A Little Bit of Lightness

What a one-two punch January and February were, huh? I’m inclined to list examples (I mean, other than the fact that I’m posting this in March when I meant to post it at the beginning of February)… but I’m so sick of even thinking about the constant bad news buzzing through my phone. I mean, y’all are seeing this garbage too, right? This isn’t a fever dream initiated by a certain Public Health Emergency of International Concern? Yikes, I guess I let an example slip through after all…

I need to be honest here. My blood is boiling (and not because of a fever). I’m pulled between extremes of emotion: teeth-gnashing outrage at the injustice at the top of all of my news feeds, but also the hopelessness and apathy born of watching horrible things happen every day while all efforts to stop those things are steamrollered.

In summary, this GIF:

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Because, look, if I’m not fine, then I'm gonna melt down one of these days. I’m gonna McFreakin’ Lose It in a Kroger, waiting in line to buy my frozen taquitos and baby carrots. I’m gonna wander into a forest and go absolutely feral. I’ll catch fish with my bare hands and eat them raw, Gollum-style. I’ll grow moss on my skin and let snails live in my hair. I’ll become the cryptid I always wanted to be and I’ll probably survive like that for a week and then die from not being fast enough to catch the fish I was planning to eat. Or, more realistically, dysentery.

Fortunately, I’ve developed some coping mechanisms that don’t involve vanishing into the wilderness. I try to keep up with the usual “exercise, eat some veggies, drink water” self-care advice, of course. But sometimes what I really need is just a hearty serving of “feel good.” With that in mind, I’ve compiled a few of the things that have brought me joy recently, and which may do the same for you.

1. Wandersong

I actually came across this incredibly endearing game over the summer, but I hop back into it and replay my favorite chapters from time to time because it’s just so, so good for the soul. It’s a puzzle-solving adventure in which you play as a Bard tasked with finding the pieces to a song that will save the universe from being unmade.

You know: light, chill stuff.

But truly. You spend the game singing and exploring beautifully-designed little worlds and collecting friends. It’s sweet and sincere and emotionally gratifying in ways that I don’t wish to articulate lest I spoil the fun of you experiencing the game for the first time.

Wandersong is number one on my list right now because it deals with that sensation of catastrophic overwhelm so well. It’s a familiar feeling: the world appears to be ending, and try as you might, there’s a strong chance that nothing any of us do is going to be enough to save it. But that doesn’t mean you stop putting good back into the universe. You keep singing, and when you can’t find your voice, you trust that your friends will sing for you until you can again.

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Also, the Bard is non-binary, which is just… chef’s kiss, ya know? I feel a cosplay coming on.

2. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

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Hi, hello, I’m a sucker for a colorful apocalypse. Kipo is a delightful adventure that takes place in a future filled with giant mutant creatures, frogs in suits, and singing lumberjack cats. Pockets of humanity have survived underground or in the urban wasteland, fearing the sapient beasts that now rule the reclaimed Earth.

It’s super fun, you guys, I promise.

And not only fun! It’s sweet and exciting and I cried, like, 15 times (and there are only 10 episodes out on Netflix so far). But it was the good kind of crying. The, “holy wow, this writing is so delicious” kind of crying.

I don’t care how old you are. This show is a beautiful escape with a BANGIN’ soundtrack. It’s the kind of media I wish I had as a kid, and I’m delighted that it exists for kids (of all ages) now.

3. Just Making Art, My Dudes

Recently, I’ve wanted to spend all my free time burritoed on the couch, watching baking competitions, eating a LOT of dairy products, and slowly spiraling into a dissociative state. I seek constant distractions, and yet feel too tired to really engage with them. Like, you know how Wandersong is at the top of this feel-good list? I love it, it always boosts my mood, and yet sometimes it takes too much mental effort to even play it.

I just wanna sit there, head empty, feeling vaguely miserable about, just, you know, stuff. Whatever.

Leaked footage of my living room on any given weeknight. Source

The thing is, I’ve been DEPRESSED before. Like, BIG DEPRESSED. This isn’t quite the same… That’s not to say it isn’t Depression, but it’s not of the caliber I’m accustomed to. It’s just a relentless fatigue, a whole lotta “I don’t wanna.”

But because of my experiences with Depression, I understand the importance of not letting the exhaustion (or the cheese) swallow me. I’ve set an alarm on my phone that tells me to get up and make something once a day. The goal is 15 minutes of creative productivity. It doesn’t matter if I’m “in the mood” or not. It gets me off the couch. Or, if not off the couch, then at least in an upright position with a pencil in my hand.

