through you are not the only people that are suffering. We must be very gentle with the people we call on for help. I am finding that the kindest people to me may be those people who, I am ashamed to admit, I have gotten upset in the past with having to deal with because they are obviously in call centers in a foreign country that we, in the United States, have to deal with for our pressing issues, and communication can be hard but they are doing their job as best they can. They have families to feed and maybe sick children and perhaps an elderly parent who has just died and they may be dealing with more than any of us can begin to imagine. It is coming to me each and every day that we are all suffering and struggling and afraid and doing our best. We are all moving forward one step, one moment, one day at a time. We have all had hurricanes in our lives, if not physical ones like Florence, life itself will knock us down, pick us up, toss us half way across town and stomp on us. Being unkind to someone because you don’t think they “know” what you are going through is the ultimate hubris. We are all doing our best. Please be kind to everyone.

I woke up this morning afraid. I woke up to the same thing I imagine I will be waking up to for some time. Early, very early in the mornings, we wake up to the sound of chain saws. There are thousands upon thousands of trees that must come down and be dealt with. It is too early to even have a semblance of whatever our “new normal” will be. We just do our best and keep on keeping on each and every day.

I am here. I am doing my best. I will finish this 365 day journey and start right into the next one. If you are suffering, if you are struggling, if you are afraid, I am telling you you need to pick one thing and see it through. That’s what I am doing here on my blog. I have invited others to join me with their own 365 day journey. It could change your life, it could save your life as it has mine, but in any case pick something, some one thing, and show up for it every day. You can do that, you can at least do that, if I can in the wake of this hurricane and after the whole last year when I was in such a terrible state with mental health issues the mobile crisis unit had to be called, if I can do this you can do something too. Pick one thing, do it, no excuses.

If not, why not? If not now, when? Isn’t it time?

Bless you my loves. Let’s carry on.