A while back(the World Race destroys your concept of time; I haven’t yet figured out when it grows back, but I’ll keep you posted), for a full week I listened to literally(please note that I never misuse that word) nothing but the Oh Hellos. I didn’t even listen to the radio in my car. Just their one album, on repeat. Or usually only my four favorite songs on repeat.
The title of this post comes from my second favorite song. It’s called “I Have Made Mistakes,” which is uncomfortably applicable as I’m wading through my reactive perfectionism(my name for how I came home from the Race and suddenly panicked at the fact that I didn’t become a superhero over those 11 months).
I’m clinging to the truth in those words.
I refuse to believe I’m alone in the dark.
I will not believe I’m the only Racer ever to come home and fall apart this gloriously.
I won’t even believe I’m the only one on my squad. The “everyone’s fine but me” mantra that’s played through my head since Searchlight has to stop.
I don’t write very often anymore, and I don’t just mean on this blog; the few posts you’ve seen here in the past five months are the only words I’ve written anywhere. I don’t journal or write on my real life blog anymore. I don’t feel like I have anything good to say, and writing is hard even when I do have good things to say, and lately it’s a major effort for me to do anything more difficult than pointing the clicker at the TV.
But I thought about it, and decided that “good” doesn’t always mean happy or positive. Sometimes it just means “true.”
I know that a lot(and by that I mean probably most, if my squad is a representative sample) of Racers have a smooth landing when they get home. They have a little jet lag and some fun confusion in the grocery store and struggle for a bit to answer the question of “How was your trip?” and then they adapt and suddenly they’re fine.
But for the others, for the ones who stumble off that last plane and crash into an emotionally overwhelmed fog and can’t seem to do anything but self-destruct…I’m going to keep writing for you. I’ll write the truth even when it sounds like a Zoloft commercial.
And eventually I’ll be okay, and the truth will be happy, but the people who need them can still find my sad posts and see that I felt how they feel, then they’ll read my better ones and see that they probably won’t feel that way forever because I didn’t.
