I sat at a good friend’s dining table last week and she asked me how things were. Things have not felt good recently, that much I know, but I don’t think it’s fair to tell everyone you know that you are doing bad all of the time, if for no other reason than it doesn’t do the complexity of your own experience justice. But still, I have felt bad recently.
I lost my wallet in the streets of a farmers market I went to in an attempt to try and pull myself out of a stubborn sulk, exchanging a driver’s license and a credit card for a bouquet of flowers.
When the sun is out, I find myself sunburnt and tired instead of recharged. I’ve made friends I can’t talk to, lost ones I can.
My laundry is piled up on the floor of my room. Yesterday I wore a flowered dress that I pulled out of my dirty hamper, and the compliments I got on it felt hollow, my ache unseen and buried underneath a pink skirt swinging in the wind.
I put my best foot forward in my coffee-stained shoes and fool the world into thinking my insides are as bright and glowing as the delirious smile I carry on my face when I haven’t slept enough the night before.
I pace back and forth on the stand-up stage telling jokes, always more poignantly aware of moments of silence than I am of the audience’s laughs. In recordings, I watch the way I so often just stare at the floor as I speak. I look for silence and disapproval to read in between the lines of support and love.
Later today I will tell my therapist I feel bad, and she will make me elaborate. I’ll tell her of the bouquet of flowers, my dirty dress, the quiet fading of friendships, and the careless boys I allow into the church of my loving body and the wine they spill in my pews, staining my heart.
When you feel bad for long enough, eventually you have to turn back inwards and investigate. Feelings are so layered, that under each one lies a different one. And deciding to simply feel bad is just an excuse not to name something else. For me recently, bad has mostly been sad. But it has also been angry, lonely, nostalgic, bitter. And if I am being honest and mature, none of those feelings are bad things, they are just uncomfortable at best and downright agonizing at worst.
It doesn’t help me to assign an objective moral value to my feelings, that just implies that unpleasant emotions should not be felt. And that when they come up they should be crammed down, pushed aside, and powered through. Or smoked away, drank away, scrolled away. Whatever it is that might help us stop feeling so bad.
I think often about the breadth of the human experience. The idea that we are simply a piece of the universe that has been set into a body for approximately 100 years or maybe much less, and our job is nothing more than to experience and appreciate. In our silly short human life, we are given the privilege of living out the depth of all human emotions, from devastation to ecstasy. I think we forget sometimes that you cannot have one without the other.
We fall into a trap of believing that our joy is good and sorrow is bad, as though each doesn’t need the other in order to exist. One without the other is simply purgatory. My favorite verse on this comes from Kahlil Gibran’s collection of poetry The Prophet, where he writes
“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
I have felt bad recently. My usually half-full cup has had a hole at the bottom and has been slowly dripping out. Despite being ongoingly topped off with sunny days and mornings spent writing poetry, I have still struggled to patch the leak. I have scooped my glass into the water of the bay, tried to fill it with hot coffee, and spent too many evenings emptying it of beer. None of it has helped.
A friend of mine asked recently the difference between a glass half-full and one half-empty, and I tried to explain the phrase to him, but the question still stuck. I could ramble on about perspective, gratitude, optimism, and pessimism, but instead of obsessing over filling the cup, I have settled into a commitment to experience it at each level of its fullness. Eventually, a cup must empty itself of one experience anyways, in order to create the space to fill it with another.
Some days I sit with sweet gratitude over neighborhood walks and low-hanging full moons. I pause to cherish the laughter of my friends. I set my alarms early on my days off, simply so I don’t miss the loveliness of a long morning. I care so deeply that my heart lives outside of my body, placed into the hands of those I love. I don’t believe happiness is only real when shared, and I don’t believe misery is the only thing that loves company.
But today I sit in frustration, crying off and on. My laundry is finally in the wash, but I don’t know where I will find the energy to fold it. I will write my sad poems, finish my cold coffee, and try to find the energy to lace up my skates, allowing myself grace if that isn’t enough to fix today’s ache.
I have felt bad recently. Grieving, relishing, wallowing, recharging. And simultaneously preparing to return home to myself.
“Like the rainbow
after the rain
joy will reveal itself
after sorrow”Rupi Kaur, the sun and her flowers
