On The Nature Of Daylight

I’ve now been completely off work for a whole week. In that time, I’ve literally slept around 9 or 10 hours daily. And I could probably sleep more. I’m both impressed and not surprised at all. I don’t think I’ve had the time and space to just be since early 2020. And even finding the resolve to give myself the next month off was a struggle. I know I need the time and space but what will I do with it? Honestly, I’m really annoyed that I even asked that question. Who fucking cares? I don’t need to do anything! I’ve been following this account on Instagram, Nap Ministry, and I think that its main message is that rest is a (re)connection to self, to being. And a call to stop doing.

I’ve spent the last few days just getting out of bed at whatever time I want, reading, eating, watching TV series. Somewhat unexpectedly, I felt ready to catch up with The Handmaid’s Tale. I know, I know. Even I don’t understand myself sometimes. But whilst watching the most recent season, which spends more time focusing on the survivors and refugees of the fictional Gilead regime, in their new homes in Canada, I began to ponder on something that’s been on my mind lately. In the series, they show the tension between those who want the refugees to feel better and move on with their lives, and the refugees themselves who are very much still traumatised and somewhat frozen from their lives in the oppressive state of Gilead. There are even interesting scenes of a peer support group where former handmaids discuss their experiences, but there’s a push to focus on the healing, rather than on their ‘uglier’ feelings of rage and anger. This made me think of all of us in our current world, marked by upheaval, tragedy, trauma, conflict, division, heightened rage, and climate collapse. This world which has been forced to stop due to a virus, which in turn forced us all into a kind of traumatic experience. And this world, which is demanding that we go back to normal.

Do you know what’s been on my mind, and which I haven’t really seen expressed anywhere yet? There is no going back. There is no normal to return to. The desire and need to return to a pre-pandemic world and life is frankly delusional. How could we possibly? After all of this? After this collective, and individual, trauma that we’ve all experienced? A trauma which, mind you, is actually not over yet?

Allow me to rephrase that. The main event may well be done, but not its effects. And ultimately, an event does not necessarily cause trauma. Trauma is often formed in the aftermath. In how people experience the world and other people afterwards.  We are certainly not over the threat, the disruption, the heightened awareness and vigilance, the conflict. We are living in the unprocessed times. We have been impacted in ways which are big and small, and which we may not be fully aware of just yet. A profound global change happened, which pushed us into a state of transition. A process of psychological and emotional change which is slower than the physical events of the pandemic and its consequences, is still very much at large. Like with any major life event, we might not realise its impact until a few years from now. There is no timeline to process something, no deadline to feel better. Our capitalist world will tell you otherwise and guilt you into moving on, jumping into new experiences, chasing an elusive back to normal, promising you freedom and happiness, but it’s all bullshit. The reason we repeat mistakes, and the reason we see so many global mistakes being repeated at the moment, is because we don’t process anything. There is no time for emotions and recovery in a capitalist world of blind productivity and power accumulation.

I can’t tell anyone what to do, but both as a person and as a therapist, I intend to resist this rush to returning to something as elusive as normal. I feel a profound change is taking place. So much so that I had to quit a job as I couldn’t possibly see myself returning to it in September. I feel a need to slow down, to feel, to be. To let old things fall, collapse, and disintegrate. To let new things emerge from the rubble, to build something new. Even if it’s just for myself. It would be a disservice to myself, to everyone I care about, to everyone I care for as a therapist, if I just jumped to the next thing without processing any of this. Not that we can put a deadline on processing, but we can give it time and space. We can carve it out of our unnecessarily consuming days. I don’t believe anything truly new can emerge or take place until I, we, do this. New days will come, but how will we live them?