Your Foundation

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After spending the day morose on November 7th, I did my best to pull myself together in the evening. I started reading a fun, silly gay book called 'The Nightmare Before Kissmas' by Sarah Raasch. The leads are the Prince of Christmas and the Prince of Halloween. Like I said, it is very silly and very gay. I'm not very far in, but I am enjoying it. In the very first chapter, on page 18, a passage stood out to me:

        "I don't know if feeling good should be the goal," He says, still in that brittle, aching tone. "It's more realistic to center on little things. One thing, each day, that isn't sullied by grief. One by one by one until you've started to rebuild the foundation that got obliterated. Because that's what happiness is, at the root. A foundation. And foundations aren't ever one thing, they're many little things interlocked together."

        Perhaps I was more primed to read this message than I would normally be. I started that day at 4AM when M's insulin pump signaled they were having a low. After tending to them I checked the election map, and cried for an hour. The prospect of another four years of hell and hatred before us all hissed in my ear all that day, but reading this made me think of my own foundation.

        I'm sure there is more context to what this lesson means to this particular character, but it rang true for me on its face. When I was at my most depressed, working for the school during the pandemic, I centered myself on little things, often with M's help.

        My morning tea is not just a dose of caffeine. It is a promise that I will create my own moments of peace, and make time for my hobbies. There truly are a lot of little things that hold me together: holding hands with M, our cats purring, our dog leaning on me, messages from friends and family, the scent of a candle, the sound of thread through fabric. That's just a few, priceless, little things.

        To get through the next administration, we will have to work, fight, and care for each other. I am determined to survive, and I hope you are too. But I wish for more than survival for all of us. I don't want any of us to become hard. Maintaining happiness is going to be a choice, and it will require work. The kind of intentional, careful work that goes into an intricate garden. It won't be easy, but you deserve to be happy. You deserve the foundation that will make you happy.

        Everything feels dark and surreal right now, and the familiar sensations are not the ones we were hoping to experience again. But come January, the world will be spinning again, with constant loud news, and horrible things every direction. You will hit the same wall. You will remember that you have only two hands and can't pour from an empty cup. Even when the need is there, and the desire to fill that need is strong. Before the whirlwind starts, take a moment and ask yourself, what is your foundation?