What’s been on my mind lately? Everything. So many things. Too many things. I used to journal more but I gave it up in 2020. When my entire world felt like it was upside down, there was just too much to say and plugging my ears against it felt easier. Maybe I never should’ve stopped. Maybe I’d feel better if I got all the crap out on paper. Here’s hoping.

Lately I’ve been thinking about trauma and grief and recovery. What does it mean to heal? How does one learn to become whole? I saw this quote on Facebook, of all places, that says, “I think there is pressure on people to turn every negative into a positive, but we should be allowed to say, ‘I went through something really strange and awful and it has altered me forever’.” Some person I’ve never heard of (Marian Keyes) is quoted as having said it.

I don’t know if it’s the tiny stalker I call a cell phone just listening in on my counseling sessions and car sobs and late night chats with my mom, or if it was by divine appointment that I’d see this quote on my timeline, but it’s really stuck with me. I am the people mentioned. I feel the pressure. I have spent years—years—of my life in tremendous amounts of emotional pain that I have tried to write off with a moral or beautify with a metaphor. But maybe that’s not necessary. Maybe, sometimes, it is enough to just say something hurt. Maybe it’s enough to say that it sucked and I hated it and thank God it’s over now (whenever it decides to be over).

It’s been three steps forward, two steps back for months. It’s been late nights and later mornings. It’s been tears and screaming and shaking and tiptoeing around any and everything that might set off the tears and screaming and shaking. It’s been losing sight of who I am in the fog of pain and stumbling through it until I get a grip on something tangibly myself again. It’s been a nightmare in the day and surprisingly mostly decent dreams at night but my goodness it’s been difficult and disturbing and deeply, deeply upsetting. I am so looking forward to the ‘thank God it’s over now’ part.

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to try? What does it mean to try and keep trying even when some part of you wants desperately to curl into a ball in the safety of your bed and wither there until the pain withers more? Until there’s no tight little knot of dread and anxiety weighing on your chest. Until you don’t have to breathe through sighs or sniffles or manic laughter.

What does it mean to suffer? And what does it mean to heal?

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I’ve come out of other emotional caves—how I’ve clawed out of other emotional pits. I’ve been thinking but I can’t totally remember. The double edged sword of having a mortal mind prone to forgetting and romanticizing—it is both a blessing to forget and a curse when you need to remember. I don’t know but I’m trying with every ounce of strength inside of me and I can see it. I can see the progress I’ve made with three steps forward and two steps back. And I have moments—brief, fleeting, bright, and terrifying—of a fiery rage insisting I push through it faster, screaming I keep going until it’s over. Because I desperately want for it to be over. I deeply long for my brain to feel safe again, to feel like me again.

And while that quote I saw on Facebook is comforting, it’s scary to think I may carry some PTSD-type response inside of me for an undetermined length of time—“forever altered” when all I want is to be back to normal.

Normal is overrated, though, and some part of me knows that. Normal is crying over the men who don’t love me rather than the friend who took her life. Normal is wishing I were prettier, thinner, friendlier rather than wishing I could go one day without an intrusive thought threatening to send me over the edge. Normal is just as exhausting, and I hate the words because of their association with a certain virus who shall not be named, but I think I know I need a new normal after this storm has passed. A new normal where I have space to say that yes, I am forever altered, and no, I don’t have PTSD or whatever.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about grief. I’ve been praying for every person I know who’s experiencing it, myself included. And the list seems to be growing. While that should probably be enough to immobilize me, there’s an odd sort of comfort in knowing I’m not alone. I’m not experiencing anything new or unprecedented. I’m in good company. And there’s something in seeing the people whose grief journey started before mine. They’ve made progress. They’re managing it. They’re still going, still trying, still living. So I can too.

Lately I’ve been thinking about grief and how to beautify it or not beautify it and how to talk about it. Lately I’ve been thinking about how to let people in. Lately I’ve been trying to do that.

I went line dancing recently. After shunning any and all bits of rural culture around me, I texted the words, “Yeah, that sounds like fun!” when asked if I wanted to come. And you know what? It was fun. For those 60 minutes, my body moved. My body danced (sort of) and I didn’t have to be anything else. I didn’t have to be healed or whole. I didn’t have to be Andrea, the graphic designer, or Andrea, the writer, or Andrea, the artist. I didn’t have to be Andrea, the mentor, or Andrea, the daughter, or any other Andrea I like and occasionally feel like a phony for trying to be. I got to be that woman in the back of the line dancing class who wasn’t very good but okay for a first-timer and maybe she wore the wrong shoes and maybe she got a little sweaty, but hey, she showed up and she tried and she had fun doing it.

Lately I’ve been thinking about a line from a worship song: “my mourning grew quiet, my feet rose to dance.” I have so longed for my mourning to grow quiet enough that my feet can rise to dance. And they did, finally. They rose to line dance. Not well, not skillfully, but they did it. I did it. And I will keep doing it—line dancing, chasing healing, trying. Because that, I think, is what it is to be human. What it is to heal, to be made whole. To try and to keep trying and to feel the awkwardness of the fumbled grapevines and the weird shimmies, and to keep moving. To keep dancing.

Would you look at that? I did it again. I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing the happy ending, even if I haven’t quite lived it yet myself.