Autumn 2020 Keeping Warm Enough

It's autumn here.  Cold, dark, brittle, rough, sharp, raspy, and dry in every way.  Through my windows, I can't tell if I'm hearing music from forgotten summer wind chimes or bare tree branches.  I am craving tenderness, reading and watching the equivalent of blankets and sweaters, fuzzy socks and warm tea.  I want kindness and gentleness, and I feel repelled by rage and stupidity, sound and fury, and all the vague and unformed fear people are radiating like the coming the winter.  I am reading about/watching people making food for others (What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Sweetness & Lightning), making art (Barakamon), learning to connect and grow despite trauma / mental illness (Natsume's Book of Friends, March Comes in Like a Lion, Fruits Basket, A Man and His Cat, Solutions and Other Problems), and growing up (Honey & Clover, Yotsuba&, Penric, Silver Spoon).  

I'm not looking for escape, I don't think; I'm not craving Aria or Strawberry Marshmallow.  Many of these works I'm currently drawn to are not anything like escapist.  Many of them are hard to watch/read.  There are stakes.  Bad things happen.  Some things cannot be fixed.  Some wounds cannot be healed.  Some hurts are terrible.  There are tears.  (Sometimes even cried by the characters. : ) Despite that, all of these works have something in them (their tone?) that makes them like hugging and being hugged, a feeling of relief and warmth and comfort.

I refuse to completely be directed by my desires.  I am reading hard things, too, like *Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?* and *All American Boys*.  But I am reading them slowly, and I am watching myself and stopping when I start to get overwhelmed.  I refuse to stop learning altogether, but I also refuse to grind myself into the pavement in these Unusual and Hard Times.  It's okay to take a break.  It's okay to get warm if you're cold.

I am tired and thirsty, and we are in a pandemic where I have been prudent and have not hugged anyone in half a year.  If you were around me when my health was at its worst and I was in pain most of the time and had such a wacky immune system and I had stopped hugging, you may not think this is a big deal.  But I had a friend at work, and we hugged all the time, and it was a kind of lifeline.  And at least once I month I would visit with friends, and there would be hugs.  And before all that, before my brain's response to pain signals started to go more haywire, I was a hugger with people I was close to.  So much that it used to annoy some other people I was less close to. : )

I am okay without hugs.  Really.  Even if, as seems likely, it's another year before I get to even cautiously return to them.  Being okay without them is not necessarily a good thing in my case, since it seems to be based in an emotion-dampening trauma response, but right now I think it's quite useful that I don't need hugs because I live alone and work from home and can't have any.  

It's also quite human to want the thing you can't have, so I want to hug people.  But I don't do it because not hugging is a way to be kind right now, to help show my neighbors love and help keep them safe.  Also, I don't have many opportunities, but even when I spent time with folks over the summer outside and at a safe distance, I did not hug even when I wanted to and when I would have Before.

I want to be After, where I am making up for lost hug time, where I feel more like I'm whole instead of holding it together, where I can rest and recover, where the shattering doesn't feel so close to the surface.

Until then, it seems like I'll be drawn to Fafner over Eureka 7 and A Bride's Story over the Way of the Househusband (I'm stretched thin enough that sometimes my laughter has a more disturbingly hysterical edge than my silent tears).  And impulse is just fine.  

I have enough blankets and sweaters and fuzzy socks to wear and read, and I will be okay.  I hope you feel the same.