September 2024 can kick rocks. Kiss my whole ass. The month delivered gut punch after gut punch, and nobody rang the bell when we needed to tap out.
Being in the Athens area means that we were up the road from a high school shooting and down the road from the most devastating hurricane in our history within weeks of each other (Milton wasn't on our radar). And with both of these events, it has induced this unshakable feeling of survivor's guilt. The way both were so close. The way either could have happened here. The way that Helene was supposed to happen here...
Throw on top another ending to yet another relationship, and there's a layer of bitterness and resentment.
For a straight month, an amalgam of emotions lived at the surface. All sounds too loud. All temperatures too extreme. Perpetually defaulting to a state of dissociation for fear that minor inconveniences would throw me into a spiral or an ounce of happiness would be thwarted. Because how dare the Universe distribute the good so unfairly?
I also lived in that space of feeling like we somehow deserved to be punished for our lack of suffering. So I read about the deceased. I visited the memorial. I watched video after video about washed-away towns and worried over restoration of power for total strangers and very close friends. Then the worry went deeper. How the destruction of school buildings would disrupt everything from connection to community to secured meals. How some would lose their sense of purpose when the building where they work or worship or even offer a safe space to their closest companions would be a sediment-filled foundation. How friendships came to a grievous end with no goodbye.
Like I said: I lived in this space of grief and loss, feeling guilt for being whole and healthy and being inconvenienced with only a 3-hour power loss. I gave money where I could. I signed up for another appointment to donate my platelets. I lent my ear to those directly impacted by either tragedy. It never felt like enough, but I'm banking on there being something behind the sentiment "every little bit helps".
My best friend and I talked through all the feelings, knowing that there would be some sort of "end" to the negative thoughts as communities heal and adjust. I can reason my way through pretty much anything. I just have to feel everything first. She suggested I do something small for myself, something to get me out of my own head. So I signed up for a massage.
The massage in itself isn't a cure. It did, though, help redirect my attention back into my body. I could recognize where physical pains stay in a couple of joints, where stress had constructed a dozen knots, how it felt to allow someone to work on the stress for me.
But it was the drive home that grounded me back to where I live. The sun was busy showing off as it was clocked out for the day, and Isakov was quietly crooning. Normally, moments like these are enough for me to soak up the beauty in the small, gentle moments. And then I looked out of my passenger window.
Around Athens, we have a route called Loop 10. I have lamented these last few years as crews clear cut the tall pines at the ramps for the Loop, stripping away the natural and giving drivers direct views of apartment buildings and restaurants. But where my eyes landed was an enormous patch of wildflowers. Pink and orange and yellow, an impressionist's blanket of elegance that existed for this very moment in the wash of the sunset.
And so I cried. Forgiving myself for the self-inflicted guilt. For coming back to appreciating what is still right in this world. The burden may have not fully lifted, but it carries lighter. What's important is keeping your privilege in check and acting to help others in the ways that your life allows.
As for the tears for pasta, that happened later in the same night. The floodgates had clearly been cracked and readied for flow. My daughter and I were starting Chef's Table: Noodles, and the first episode featured Chef Evan Funke of Los Angeles. They followed him to a woman's kitchen in Italy where she taught him to make trofie pasta by hand. The poetry that poured from Funke's soul as he watched her roll dough into perfectly-tapered spirals with the spine of her hand, and my child was eyeing me with concern as I sniffled through the scene. Sometimes, that much beauty packed into a tiny space of time when the world around you feels like a hectic mess feels like a hard push on a lever to bring ourselves back into a balance.
Do good and be the good in the world. And go appreciate everything that is beautiful.
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