Gasping for air.

I am tired of holding my breath every day. 

I don't quite remember what it is like to not fear the beginning of a new month and what those next thirty days will bring. 

For five months straight we have collectively lived in a societal state of breath-holding fear. 

Each month, something new. A new salt to our barely healing wounds. A new item on the long list of anxiety-causing subjects. 

The news of giant bees and bats and fires and impeachments and empty grocery aisles and hospital beds and schools felt like the world was collapsing into chaos over and over and over again. People began to expect bad news. And it came. It piled on and on and on. 

A deeply divided election, a civil rights movement, a political fight, a (still remaining) pandemic, an argument over health and science, an explosion. 

Each day it was something new. 

And the world was in it together. 

That should be comforting really. They say misery loves company, but honestly, too much company makes anyone want to isolate in their own space. 

The whole world feels like its about to explode and the only thing I want to do is hide in a hole and give up. It's too much. I am tired of holding my breathe and not knowing when I will be able to breathe again. I am tired of the changes. I am exhausted from the quick goodbyes and the unknowns and the endings. I am tired of the inability to help anything. I am just tired. 

This is the point of the Instagram caption where I would normally spin it into something positive. 

Except today I have nothing. 

Today I allow myself to just be tired. To weep with and for the world. To remember that humanity has and can do hard things; even if they do them grudgingly and without a choice, they do the hard things. 

It is better to weep with the pain of the world then to feel nothing in the midst of the pain of others. 

We can not stop the hard things; we can chose to readjust, relearn, revise, and review our priorities. 

Some day we might look back on all that time we held our breath and realize that instead of suffocating, we evolved and learned to breath in a new way. Like so many have, we evolve to the world around us. 

Our new gills are coming. But for now, we must swim on without them.