I’ve downloaded some drawing software and played with that. I’ve scribbled figure drawings in sketchbooks. When I’m REALLY motivated, I work on a memoir-esque comic book project.

Often, even though I’m only “supposed” to be working for 15 minutes, I go much longer than that. Sometimes I fixate so intensely on a project that I work on it for hours and struggle to think of anything else even when I’m not in front of it. My rust is knocked loose, and suddenly, I’m an idea-generating machine again, unable to write or draw fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. Which makes it hard to sleep or find time to wash the dishes or remember to preheat the oven for dinner, but hey, at least I’m not staring at the wall while my contacts dry and adhere to my unblinking eyes.

OK, so now that I’m writing it out, some of this is a little disordered of me, but still… Art has broken me out of my funk plenty of times, and the hyperfixation that follows at least bolsters my energy again. Once the mania releases its grip, I’m ready to clean the bathroom and fold my laundry and brush the filth out of Binx’s beard (sometimes).

The wonderful thing about art is you need so little of anything to make it. Pencil, paper, BOOM. Prefer to use a computer? Scribble with your mouse in MS Paint and pretend it’s 2002 again. Treat yourself to some cheap canvases and a set of lowest-grade acrylic paints from Michael’s (they basically give those things away… Google some coupons and get ready to spend, like, $4 on an entire painting starter kit). Look up “wine and canvas”-style painting tutorials on YouTube. Go WILD. You are MAKING something. Time is a hateful circle, but the raggedy painting you made of a cardinal after watching half a video about it will FOREVER watch you from wherever you try to hide it once you’re done.

But seriously… Art lets you rest your mind and allows you to channel yourself in new ways. You don’t have to be good. You just have to MAKE. You’ll feel more human once you do.

4. The OUTDOORS

Just because it’s winter in the hemisphere you’re probably reading this from (if you’re reading this when it comes out) doesn’t mean you’re trapped indoors. And I know I started this list specifically stating that it doesn’t involve vanishing into the wilderness, but hear me out…

Parks are still open. Walking trails are open. Your neighborhood streets are (probably) open. Of course I’d rather go play outside when it’s warm and sunny. I am, after all, little more than a bipedal lizard whose deepest desire is to find a rock to sun myself upon.

But this lizard can also put on a coat and gloves and take my dogs out for a walk.

This is definitely another “sometimes you have to force joy into your life” list item, because during my stuck-on-the-couch days, I really don’t feel inclined to put on a shirt without salsa stains and go out into the cold. However, as with art, I consistently feel brighter and better for having done so. Even if it’s just out onto my porch to watch snowflakes and sip coffee for a few minutes.

The color will return in a few months. I don’t know what fresh and disheartening news will come with the spring, but at least daffodils will come too. For now, I can still find joy in bare trees.

5. r/Eyebleach

No article on the topic of “lightness” is complete without mentioning the subreddit r/Eyebleach, the true palette-cleanser of the internet. I know it’s a “cheap” joy to end my list with, but sometimes I just need to watch kittens falling asleep or children dancing with bus drivers for a few minutes to calm my frantic brain. r/Eyebleach (and subreddits like it, such as r/WholesomeMemes) is a reminder that there are still good things in the world.

I mean, look at this:

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Don’t tell my dogs, but I’m not the type to melt over puppy pictures. But that baby up there? WOW. Just… very good stuff.

That pup is out in the world, having a grand ol’ time, looking at two different things at once with those goofy eyeballs. And that’s good news.

I know the stakes feel higher than ever. I understand the feeling of hopelessness. But you deserve to find joy for yourself, and I truly hope you find that joy today.

The days are getting longer and brighter. Take care of your happiness, and keep marching forward into spring.

The Year of the Unicorn - Lesson 6: You've Got to Be Kind

In the winter, my house becomes a tiny space station floating in the void. Every day after work, I dock my cruiser and step into the imaginary airlock of my screened-in porch, always securing the outer door behind me before unlocking the house door. I deactivate the alarm and peel off my layers of protective gear, shoving gloves into pockets, hanging my padded parka on the coat rack. By the time I’ve greeted and fed my little collection of aliens, everything outside of my home has been swallowed by the cold blackness of night.

In my mind, my neighborhood is a constellation of isolated stations orbiting the distant star of downtown Indianapolis. We are points of light that appear to be mere yards apart, but I know in my soul that there are light-years between us.

Distances are so much wider in the winter, when every trek requires donning one’s spacesuit and navigating the Cold Dark, guided exclusively by artificial light. That seems like a lot of effort, especially when I’m already so exhausted.

