What’s A Day For, Anyway?

This morning, I went to get some blood drawn, because my doctor wants to know how in/effective a medication I am on is. Then I stopped at the butcher to get some soup and yahrzeit candles. After that, I headed home to make sure my son was ready for his aide, who had come to take him to his baking class in Brooklyn.

Later I will head downtown to meet a director friend for coffee and a snack, a much delayed get-together, but one I’m looking forward to, despite my lingering cold. But because of that lingering cold, and my husband’s newly brewing one, we’ll not be going to hear Hillary Clinton this evening, in conversation with Reid Hoffman. Lost money on those unreturnable tickets, but that’s a “sunk cost” as my husband would say.

Why share the minutiae of this Tuesday in January? I suppose to give some context to the rest of what I want to share. This day has some content to it, a little bit of activity and substance. Most of my days are emptier than this, by quite a bit, actually.

That’s been true for a while now. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment, but I suppose the dividing line — as for many of us — is pre/post COVID. But if I’m being brutally honest, the dividing line for me is most people I’ve known. And me.

I’ve lived with a lot of silence and emptiness since I stopped commuting to a job. But not only then. I was thinking the other day of a college philosophy professor of mine — Stanley Kaminsky — who saw that I was struggling and said, “just come to class, and I’ll pass you.” Not struggling academically. That stuff generally came easily to me. It was the bone crushing depression that I was wrestling with. And Professor Kaminsky noticed that the beast had the edge in that moment. And he was trying to pull me up and out. It was a beautiful moment of compassion that I remember forty years on. And I can’t recall what I had for breakfast yesterday.

Truth be told though, the beast never really dies. But what does die, bit by bit, is my hope that I’ll meet another Stanley Kaminsky along the way. I have an older sister who periodically tries, but I’m not sure she has it in her to deal with the emotional nadir and chaos of my life. She’s a problem solver, and some problems don’t have neat and tidy solutions.

I have two dear female friends with whom I can share anything, really, but each has her only red wagon to pull, one with physical health issues, one with depression herself, as well as child-related struggles. We love one another fully and without judgment, and that is a powerful, magical thing. But there are 365 days in a year, and 24 hours in each of those days, and day in and out, it’s not enough.

Some days — many days, actually — I realize that silence is my closest companion. It’s a funny thing, in a city as noisy as New York, but it’s true. I don’t speak with another human being other than my husband and son, and our doormen, as I come and go walking the dogs.

Let me be clear that none of this is meant to elicit pity. Life is what it is. Some days, I’m up for the challenge, willing to make that extra effort. Other days, I can’t figure out why I should get out of bed. I used to be someone who loved to volunteer, to participate. I’ve lost that interest. I think largely because I just can’t bear to think about joining something by myself. Yes, I know that’s actually how one meets people. But somehow, it never works out for me. I’ll meet someone, form a quick bond, and we’ll make plans. But life gets in the way, or interest just dissipates. And the cycle renews.

There are people who say that failure is a great motivator. Maybe. But it can also be the last nail in the coffin of your caring, the thing that tells you that trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is indeed insanity. And god knows I don’t need more of that in my life.

I was thinking as I imagined writing this how there are many times in my life when I got knocked sideways and could have fallen completely out of the ring. But somehow, I powered through, got up, and kept going. The only person who might have noticed in real time is my husband, because some of those times we shared, we powered through together.

I don’t believe god gives you only what you can handle, or any other bumper sticker bullshit people trot out. I don’t quarrel with anyone who does believe those things, but they just ring hollow and utterly false to me. I don’t think I believe my days will magically change. I think each day is not quite a gift, but certainly a chance. As long as I’m able, I need to keep getting up. I need to fight somehow for better, fuller days, and not mourn or bemoan the ones that fell short.

I can always find something to be grateful for. The capacity to sit at a keyboard and pour out these musings is one of those things, even if the musings are downbeat. Gratitude for me is not about being happy when things go right. Gratitude is about the capacity to see past what isn’t working and find the one thing that is. So if a day falls short and I’m feeling stuck, gratitude can be found in knowing that, in being aware enough to understand that I’m not thriving the way I wish I would. Maybe it sounds silly to find gratitude in something that sounds negative, but for someone who has had to power through so much not thriving in my life, being able to see it, know it, and feel it, and yet continue to function and breathe is summiting Everest. You only know what that is if you’ve ever been at the very bottom and had to claw and climb and cry and fight and rage and weep and wonder and ache and wish and hope and try to remember what it’s like to dream. And think that maybe, just maybe, that’s what your next day will be for.