Breast Kept Secrets: It’s OK to Just Survive
I’ve tried to put pen to paper for many days. Each piece I begin feels unimportant, mundane, repetitive. I don’t know how to fit my voice into the current narrative. I don’t know what is helpful to say…what is just my own story and what is helpful to others. But the nagging feeling won’t go away. That I do have something to add. That my experience from a year long quarantine of sorts makes me a pseudo expert on staying in one place without losing your shit. Or maybe that’s the crux of it all. It’s impossible to not lose your mind in these year-long days and day-long seconds.
That’s the worldwide ugly truth. Staying in place, being stagnant, forecasting one day at a time instead of weeks at a time goes against our very nature (or at least my very nature.) And the emotions, oh the emotions. If only we were pre-programmed to experience five emotions rather than 27 different emotions. It’s the blessing and curse of being human. We can’t experience joy without sadness. But sometimes the sadness is just too much, and the joy is too far away.
I wish I could give you Rachel’s Top Ten Tips for Surviving Quarantine. I wish there was a book on navigating a pandemic that I could refer you too. I wish that there was a one size fits all solution to boredom, worry, uncertainty. The truth is: I didn’t have a routine or magic answer or quick fix to getting through treatment. I didn’t have that special thing I could do to help my mind get to a better place. There were a lot of days of pure suffering. And there were days of pure survival. Just as there were many days of normalcy and happiness. But I never knew what kind of day it would be. I couldn’t plot out my mood or pre-plan for a break down. I could only take the days as they came.
And that’s what I’m relying on now. That age old instinct to just do what you can to survive. For me, that doesn’t mean quaranbaking sourdough bread or crafting (I have no patience.) In this very moment survival looks like comfort eating granola bars, looking at million dollar homes in Bend on Zillow and making sun tea for some Peterson family nostalgia. I’m not thriving right now. My level of productivity is measured by if I brushed my teeth or not. But I’ve learned to be OK with not thriving. Sometimes life calls for merely surviving. And sometimes we have to be in that survival mode for much longer than what we’re comfortable with.
Just surviving the day, the month, this moment is not something to be taken lightly, friends. It’s hard, unbelievably hard. Stringing together the moments can take a monumental effort. So surviving instead of thriving is not failure. In my eyes, it’s a heroic effort. It took a Herculean amount of strength to survive today.
So friends, that’s my quarantine pseudo-expert tip (I just spent 12 days locked in one room, so maybe I am a true expert!). It’s not too special. It’s not ground breaking. When you boil it down, it really is this: keep doing what you’re doing. Keep surviving. And don’t count yourself out for not thriving. From where I’m standing, you’re doing great.
