Navigating the Shitstorm
Literally (my yard is currently flooding with sewage) and metaphorically <gestures to everything else going on in the world>
My fearless fucklings,
I had a whole different post planned for this week, but then lots of things happened and continue to happen, and I am digging DEEP into my personal bag o’ coping mechanisms, so I thought I’d share a quick pep talk with you.
In the immortal words of Broadway’s Avenue Q: The Musical, “It’s only for now.”
Yes, I know that sounds like utter Pollyanna bullshit given the minimum four-year hard time sentence America (and the rest of the world) is about to serve at the tiny hands of an unrepentant ra[c/p]ist, but hear me out.
Macro level: YES, THINGS ARE BAD.
On a teeny-tiny micro level, though, consider this: Whatever is happening to you right now cannot possibly last forever.
Or at least, forever, without a single pause.1
Without a few days of fun or an hour of respite or a moment of joy somewhere in between.
The pauses, respites, and joys are out there, and they will come for you, I promise. Babies will be born, Bad Sisters will come back for season two, your team will win it all, the bodega will have your favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s.2
So let’s try to get through today, shall we?
On a personal note—and per the title of this post—a few days ago after nearly twenty-four hours of rain in my town in the Dominican Republic, I woke up to a moat surrounding my house.
There were tadpoles in the carport! And twelve individual septic tanks spewing dirty water into our collective gardens, like the fountains at the Bellagio if they were filled with raw sewage!
IT WAS A LITERAL SHIT SHOW.
And after a couple days of drying out and cleaning up the garden and running the long-delayed errands…it’s happening again.
Yup. Round Two: Poop-Tastic Monsoon Boogaloo!
I will not lie to you; I have lost my [figurative] shit several times in the last week, including very nearly this morning as my husband was preparing to head to the airport in a torrential downpour for a difficult and emotionally taxing solo trip—and one which I have been desperately trying to not make him feel even worse about due to leaving my panic-stricken ass at home to deal with pumps and sewage and cats that are too stupid to stay on their relatively dry terrace and instead must be rescued kicking and screaming from the cul-de-sac when they cannot figure out how to cross the poop moat to get back home.3
But—as I reminded myself this morning and approximately 8 million times throughout the day (and it is only 3:00PM as I write this, so I’m on track for a good 30 million total):
We have been here before, we know what we’re dealing with, the water will recede, then it may even come back again, but eventually things will dry out and I’ll clean everything up and move on…until the next time.
(It’s sort of working, this internal pep talk. But “sort of” is better than not at all, so I’ll take it.)
And to be fair, I say all of this with a lot of privilege in my back pocket—I have pumps and rubber boots and backup power and lots of food in the fridge and about a jillion spare towels and friends with cars who are willing to come and rescue me if needs must.
I fully acknowledge that I am luckier than most in this particular situation.
But my anxiety doesn’t know any of that, so it’s up to me and my logical brain to override the emotional one for as long and as well as we can.
In my book Calm the Fuck Down, I talk about “crating your emotional puppies,” and if there was ever a day, a week, an election cycle in which to do so, NOW IS THE MOTHERFUCKING TIME.4
Why?
Because, my gentle fucklings, it’s all fine and well (and necessary) to feel your feelings, much like it is to cavort with puppies—but it’s also really hard to calm down and focus and get shit accomplished with those little beasties running around the room, tearing up the joint, eating your shoes, and perhaps peeing on the carpet.
(Your brain is the room in this scenario, and these are metaphorical puppies. Emotional puppies. Emuppies!)
And currently it is high time for me to lead my emuppies into their crate and shut the door so I can gird myself for the next 48 hours of rain and butt sludge ahead.5
It’s also time to remember what I said up top. It’s only for now.
(BTW, I’m writing this down as much to help myself as I am to help any of y’all who may be experiencing something similar, this week or in the future. Self-help gurus: we need to take our own advice too!)
Alas, bad shit is always going to happen, sometimes even coming in unfathomable waves.
In the end, there is absolutely nothing we can do but acknowledge it, accept the reality of it, clean up after it, and keep going. We’re all out here doing the best we can with what we’ve got.
So if it helps you cope with whatever literal or metaphorical shitstorm is befalling you in this moment: remember your emuppies.
By all means, let ‘em run around for a bit (feel free to cry in your closet or scream in your car, is what I’m saying), get ‘em nice and tired out, and then pick ‘em up by the scruff of their adorable necks and put ‘em in the crate for the rest of the day so you can get back to the business of calming the fuck down and solving problems instead of making them worse by panicking, freezing, and hiding under the bed until the rain stops.6
Good luck out there, friends! I’m rooting for you.
(Your emuppies are too.)
PS: Watch the cast of Avenue Q sing their little puppet hearts out and tell me it didn’t help lift your spirits for at least three-and-a-half minutes.
Okay, yes, there may be a few exceptions which are too tragic to go into, and I addressed even those possibilities in a chapter of Calm the Fuck Down titled “A Catalogue of Terror!” which, not coincidentally, I re-read for my own benefit this morning.
If it’s not Chubby Hubby, what are you even doing with your life?
I mean, I guess I can’t blame them. But I am going to Google “miniature Wellington boots for cats” as soon as I press go on this post.
It’s just a harmless metaphor; please don’t come for me, anti-crating crusaders. I don’t even have a dog.
Or, you know, the next four years…and then some.
NOT THAT I HAVEN’T CONSIDERED ALL OF THESE OPTIONS MIND YOU.
I will help you clean up the poop if I can run away to the DR.
I am kidding. But also. Watching a lot of House Hunters International for cope. Not going anywhere. But a girl can dissociate and google houses in Costa Rica.
Cherry Garcia is still my favorite.
Dogs are magic. They live in the present. They love unconditionally and have absolute trust about where their next meal is coming from. With a yard and a doggie door they’re in heaven. Now one of my pups has developed into a bit of a predator. She’s killed two raccoons and three chickens. But she’s an Australian cattle dog. Protecting her herd is her job. But she lays on her back either her head in my lap and all my fuck the world thoughts vaporize and disappear before my eyes and my heart is light as long as as I don’t turn on the news.