No matter how much warmth and light I cultivate in my space station, the darkness still manages to seep in and drain me of energy. The super computer in my palm should makes distances seem trivial. I could contact a host of friends and family members to remind myself that I’m not alone in the vacuum of space. Even that task, however, can seem unachievable. I fear appearing clingy or weak. I’m torn between my need to prove that I’m happily healing and my desire for words of comfort and reassurance.

It’s my first winter alone in several years. I had never planned on wintering alone again. However, I’ve allowed my grief to settle and cool from its previous molten form into a fertile shelf of volcanic soil in which I can spread new roots. But the green, growing parts of me are still fragile, and I worry about my ability to purify the limited air supply of my little pod. I can meditate, exercise (usually via spontaneous living room dance breaks), play release-the-rage video games, paint goofy animals, take long baths with the hopes of growing gills, do all sorts of things to care for myself… But it’s not always enough.

The past month has worn my spirit thin. The Christmas season is supposed to be centered on family, and my family was halved at the start of the year. Every tradition that I performed alone felt like a needle under my skin - not a devastating wound, but an obnoxious prickle, a reminder of how tender my flesh still is.

Decorating the tree was the worst of these traditions. Goodwill received an influx of generic “Our First Christmas” ornaments courtesy of my little space station, and I like to imagine that they were placed on a shelf next to "baby shoes, never worn”. Heck, the scraggly plastic Christmas tree that I decorated exclusively with pre-wedding ornaments outlasted my marriage. Ouch.

It’s been hard to stave back the bitterness. Looking out the window into the frozen waste, it’s easy to believe that the universe is random and cruel and determined to suck the light from my heart into an endlessly feasting black hole.

But then my phone will buzz with a silly video sent by a beloved friend. Or another buddy texting to invite me out to ramen. Or my parents calling, asking about a good time to stop by to set up the beautiful outdoor lights they gave me.

Those gestures bring my life support back online and add a new brilliance to the stars outside my door. They confirm in my heart that the greatest lesson I’ve learned so far is this:

You’ve Got to Be Kind

That phrasing is stolen from Kurt Vonnegut:

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I’m ashamed to admit that kindness has not come easily to me this year. I have wrestled with a rage that sits just behind my teeth and scalds my tongue. I have screamed and thrashed like a snared coyote, more inclined to chew through myself than through the trap to escape. I have scrutinized every word of love that has been spoken to me, terrified of trusting that kind of gentleness again, torturing myself with the possibility that I am unworthy of such warmth.

But it’s because I have suffered these things that I understand better the one mission we small animals in our lonely spaceships have above everything else:

Be kind.

Be kind.

Be kind.

Be kind to others when they make mistakes. Be kind to yourself when you’re processing difficult changes. Be kind to your friends and accept their kindness toward you. Be kind because the universe often isn’t. Be kind by being your brilliant, shining self.

We are brief things breathing limited air. We are all space stations glittering in the night. But we can also be space unicorns, defying the void by lighting up the cosmos!

Is that too cheesy? Too, dare I say it, uni-corny? Too bad!

Look: kindness is the greatest magic I have ever known, and I love the idea of a unicorn galloping across the galaxy, scattering stardust, making the universe a little more vibrant, a little softer-edged, a little sweeter.

That’s what I want to do. I want to be my kindest self. I want to aim my sparkly unicorn horn at you and fire sunlight directly into your aching heart. If I am forgotten, if my stories disappear, if I do nothing else during my stay on this planet, let me be kind with all of my soul.

The heartbreak that I’ve experienced this year still clutches me sometimes and makes me want to isolate myself in my space station, muttering hateful things about the nature of humanity into my microwaved bowl of SpahettiOs. I have to remind myself to look at the world with wonder and awe in moments like those. I have to accept that it is sometimes difficult to do that, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost my magic.

I have to be kind to myself.

I’m stepping into 2020 a lighter, brighter creature. I am less concerned with what has been done to me and more focused on what I can do. The Year of the Unicorn may be over, but I’m carrying that joyful energy forward.

May the lessons of 2020 be kind to us all.

The Year of the Unicorn - Lesson 5: Shine

One year after my first foray into Dungeon Masterdom and with much knocking on wood and crossing of fingers, I finally hosted the 3rd(ish) session of our campaign.

Any tabletop gamer will tell you that the most dreaded adversary the players will face is the Almighty Calendar. Even so, three sessions in the course of a year is a little extreme. Of course, it wasn’t merely an issue of scheduling. The night of our first game, a shocking secret came to light, one that completely rewrote my future.

