It’s July 1, and I realized I had absolutely nothing to write in June. I was busy being quiet, watching, learning, absorbing, grieving, and trying to make sense of everything that’s going on in the world. When I feel confused and scared, I don’t have a lot to write about. I fear pissing people off. I fear putting something in writing that will be misconstrued. I fear saying too little or too much. It’s time to put fear aside and write today.

When I know I don’t have answers or solutions, I get quiet. I feel like a trapped animal – helpless, frozen. I try to learn everything I can about whatever is happening and to make educated choices based on that learning. I try to see where my biases lie and accept that some of what I’ve learned has to be UN-learned. I try to be patient with people who are not in the same space as I am, and I try to level up to people whose growth has surpassed mine. It’s all hard and messy and daunting.

Some days, I turn off the constant chatter in my brain, and I turn on YouTube cleaning videos. I watch them for hours, gaining satisfaction from the fact that we still have some control over our own little worlds, inside our homes, with our cleaning products and microfiber cloths. I will watch and then clean up little messes around my house, feeling grateful for the time to let my brain focus on dirty toilets instead of the shit show I see all around us. A respite in cleaning toilets is something I never thought I’d need, but there it is, and I am grateful for it. The metaphor is not lost on me, my friends.

A long time ago, when I started this blog, I read that I should have a very clear focus: baking, skydiving, travel, underwater basket-weaving. I never did that. I started this blog to unload my feelings surrounding my divorce (another shit show I survived by cleaning toilets) and to try to make sense of what came next. I never thought it would be a pandemic and a country so divided that we might very well be sitting on the precipice of the end of it. It feels too heavy and important to blog about how I still struggle with personal issues. Or maybe, like the YouTubers who still film their cleaning routines, I need to keep writing about whatever is going on over here at the Meatballs & Butterflies residence.

I don’t know. And I’m OK with not knowing right now.

Trust me when I tell you that I see it all.

I feel it all.

I’m absorbing it all.