avoiding avoidance with gratitude

i’ve been playing a lot of iphone games lately.

this week, i spent 13 hours and 40 minutes playing color block jam. when i run out of lives, i watch the 30 second ads to refill. i’ve saved the king from his unfortunate demise more times than i can count. i’ve done more housework for that shivering woman and her threadbare daughter than i have for myself.

i’ve been avoiding social media and news outlets. my brain is having difficulty processing an algorithm that alternates between deadly headlines and late-stage capitalistic plugs to make myself thinner and prettier (read: smaller and ready to be looked at, not heard)

i’ve found myself retreating to mindless distraction at a time when i cannot afford to distance myself from reality. i don’t want to be the woman sorting colored blocks while the world burns around me.

in college, my professor for intro to buddhism told us that gratitude journaling has just as powerful an antidepressant effect as anything my psychiatrist prescribes. while i never fact-checked him, i’m trusting his methods may help pull my brain out of its frozen avoidance (while still of course taking my SNRI).

to help regain the mental strength to stay awake to the violence those in power are so desperately trying to normalize, it’s at least worth a shot.

presenting: my public gratitude journal

recently, a friend of mine made me realize that views like this one are a privilege. my body is capable of climbing up mountains and, only because of that privilege am i able to put hank on his leash and lose my breath as we hike closer and closer to the sun together.

i recently dug my high tops out of my boyfriend’s trunk. chuck taylors were the first shoes i ever cared about and i wore my first pair from the time i was ten years old until they came apart at the seams. even simple styling made me feel like i was coming home.

i actually came home. i ate smith’s hot dogs and collected beach glass on presque isle. i spent the evening with my sister watching the same movies that are stitched into the fabrics of our souls, that gave us solace in the sometimes hellish landscape of our childhood. all these years later, she lives under that same roof and we continue creating safety for each other.

i got a free slurpee at 9 am when i went in to put gas on the pump (there was no apple pay option; i didn’t have my debit card). i had a long conversation with the man working security at 7-11 and he teased me about making a mess. i went back to my car and realized i forgot to pay for gas. too shy to go back in, i went to another gas station nearby, but the artificial cherry and connecting with a stranger made the minor inconvenience more than worth it.

i saw physical manifestation of my forever answer to “what do you want to do with your life?” — be the editor of a really cool publication. the version of myself who wrote essays on an empty stomach or in the throes of grief or in her head standing over a flat-top grill during a 6 am shift before class is already trying to convince me i’m an imposter, but she doesn’t know that i did this all for her to be able to roll her eyes at everyone who asks “what can you even do with an english degree?”

you can write. you can call it like you see it and hope that you help others see it too. you can be a drop in the bucket of a larger resistance — and you can dream (though the dream is big) that your words can help change the culture.

you can make cool shit with people you admire and you can be proud of that cool shit.

but to continue writing, i need to shake myself out of my iphone game slump — first by expressing gratitude.

until next time - xoxo kym