I can see the sky from my window

I can see the sky from my window. I can see the sky from my kitchen windows while I’m preparing one of a million snacks or meals or trying to tidy for the millisecond it will last, or washing dishes, or best of all, playing with my dragons.

I can see the sky from my window. I can see the sky from my bed. There are trees outside too, so the early colors tangle up with the branches to say hello. If I turn a bit I can see the blue, or gray or any shade in between of this sky that is gifted to me every morning.

I can see the sky from my window.

 

I’ve been miserable. With beautiful high moments in which I’m at the top of this rollercoaster of existing in a pandemic, but those are so fleeting and it is always a fast plunge into another eruption of negative emotions, accompanied, of course, lest they go solo and feel very alone, with the most negative and destructive thoughts that I would ever wish on my arch enemy, which, of course, is always another version of myself.

I’ve been mostly miserable, with those ecstatic moments and those plunges and then those very very slow trudges uphill, those treks in which you wear off your shoes because it is so rocky and dry and so hard to climb back up. Your muscles tremble from the effort and all you want is to eat day old croissants. The movement is slow, it almost feels like you don’t move at all, stuck to the earth in this upward movement, without real stability because your whole body is going one way and your mind is going another; but you continue and instead of looking up you look down, where you came from and perhaps you get dizzy or just plain exhausted and it feels so much easier to just fall again instead of going forward. But you do, somehow, and you are finally at the peak of this phantasmagorical rollercoaster that is life in a pandemic, and you can breathe, and you feel grateful for all you have and have done. You feel at the top of the world, which you are, just by the utter simplicity of survival. You can finally find some kindness for yourself, and that self compassion you’ve been seeking, yes, it is right there. And you inhale and exhale (and of course by you, I mean me).

And then it is the plunge, again. Those fleeting moments are exactly that. Fleeting. So short they barely exist.

So here I am. Knowing that I can see the sky from my window.

This weekend, as many others, I was talking to my love about the dream of a farm, about space and forests and maybe another city, or another country. Or perhaps, another life. I feel like I keep trying to escape this. As if changing circumstances will actually change circumstances.

It’s been a hard go. I could tell you all the personal shit, but, what for? It’s been fucking hard for everyone.

Except for some. Those who have thrived, those who have really enjoyed the time together with their families, or the time alone and all that time to actually do and learn and be, those who’ve relocated to the lives of their dreams, those who’ve thrived in business and in life, those who’ve grown. Yes, I see you, I appreciate you, but I very often also want to tell you to go fuck yourself. Because that is not the case for most of us. It’s been fucking hard. No, I have not thrived. I have barely survived.

So, yes, I can see the sky from my window. And this weekend, after going over, once more, every single decision I have taken as an adult, and how it got me here, as if I had the omnipotent power to have created this pandemic and all its consequences, including the macho governments that will rather fuck things up than listen to sound advice (oh Jacinda, why can’t you be queen of the world right now?).

After fruitlessly not figuring out my way out of this pandemic, of covid and delays in vaccines and people dying and the exacerbation of socioeconomic status and what that is doing in terms of who dies and who lives… I realize I can see the sky from my window.

Because you see, it hasn’t always been like that.

I haven’t been able to see the sky from my window.

In the apartment I grew up my window/ wall opened to another room, so I could never see the sky from my bedroom. In the house I lived after I had to keep the blinds close to have some sense of privacy, and the ones I could keep open, well, those didn’t see sky.

In my first apartment as a young adult, my bedroom had a window which looked inside the building. The apartment after that had windows to my neighbors. Then I moved to New York. Big windows and so many offices to look at. No sky.

And so the journey of the sky-less window continues.

Until now.

I have windows through which the sky says hello.

And that is a lot.

Because that is what I had been seeking for many years and lifetimes.

So this weekend I made a decision.

I am done being miserable. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to have a hard time because, well, online school, quarantines, lockdowns, death and all of that. I will have a hard time because sometimes we do, but that doesn’t mean my life is in the suckiest of sucks, or that I made very poor choices to get where I am right now.

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a victim of outside circumstances, and me, the controlling, planning type, has the most difficult time not being able to plan even a week ahead because who the hell knows what the world will look like then.

So yes, I have been mostly miserable, but I am done.

I have windows to say hello to the sky, and the sky winks back.

So there.