Here, look at this giant tree for a moment, and see if it helps. Focus on the fact that it is always growing towards the light, something you should try and employ as well. Because are you okay right now? No? Me neither.

I think the shittiest part of this pandemic is all the full frontals we’ve had to endure. Not the nudity, I haven’t had any nude bombers in the neighbourhood (if you’re out there, please streak on by, I need a good laugh) but the stark, in-your-face actualizations that no one asked for, no one was ready for.

Fight with your long-time friends over vaccinations and pandemic behaviour? Check! Live with your spouse/partner/whatever for not four hours a day but twenty-four? Check! Come face to face with your inner fears of failure as a parent/partner…check! Top it off with a healthy dollop of doom scrolling, navel gazing, menopause, early onset arthritis and a mid-life crisis? Yes and yes, only it gets better, because on top of that, like sprinkles on a cupcake, if you’re like me, you know you’re privileged. You aren’t escaping a totalitarian regime or trying to. You have autonomy, basic human rights, you aren’t battling cancer. You have space, freedom, the money to buy groceries. So you chastise yourself for feeling bad when you aren’t the one needing to feed your children, when really, you should have nothing to complain about.

And the final flambe’: if you’re empathic, if you feel people and the world energetically, you’re effed right now. Sorry to get all woo-woo on you but I’m one of those. The burning planet? Let’s just say when you know that animals are boiling in their shells at sea, that extinction rates are on the upward curve, that this virus is possibly a last-ditch attempt at the Earth giving us her giant middle finger…ok, you get the point. I went to the doctor, finally.

            “GIVE ME SOMETHING THAT DULLS EVERYTHING,” I said, only not quite. Actually what I did was burst into tears and give him a hug, something I have not done in the over ten years we’ve known each other.

            “I need some help,” I said, in a small voice I rarely allow anyone to hear.

And the reason I am telling you this is to break down certain illusions. Facebook being one for us oldies. I only post pics of vacations and happy events, not because I want people to think my life is perfect, but mostly because I don’t take pictures otherwise, I just forget to, I’m off living my life you know? And those who know me know how I am. But perhaps you don’t know me that well, perhaps you think I’m one of those people who laugh things off all the time. I try to. I use humour like a shield and I wield it whenever possible. Sometimes it backfires terribly, but not all comics are good ones, no? Sometimes they make dick jokes when their grandmother is in the audience. (I haven’t done that, but I did once take my grandma to a movie with Sean Connery in it, because we liked him, and the first scene involved a sex-choking murder after a bout of implied cunnilingus, and she was a devout Catholic, so… let’s just say that was awkward). Sometimes humour doesn’t cut it at all. You get it wrong. It doesn’t work. Or one day you find you can’t lift your head to face anything, to joke about anything at all. You (meaning me) have all the classic symptoms of depression and anxiety, and then you feel bad again because aren’t you the one who just bought a beautiful house? How many people get to do that? How lucky are you?

So lucky you’d trade it all to feel joy again, however you could find it, to stop feeling like this day might be your last, so you better reach out to others before you drop off the face of the earth from sadness. And this, you realize, is how people suffer in silence. You haven’t just lost a loved one, or your country, or your livelihood. There is no reason, other than the fact that everything in the world seems to have gone to shit. You’ve just lost yourself and don’t know how to find your way back.

Cue a visit to the tidal pools, to the forest. A few hours with old friends and family. A restorative balm if there ever is one, but you still don’t tell them how it really is, because then they’d worry about you.

But maybe it’s ok to let someone worry. You’ve let a few people in, they’re keeping tabs, you appreciate them more than they will ever know because they don’t know that they are the ones inching you towards joy. They will remind you, perhaps over several beers, that your husband was once known for nude bombing people while they were asleep in their tents at Ultimate tournaments, which makes you smile, because that’s one of the reasons you love him, his ability to surprise with random acts of silliness. And you used to do such things as well, you and your college buddy who employed something called “titty pancakes”- smashing your breasts up against a plate glass window where, say, a bachelor party was being held, shouting (you guessed it) “titttttyyyy pannnacakkess” and then running away as fast as you could from the scene of the (giant flat boobs!) crime.

Thank god there were no cell phones back then.

What I’m realizing is… perhaps I need everyday walks in the woods. Also, more nudity. Random, silly nudity, like, in the grocery store, or skateboarding down the street, that’s what I need for a good belly laugh. Like a Benny Hill episode only without all the groping old guys. Just naked people running through fields chasing each other and laughing and no one ever gets caught but just runs into the sunset whooping and laughing with the closing credits. Maybe there’s a metaphor in there. Or maybe I should organize a field trip. Or join in one of those fun-runs although I can’t imagine how that isn’t painful for those of us with giant cans?

Anyway, I guess my point in all of this is, we’re not okay. Nothing is okay right now, so help each other. Reach out. Tell people you need them, you want them in your life. And if they’ve had a few or they’re feeling especially brave, they can run on by your house naked, if you promise not to get out your phone and record their posterior for posterity.