My thoughts after one month on the road

August 24th, 2020 marked one month that I have officially been on the road. What a crazy month it has been! I have driven almost 10,500 miles from where I started to where I am right now. I have driven almost half way across the United States and been in every state along the way. There are a lot of things that have changed from the way they were when I started this journey a month ago. I would not have pictured myself here right now a month ago, I thought I had a plan. I thought I had my car packed perfectly. I thought I had an idea of how I would handle my anxiety. You know what, I did have it all figured out. I did have a plan, I still do have a plan but things change, stuff gets rearranged (almost daily), anxiety is still there waiting and will come out of nowhere making it hard to breathe. Although nothing is how I imagined it feeling, everything is still feeling good.

The first two weeks of the journey felt like a cheat. I was spending time with family and helped my friend move her stuff into her new apartment. I got to spend a few days out on my own in between but I wasn't focused on the trip as much as I was spending time with the people that I care about. I knew that on this trip I'd be able to talk to them but I also knew that my mental health would change and my focus would shift. I spent several days at my friends new apartment which didn't make me feel like I was road tripping anymore, I had a normal daily routine. In between trying out new restaurants, coffee shops and avoiding the worst construction we both have ever experienced, she was working on setting things up and I was busy working from home and planning the next leg of the trip. I had all these goals for myself before starting, I even made new and updated lists once I got to her place. I had everything planned out so perfectly. So where did I go wrong?

The other day after I had just had another breakdown in the car, I was trying to hype myself back up to the positive state I had been in just a few hundred miles earlier. Why was I so upset? What was I even upset about? It just seemed to hit me out of no where, so annoying! I was so mad. While trying to make myself feel better I found myself saying out loud "This is what you were expecting wasn't it? You literally planned to have no plan, you made it this way but you can also change it. This way of doing things is no longer working. That is the point." I even said it to myself earlier today when I was beginning to notice my anxiety taking over. "I planned for a day of rest. That is the point. I need to allow myself to sit on the couch and work instead of running around and getting myself all worked up and then stressing about how I didn't get any work done today. I deserve this ice cream bar."

I haven't been listening to the news as much, I will check in for an hour or two every other day but it adds to my stress levels which is something I don't need. I really don't know what is going to happen in the election or how much worse this pandemic will get, but I am (like everyone else) trying to go in with an open mind and listen. I think that that is one of the most important things we can do right now. We need to be listening to the people protesting in the street, the people advocating for basic human rights. We have been ignoring our pain as a society for so long and now it is catching up to us.

I haven't been sick in a while *knock on wood* but I was very sick this past fall. My friend got an infection that lead to multiple strange illnesses that doctors could only blame her for, instead of helping. Instead of listening to her, they blamed her being sick for months with countless symptoms that would come and go whenever they pleased on her. Let me say that again. They blamed her for being sick for months. THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE. I got sick about a month after she did and was also sick on and off until January. Yes, January. Right before the pandemic became serious, I was driving up to Canada on an impromptu post-Christmas shopping trip by myself and was finally starting to feel like I could breathe again. I remember being stuck in traffic listening to the CBC radio interviewing a family who was already dealing with lockdowns and travel restrictions. All that to say that I used to get sick a lot, even before this last fall. I would literally work myself into catching a cold, then forcing myself to stay at home until I got slightly better. It was at that point that I would return to the same 40 hour work week at a job that drained me of my energy before I even got in my car, and continue with my full 17 credit college schedule. I would repeat until I got sick again and I was okay with it. Honestly, I was. Hindsight is 2020 (pun intended) and our society has been working on overdrive for far too long and now we have made ourselves sick. It's time that we take time to rebuild (easier said than done), relax and heal.

We need collective healing. We need community wide support for socio-emotional learning. We must listen to each other to figure out how we can heal. We are in a place in our history that will either be defined as the turning point or the breaking point. Rebuilding our society is not easy, and it is going to take more than a few thousand people sharing memes on social media to do it. We need real leaders and trailblazers that are willing to put in the work. We can decide to improve ourselves and our communities through education and conversation, or we can choose to sit back and allow attacks on innocent lives and for the rich to get richer and the poor to become poorer. We have the chance to make a difference and to actually contribute something to the next chapter in history besides pedophilia, destruction, violence, poverty, racism, classism, sexism and all the other -ism's you can think of. The choice is ours.

On August 14th at 12:24pm I recorded a note for myself...

"The problem is that we are focused on solving our problems with the same old methods from one mindset. If we were to collaborate we would have the opportunity to listen to those around us and hear other methods and begin to understand other mindsets. We don’t all have to agree because that’s not the point. The point is that we stand together to fight these issues of injustice together to heal our basic societal foundation.

The question we should be asking ourselves and those around us is How can I help? and What is the next most loving thing you can do for yourself? Ask. Listen. Then you go out and do it. "