BEING TIRED
Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD
Every person I have talked with in the last week said they are tired, really, really tired. It is my sense that we are in a time of collective, cultural PTSD. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Covid and political unrest literally took the wind out of our sails. Covid touched the deepest place in our psyches. The threat could not be seen. Death was everywhere. And Death was coming in shrouded rooms with spacewalkers
with no faces. Death without comfort or family or ritual. Bodies were stacked in trucks, our elders were wiped out, we had no funerals, no goodbyes, no closure. We just hunkered down in isolation.
And we didn't process it because there were no words to describe it and there was
nothing we could do. Some people loved the slowing down and the quiet, but remember our social networks were severed and we were alone while literally millions were dying.
Schools were invaded, children were shot, safety was assaulted, families were polarized by political
beliefs, freedoms were ripped away and people were fighting. Kinda like growing up in an alcoholic household.
As I am writing this, I understand why we have not talked about it. It is like sitting at the edge of our hometown that just burned to the ground in a fire. There are no
words, there is no comfort yet. It is all right to be tired. It is all right to be without words.
We can just sit with each other with a cup of tea, or hot chocolate, or coffee and let it cool and comfort us.We can put on music or be still, we can read a book or watch
football. I had my dog Rosie next to me in bed and thought about breathing her out breath and wondered if breathing in dog breath would make me more like a dog. Or if her breathing in people breath would make her more like a person.
I will eat breakfast. And have lunch and
dinner. I will journal to make sure I eat enough. I will go to the drive though at Starbucks so the girls can give Brody a dog cookie and laugh because they are happy to see us. I will keep cleaning, and having Kevin take stuff to the dump. I will keep reading books in the early morning wrapped in my quilt. I will watch Korean dramas on Netflix that have no guns or sex or killing. And I know that my brain and heart will heal.
