I keep trying to think of analogies for what I suspect is the emotional state of a whole lot of people right now. Maybe you. Here’s one.
The analogy is for when you finally get through the crushing stress leading up to the election, then getting through the election and on to the news media calling the race for Biden, only to find a world full of so much more to worry about with everything else going on in the world.
An expression I used in my book was “out of the frying pan and into getting hit in the head with a frying pan.” That might work. My editor didn’t like it but boy I did.
I was thinking of election stress being like Goliath and you’re David and after you slay Goliath you realize that Goliath was blocking your view of a huge group of other Goliaths. And you also have the unenviable task of getting rid of the bloated Goliath corpse.
(That Goliath looks like former NBA center Tom Burleson.)
Maybe the stress was a wrestler and you finally pinned him but then find out he was part of a three-man tag team with his partners COVID and Race Issues so things aren’t going to get easier. Plus the first guy, the election, insists he wasn’t really pinned even though you completely pinned him and everyone knows it, including Georgia’s secretary of state.
Regardless, getting past the election is a relief for anyone and a joyful one to Biden supporters. So you let your guard down because you’re in a more restful place. And there comes the shock of nothing actually being easier. COVID is out of control in America and we know - we KNOW - that thousands and thousands of our fellow citizens will die. Racism, sexism, climate change, the economy, are all huge and raging and have been this whole time. The conclusion of the election seemed to have given you a chance to relax but it’s like relaxing on a Hawaiian beach while Hawaii is having a massive deadly civil war. A bit hard to chill.
And I think a lot of people coming off one stress are just going to rediscover some new things to get stressed about and get re-crushed under those, perhaps even worse because they might have believed relief was coming. I think it’s a rough world out there and it can make you lose hope that there will be times when you’re not crushed by stress.
What can I do for you? Not much. Perhaps help you identify what might factor into a letdown feeling so you can analyze it, compartmentalize it, and treat it as best you can given the circumstances.
Be kind to yourself. Realize we are presently in a time so challenging that people will study it in history classes for a long time. Our progeny will ask how we got through it and we’ll shrug and say, “I dunno. Had to.”
So that’s one take. And now a line to denote a separate thought.
Speaking of getting re-crushed by stress.
It’s worth considering how much of your stress and depression is from the terrifying very real world we live in and how much is from the habit of stress and the habit of assigning it.
Here’s a habit I have and wish I didn’t: I stress out about something coming up. An election, a job thing, something with my kids’ school, a weird ache in like my elbow or something. Then that thing gets resolved and instead of just being CALMER I find a brand new thing to stress out about. I always have to be filling that void. I’m Sisyphus stocking up on boulders for the future.
I’m pretty sure I have some backup long-range worries lined up as reserves in my mind so once something gets knocked off the list, in rushes some stress about glacier melt that can hold me until the next very specific stress arrives. The stress has carved out a little condominium in my mind to use as an AirBnB and makes sure it’s always rented.
So I wonder if that’s what’s going on to some extent for a lot of people coming off the election. Are people so used to having that dread/anxiety over the election setting up house in their head, maybe for the last four years, that they’ll refill it with something that feels similar?
Do I do that? Do you do that?
And that’s not to play down the various very real terrors that are happening but at a certain point, are we hooked on anguish?
I sometimes forget, here in this ostensibly self-promotional newsletter, to self-promote. Please buy my book, The Hilarious World of Depression.
I get letters all the dang time from people who read it, benefited from it, and are buying it from others. They track down my email just to say thanks.
It’s important that I take time to sit with each letter and breathe it in and out for a while. Because it’s the most gratifying thing a writer/artist/creator/maker can receive: a little indication of “that helped.”
So thank you, readers.
And here are photos of three-person tag teams that I did not use in the first item but still enjoyed. They are each quietly sad in their own way but some of them could easily beat me to death.
How did you know, Joe? I was so elated Sunday and then went right back to news and Facebook way too quick. Sticking to Instagram. Lots of cats.