STEPPING OUT OF A STORY
Why wasn’t I falling apart, when that’s what it felt like everyone — including myself — was expecting?
I was still in my underwear when the decision overruling Roe v. Wade was published. It was 7:10am on the west coast and I didn’t move for another five hours. There was too much to do. I told myself I did not have time to “process” what had happened.
The next day I was on a cross-country flight, getting home at 2 a.m. and then staying up until sunrise because the book I started on the plane was too good to put down. I penciled time for a breakdown on Sunday afternoon, when the rush eased up.
Sunday passed devoid of a personal crisis.
Over the next few days, a pattern emerged: sort through waves of abortion coverage, try to decipher legal language, keep track of court battles in a dozen states. Slowly mark the states losing access to critical healthcare. Do something fun in the evenings. Read a book, make art, play a video game, see a friend, watch Veronica Mars. Repeat.
Clearly the chaos had infiltrated my vision so thoroughly that there was no space left for me to process the grand scale of implications the overturning of Roe would have. I anticipated the physical toll of grief ministrations. Around me were cries of rage, pain, despair, fear. Emotions were erupting through every press release, headline and Instagram story. I waited my turn.
But each day I was shocked I felt fine. Part of me even felt stronger, reinforced. I told myself my relative lack of affect must be because my brain was still stuck in some lizard state, running from a sabertooth cat. Any minute now realization would come crashing down, and true understanding would knock me down on my ass.
Two weeks later I began to question that assumption.
Why wasn’t I falling apart, when that’s what it felt like everyone — including myself — was expecting?
***
I mused over the question for several days, and came up with an objective list of factors responsible for my ability to keep my shit together: a sense of purpose, the nature of my work, my relative privilege, a lack of time for social media.
But these reasons didn’t feel like enough to permanently prevent the panic I was sure I should be feeling. The seismic shift rippling across the country had failed to meaningfully impact the minutiae of my daily life. I felt disconnected from the heartbeat of the collective, and more sinister fears began to surface.
I must be malfunctioning. My list of stressors was too long for me to be as functional as I was. I wasn’t experiencing any of the hallmarks of grief I had come to expect over the past several years of covering tragedy and horrifying events. My focus was intact, my chronic illnesses remained under control, I wasn’t spiraling into existential dread. I concluded that something must be gravely wrong.
Finally, after too many days ruled by spinning thoughts I grabbed my journal. Writing empties my head, always gives me clarity. Pen to paper would be the way I would find out what was wrong with me.
I was striving to distill a malady, but questions poured out instead. Why am I worrying about whether I am feeling enough pain? Why am I comparing my level of dysregulation to others’? Why do I think my feelings and reactions are wrong?
A different kind of clarity emerged.
I was expending so much energy punishing and judging myself. To what end? There is so much pain in the world without me compounding suffering with shame over my reactions. Denying “processing,” saying I’m in shock, emotionally undercuts me. It assumes I need to break down.
What a breakthrough.
Maybe processing is quiet moments of staring into space, of crying for a minute and then washing my face with cool water. Maybe I don’t need to crumble from the weight of overwhelm and repressed emotions. I can decide to not beat myself up about my lack of outward distress. I don’t have to act like others, or feel what they feel in order to recognize and affirm their experience. Disrespecting myself does not further my community.
Recognizing and naming the judgment I needlessly weaponized against myself was a relief. I am not like everyone else; there is no need to let my emotions be ruled by peer pressure. Now I’m releasing shame about the way I express myself, and shame over not feeling the correct emotions at the right time.
***
While pondering this new way of thinking, I realized there’s another factor contributing to my current calm. I am taking care of myself, and the consequence is being able to handle stress in a way that feels completely unreal to me.
In the past few weeks I have been putting into action months and years of learning how to weave a web of care. I am setting boundaries, committing to regenerative practices, and checking out when needed — all things I am proud of.
Shame does not belong here, although it tries to worm its way in. There’s a voice in my head that suggests I am perversely proud of myself, that maybe this stoicism isn’t an achievement, that maybe I’m lacking some humanity after all. I shut it down by continuing to choose what I need to do (journal, pull my tarot cards, close my laptop) instead of what I want to do (play video games for hours, checking Slack as soon as I wake up, skipping meals).
I have found equilibrium, and am not judging what my homeostasis looks like or what methods I employ to bring myself to center. Gathering these threads together has been a long journey, and I’m allowed a victory lap before continuing on.
***
And then all of my newfound convictions collapsed. One day I scanned the daily headlines and began sobbing at my desk — heaving ugly tears, mascara running black streaks down my face. Later that night I cried again, for longer, unable to form words to express the deep hopelessness that had settled over me.
It’s an easy narrative to craft that one final tweet sent me over the edge, my tolerance bucket overfloweth. That all the pent up misery from the past few months exploded into a cathartic weeping session. Maybe I was kidding myself and all this shit about expressing emotions differently and taking such good care of myself was delusional hubris.
It’s also the wrong one.
Here’s the thing: I had read the same stories I had been seeing for weeks. But I was different that day. I know that by the time I sat down at my desk, I had dealt with a variety of stressful situations. I felt unsettled and out of sorts and overly sensitive. And then I saw the headlines.
I broke because of a final straw, but it was one that had been brewing for an hour, not weeks or months. I overslept and didn’t do my usual morning routine. Instead of taking the time to reorient myself I tried to ignore how I was feeling. I was not overwhelmed by the news; I was overwhelmed, and then there was the news.
***
Perhaps this insight doesn’t sound groundbreaking. But the punishing pace of the past several years led me to write a story in my head asserting I was too human to be a journalist. I felt too much, my insides were too soft. I was incapable of ignoring a world on fire, which I assumed was what all the successful reporters were doing.
In fact, when I didn’t find myself inconsolable over recent tragedies, I took it as a sign I lost myself. That journalism had made me inhuman, that I had unwittingly surrendered my empathy, my compassion, my favorite parts of myself in order to deal with the daily routines of my job. I told myself that full-time journalism work had necessitated a soul-deep numbing, just to get by, and now I didn’t like who I was becoming.
I have pulled back from that defeatist view. I see now that my job is not the only thing that has affected my emotions; I’m also prioritizing my well-being. I’m accepting that we all feel different things when confronted with the same stimulus. Perhaps my way of expressing myself has changed, but it’s not automatically for the worse.
I still feel grief. I still feel pain. But I’m not letting myself believe I am constantly treading water, perpetually at risk of being pulled under. I’m not letting myself believe that I am trapped below, that my capacity for feeling has been exceeded. I am experimenting with calling this growth, or expansion, or resilience. Not loss.
No additional thoughts today — my attention for the past week has been focused on editing this essay. (Thank you to my partner for helping me over the final round of edits!)
I do have one request: if any of this resonated with you or sparked something within, I would love to know in the form of an email reply or comment. Feedback and conversations stemming from my writing brings me so much joy — and, frankly, gives me motivation to continue sharing my work in this way.
Wishing you a robust web of care,
Jasmine
Thank you *so much* for writing this.
It’s beautiful, and permission-giving, and just right.
Thank you for sharing. This is extremely relatable, including specifically about Roe v. Wade. I don't really engage with social media or much news, so I sometimes feel like I'm being cold or refusing to look at the truth. I thought it must be a failure of empathy on my part, like "if it doesn't directly affect me, I don't care." I finally cried about it just a little in therapy while talking about how I was moving back to Hyde Park, back to the street where the Jane Collective performed underground abortions in the early 70s.