Pretty high drama even for Dungeons & Dragons, amirite?

The next few months were extremely emotional and confusing for me. To cling to my gaming theme here, I was desperately trying to play an unwinnable game governed by a Game Master who had little interest in the rule book and whose primary goal was to convince me to give up on the game by myself.

But I’m a tenacious little scamp, and I didn’t want to give up. I’d vowed to play that game, nurture that game, celebrate that game’s anniversary, maybe have a family with that game… Right, enough of the strained metaphor, you get it. The point is this: I’d committed my heart and my future to someone who no longer felt committed in return, and who was hoping she could shake me off so her conscience wouldn’t have to carry the guilt of leaving me herself.

Obviously, I’ve simplified and vague-ified an incredibly complex situation. However, the time has passed for me to keep defending someone who spent the better part of a year gaslighting and villainizing me for the preservation of her own ego.

Because that’s the truth of it. Whether with malicious intent or not, I was wronged by the person I trusted most, around whom I was my most authentic self. I acknowledge the fallibility of all individuals involved, but that doesn’t invalidate the mistreatment I experienced.

It is painful for me to write it out like that. To state unequivocally that I was treated unfairly at best, outright cruelly at worst. I have spent eight months scrutinizing every shortcoming within myself, every emotional reaction, every selfish impulse, every unkind word that I unleashed during the slow and torturous death of my marriage. I stood as far back from my own life as I could to analyze my behavior at a cold, impersonal distance. I agonized into the wee hours of the morning about whether I could have handled anything differently, trying to figure out if I was the toxic bad guy in someone else’s fairy tale.

Here I am on the other side of that process, near what would have been my third wedding anniversary, with this knowledge: I did the best that I could and the best that could be reasonably expected of anyone undergoing the trial I was going through. I’m far from perfect, but I fought hard, right up to the end, and I’m satisfied with my efforts.

I’m not all the way done processing what happened, and I’m still working out the balance between kindness to those who have hurt me and kindness toward myself, but I’ve made enough progress that I finally feel like I can open myself back up again in order to:

Shine

Which brings me back to D&D. It takes a certain measure of confidence to tell your group of friends: “HEY. I’m going to lead us all in an elaborate, dice-based storytelling activity because I think my Fantasy Setting and Vague Plot are so worthy of attention that I want you to make up characters for it and then play out their adventures under my omnipotent oversight.”

I am very exposed as a Dungeon Master. I screw up rules and forget important details. I have to think on the fly and some of those flying thoughts are Not Great. For the duration of each hours-long session, I am constantly performing, which makes my ego constantly vulnerable.

Why would I do that to myself? A solid 70% of my blog entries talk about my life-stunting fear of failure. I hate creating opportunities to display my flaws, and yet at least once a month, I run a game that I still don’t fully understand and which I will definitely mess up multiple times.

But I love D&D, and despite my shortcomings, I’m a pretty decent DM. At least, that’s the feedback that I’m getting from my players, and I trust that they’re either being honest with me or are lying to me because they love me enough to support my nonsense even if I’m terrible at it. I truly can’t complain about either option!

The thing is, playing this game with my friends fills my chest with light. A golden glow expands within me every time I do something I love with the people I love, whether it’s D&D or hiking or perusing antiques. I get to shine for a moment, and it feels like being in love.

For months, I’ve been scared about my capacity to experience that kind of emotion again. I had such a deep well of love in me before, and the night I of my breakup, it all drained out. I felt it so physically: broken glass ribs and a black hole heart, a sharp void where all my softness was supposed to be.

I never wanted to feel like that again, but I also wanted to get my warmth back. I compromised by being extremely forthright with everyone, thinking that I was taking away their ammunition and softening the sting of their inevitable abandonment.

I wasn’t quite as blatant about it, but my method was basically this:

“Hi! You may know me as your friend or tolerated acquaintance Abi. I struggle to process words during phone calls, I thrive in clutter like some kind of trinket-goblin, and I only found out this year that vermilion is a shade of red, not green (and I looked it up just now to make sure!). So when you get sick of me in a couple years despite your promises of affection, don’t pretend you didn’t know what you were getting into, because I put it all right there on the label, like a list of allergens on a box of Cheez-Its!”

Like, the number 4 is soft-spoken and friendly and the best buddy of 5, who is really bold and a little cocky but essentially a good dude.

What started as a self-effacing method of defense, however, became something bigger. I went from showcasing my faults to deliberately engaging in the things I enjoy, even at the risk of exposure and embarrassment. I wanted the people I cared for to see all of me, to get a full picture so they could decide for themselves whether our relationship was tenable.

