Too much

When does too much become really too much? When can you just walk away, or when should you? When, for example, does the terribleness of an absolutely terrible situation outweigh whatever you hope to gain from it? I am asking, as the Internet says, for a friend. 

No, that’s not true. I’m asking for me. I’m in a terrible situation that is unlikely to get better but is entirely likely to get notably worse and yet I can’t walk away without causing a lot of difficulty for a lot of people, myself included. And I don’t really know what to do. My head hurts and my stomach hurts and I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight. I don’t know what to do.  

*****

That was last night. And now it’s the next morning. I did sleep, but I woke up extremely early, knowing immediately that sleeping time was over and that I was wide awake for the day. When you wake up too early, sometimes the best thing is to realize right away that there’s no more sleep available and that you shouldn’t waste any time looking for more sleep and that you should instead just get up and out of the bed, and so that is what I did. I don’t feel much better than I did yesterday. In fact, I might have cried. Or maybe that was just the shower. 

*****

In the midst of last night’s crisis, I thought about stopping this, “this” meaning my daily writing habit. I have an unbroken streak of over three years. And when I say “daily,” I mean 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I write on weekdays, and I write on weekends. I write on Christmas and Thanksgiving and Juneteenth. I write on my birthday. “Daily” means every single day. And I thought that while I’m on the subject of things that are too much, maybe writing every day, no matter what, is too much. 

But it made me sad to think of stopping, and not just because of the streak because who am I, Cal Fucking Ripken? No one is counting my consecutive writing days. No one is keeping track of this, and I have no proof of my daily word production, so you will just have to take my word for it. And I don’t know if there’s a record to break, but if there is and if I break it, ESPN is not going to broadcast a highlight reel. There won’t be a “30 for 30.” All of that is to say that the streak does not matter, but I look forward to doing this every day, even when I don’t have time, even when it is, in fact, too much. Something might have to give, but it won’t be this. 

*****

I started writing this on Monday, which was a particularly difficult day. Tuesday and Wednesday were no better, until late Wednesday afternoon. I was walking around the Leisure World Giant, shopping for my old lady (so much bleach!) and all of a sudden, things just fell into place and I saw just enough of the big picture that I knew that I could live with the immediate terribleness and could figure out a way forward that would make the whole situation not only not terrible but entirely reasonable and in some ways, even an improvement over the situation that preceded it. It’s Thursday now and while I am not quite as optimistic as I was yesterday in the warm embrace of the natural foods section of the supermarket, which is always so much nicer than the rest of the supermarket; I am back to my almost-normal self. This too shall pass. And the nice part is that even if it doesn’t pass, I’m pretty sure that I can live with it.