As a kid I often got called “resilient” because I would accept major changes — like moving from Philly suburbs to Buffalo in the middle of my first year of high school!!!! — without complaint or acting out. But I wasn’t “resilient” so much as aware of my own powerlessness.
I accepted what was happening and I made the best of it, but I experienced a lot of pain that I just sat with. And sat with. And couldn’t let go of.
I feel like this past year has been a year of *real* resilience for me, because I have been able to not just accept my situation but really acknowledge my pain and fear and feel it and let it go rather than ignoring it and letting it fester.
And like, major caveat here that I’ve been very very lucky: financially I am stable, all the people I know who got sick pulled through, no one I know is in crisis at the moment.
But even still, it’s been a hard year for everyone and I’m pleased with mental health management.
The thing about mental health management is that when you write it down on paper it all seems so basic and dumb. Like, how do I stay okay these days? I acknowledge my pain, I allow myself to feel it, I recognize when I’m catastrophizing and I pull myself out.
Laying it all out like that makes me feel like a GOOP column or something. But the thing is, like so much of life, the *steps* you take are basic. They’re just also major steps that require tons of work to perfect.
It’s like Othello: a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.
It took months of work for me to be able to recognize certain thoughts as being my OCD, or catastrophizing, or generally unhelpful bullshit that I should not listen to. Learning to recognize it is the first step. Then there’s the work of building up the strength to dismiss it.
(Also, in my case, medication wasn’t necessary; in many cases, it is.)
Anyway, I don’t really know what my grand conclusion is besides wanting you to know that in order to get past your pain you actually have to let yourself see it. And then you have to allow yourself to let it go. It’s so simple and yet it’s so hard.
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I’m really bad at top ten lists but three movies I unabashedly love are Point Break, Chasing Amy, and Boiler Room, and I think it’s probably not a coincidence that they’re all about how fucked up masculinity is
The thing about Boiler Room is you look at the cast and you’re like “Giovanni Ribisi? Ben Affleck? Scott Caan? Vin Diesel?” and you expect it to be some action heavy garbage but it’s truly the greatest acting that most of these men have ever done in the entirety of their careers.
I will defend Vin Diesel’s acting chops on his Boiler Room performance alone
Just remembered the time my ex said they wanted to do meaningful work and opened up a web store that sold a $4000 healing amulet
That’s the correct number of zeroes
This ex is also in a documentary that kicks off maybe a year or two after we broke up and they’re basically the Anakin Skywalker character of said documentary, which made for a very cathartic watching experience for me personally
I appreciate the importance of all these sites dedicated to undervaccinated populations but it’s also frustrating that I can’t find an appointment for an under 65 family member with comorbidities in North Brooklyn
Everything that does pop up is Bronx only, Queens only, 65+ only, oof.
Anyway hopefully it’ll be easier as more vaccine gets shipped
Honestly my best Twitter interaction ever was the time when Josh Gad was promoting jOBS and he referred to it as Jobs and I was like, “See, even the stars of the movie are too embarrassed to write the title correctly” and he was like, “Okay I laughed”
My peak
He deleted that tweet pretty much immediately so you’ll never find it
Super proud of Mallory for taking a full 12 weeks of maternity leave, regardless of the potential blowback. I’ve seen with friends that even twelve weeks *is not enough* parental leave — at three months, babies are still so helpless!
It’s terrible that we ask parents, and especially birth givers, to choose between careers and kids. It’s terrible that we punish people for taking three short months off of work to foster a new life — all the more so in a pandemic, when childcare isn’t a real option.
We need to do better by parents, and we especially need to do better by moms.