And it felt good. Boldly dressing up for conventions and fairs, traveling to visit friends I’d fallen away from, just being my loud, enthusiastic, hyper-expressive self as fearlessly as I could manage… Everything fueled the fire in my chest, and that fire began to cauterize my wounds.

There is now more warmth than ache in my soul. I am surrounded by people who know my faults and love me nonetheless. I still sometimes worry about being “too much” or “not enough,” but that worry doesn’t cripple me anymore, and I’m fortunate to have folks in my life who will listen to my insecurities with kindness and patience instead of anger and exasperation.

I hope that by allowing myself to feel that shiny joy inside of me again, I can help others access their own joy. I want to keep my spark alive even when life isn’t all moonbeams and rainbow sprinkles. I want to be a unicorn in a herd of unicorns, watching my loved ones shine as they unabashedly pursue their passions and open their hearts to each other.

There’s always a chance that I’ll experience more devastation by letting my walls down like this, but now I know that the glow never really disappears. The ember endures, and it can always be coaxed back to life.

I’m tired and battered but still shining, and I have one last Year of the Unicorn lesson in my heart. It’s been my biggest challenge, but I’m almost there.

Soon.

Header photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

Anti-Death Spray

Recently, as I was avoiding chores by digging through my laptop's archive of fanfic- UH I MEAN my totally legit unfinished pieces of fiction, I came across a document with a weird title: Anti-Death Spray. I didn't recognize it, but the date stamp claimed I edited it in 2017. 

My arms got kinda tingly. At last, my life was taking on the elements of a psychological horror anime, just as I'd always dreamed.

As soon as I opened it up, however, I remembered it.

At the top of the page, instead of "Anti-Death Spray" followed by the unraveled mysteries of the universe typed in Wingdings font, was this phrase:

"Things I love:"

Followed by a 42-item list.

The 42 things I love fit on one single-spaced page. The list starts with the blessed givens: Kelsey, my family, my friends. My dogs. Corn dogs. The big, obvious, right-out-the-gate things that I cherish. 

Then it gets a little funkier, and smaller.

Pokémon. Cool jackets. Sitting around a fire. Being the big spoon.

When I say funkier and smaller, I mean it. The last item on my list is "Diet Coke paired with cheddar cheese." Which is silly, and debatable (if you want to debate it, though, be ready to catch these hands first). Putting cheese and low-calorie cola on a list of beloved things seems like kind of a stretch.

But I remember when I first had that thought, back in high school. Yes, specifically this thought: "Heck, this block of cheese that I'm consuming as if it were an apple (not that it matters to my impervious 16-year-old digestive system) pairs very nicely with this Diet Coke."

I was stressed out at the time. I know this because I have been continuously stressed out since I was a zygote, and have cycled through various degrees of denial for the subsequent 27 years. The cheese and soda snack was fueling a study session for my upcoming finals. Rather than absorbing information, my brain was preoccupied with forecasting my inevitable, world-shattering demise. It told me I was going to fail my tests, and never go to college, and never get a job, and rain shame upon my family. And that all sounded reasonable to me, so I didn't question it. (Believe it or not, I got even worse at handling anxiety from there, to the extent that in the worst throes of my adulthood anxiety, I didn't consider my problematic teenage thought-patterns to be anxiety at all. But you already knew that, because I post about my mental health circus about once a month, partially because I want to normalize conversations about mental illness, and partially because of my compulsion to overshare on the internet.)

Anyway, high school me with the flawless internal organs of a god, eating a slab of sharp cheddar and sipping Diet Coke from a can. The savory tang of the cheese balanced by the mellowed, false sweetness of the carbonated drink. I told myself that there would be a time that I could have this snack again after the tests, whether or not I passed them. There were still things in the world to enjoy.

I passed my exams. After all, I'm a neurotic overachiever who had a dissociative meltdown the one time I got a B in college (and it was in Drawing 101. DRAWING ONE OH ONE.)

Things have improved tremendously for my head in recent years, but every so often, my defenses are breached. During one of those times, I wrote my list of things I enjoy and will enjoy again, like the company of my spouse, and the smell of a bonfire. 

And, like a total weirdo, I named that list "Anti-Death Spray" and trolled my future self into thinking I was in the plot of a gritty magic-realism video game.

There is a lot to be afraid of today. There are many opportunities to feel worthless. But there are also camping trips with your friends, and used bookstores, and really cool candles. Maybe there's pain ahead, but someday, you'll have your cheddar cheese and Diet Coke again. 

In the style of my favorite 90s public television Science Guy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a love list to add to."