if you’re anything like me, you’re alternately angry, sad or afraid during the shutdown. so is everyone, so so what? in a weekly spiritual support group that i’ve attended for years we tell each other what is going on in our lives. some days things are going well for some of us and other days things are feeling not so hot. we talk about it all and how we use spiritual principles to address what’s going on in our lives. we all do our best to respect our own and each others’ feelings. we all do our best to stay out of playing the victim in our lives.
since the shutdown it’s the same yet different. we all continue to have feelings. we all have better or worse days. but i am starting to wonder, since everyone is going through the same thing, am i allowed to feel angry, sad or scared about what is affecting basically everyone? am i allowed to feel a victim when everyone is a victim of this situation?
i find myself playing the “i am more affected than you are” game. i have an 86-year-old mother to keep safe. we had her care situation change without warning. we are all scrambling to cover her care without introducing additional contact. it’s practically impossible to get it right. it is very stressful. i realize i want to prove how hard our particular situation is so that i can justify feeling sad, angry, mad at more than just the shutdown itself.
then it came to me, i don’t need to justify my feelings to anyone. just because everyone is sad, mad or scared doesn’t mean i don’t get to be too. a friend of ours assigned their kids to write a letter to the coronavirus telling it what they feel about it. i laughed when i heard that but, then i realized, i need that too. i needed that permission to tell the coronavirus that deeply resent its incursion into my life. i hate it for ruining the economy. i hate it for killing people. i even hate it for preventing me from going to hot yoga. i hate it for keeping me from hugging my family and friends. i hate it for cancelling my out of town trips and restricting my movements.
and, you know what, i get to hate it. i get to be angry. i get to be scared, even though everyone else is too.
