Maudlin

I wrote something this morning about Sunday mornings, filled with melancholy and maudlin thoughts. Perfect Sunday mornings aside, I am still angry. It’s really hard not to be. Things are very uncertain right now and we are pretty powerless to stop it alone (except, stay inside, please). Being angry is perfectly normal.

Maybe that’s the problem, too many of us telling others what is okay to feel. I say feel what you want. There is no rulebook for something like this. No one knows whats going to happen, so nobody knows what to feel and when to feel it.

It’s probably not healthy to let this low-grade anxiety overwhelm us though. We boomers are especially anxious since the virus seems to have us in its target this time (contrast and compare with H1N1, which overwhelmingly attacked the young). It still is indiscriminate in who it kills, but we know where the big numbers lie.

 If not for yourself, there is that continuing undercurrent of that someone you know and love will die. It’s not so much the numbers right now, it’s the onslaught. This is unlike other pandemics, in its transmissibility and mortality. That’s pretty scary.

I write to let it out, including private journaling. I find the process of arranging my thoughts to be calming. If for letting me remember what I am not in control of this morning than anything else. My only advice? Rage when you need too. Cry when you need to. Be afraid. Be vulnerable. Then you can be brave. You can be strong. You can be resilient (I love that word).

In two words? Be human. I guess that doesn’t seem so maudlin after all.