Moonlight, you’re just a heartache in disguise

It was a rough day yesterday. I finally broke.

When I start acting like this:

It’s a last ditch effort to stop feeling like this:

I know I’m safe here and I should be thankful and I’m strong and I should go for a walk and enjoy nature, etc.

At least that’s what people keep telling me.

Except I know that I’m safe here in Tucson. I got myself here because I was looking for safety. I knew way before most that it was gonna be bad.

And I am thankful. And I am strong. While everyone has already gone through their first and second round of breakdowns, I’ve been holding down the fort. Strength and invincibility are not the same thing.

And I don’t enjoy walks in Tucson. I don’t enjoy nature in Tucson. If I did, I never would have left for NYC. Everybody, from friends to professionals, keeps telling me to ground myself in nature. Maybe that answer works for most empaths. I don’t feel grounded in the desert. I feel grounded in NYC. But remember, that I am an alien and my home planet is a lot more NYC and a lot less SoAZ. Nature can stuff it.

I’m too much Walt Whitman to care for what most people care about. I need frenetic city energy. Erotic stranger encounters. Feeling anonymous in a crowd. Expressing myself, seeing the rubberneckers as they feel me walk past, and fucking being on top of the mountain everyone says is the hardest to climb.

A bird, a tree, a hill, a saguaro…I don’t connect. I don’t harness energy. I don’t feel of this place.

I can be strong and thankful and patient. But I am breaking down from atrophy in ways I don’t think anyone understands.

Even my therapist thought it was a good idea to be looking at pandemic statistics with me to show me how it’s getting better. I’m not worried about Covid-19. That’s not the end of the world. I’m worried about the inundation of human suffering I can tap into at the drop of a hat…and that human suffering isn’t going to abate when we all get our vaccination and reopen society.

‘I Don’t Think the New York That We Left Will Be Back for Some Years’

April 20, 2020

People feel the heaviness of the present and the uncertainty of the future. They fear and they react. I feel the certainty of the damage being done and the great burden of having to go into the disaster and help heal people.

This isn’t a blip. People will forget, thems that weren’t put out. But there is so much going on right now that will leave a scar. How do I help facilitate the healing?

I can’t even think straight enough to clean the kitchen, let alone plan for the extended future. And clarity is hard to attain when your allergies are killing you. I really don’t like being here. I like the thought of Tucson, but it was never meant for me.