DON'T ASK

Michael put a few Nutella Happy Hippos in my stocking for Christmas. The other day, after lunch, I opened one up and chomped off the nose of a hippo. I suddenly turned into someone who had just walked for days without food and crammed the rest of that hippo into my mouth like my life depended on it. Then I opened a second Nutella Happy Hippo and repeated the process. I don’t know how I managed to pull myself together before finishing off all of my Happy Hippos (seriously though, how can they even be happy. they’re filled with Nutella and are going to be eaten). I know what you’re thinking. “But Cindy, you can always buy more Happy Hippos.” This is true, but they’re not sitting in with the Hershey bars in the impulse buy area at the grocery store. These guys come from the same place as where the whole Table Incident of 2020 happened. I have been back to that store once since then and I tried to make myself as unnoticeable as possible because I am still embarrassed to show my face there. So again, why are these guys called ‘Happy’ Hippos?!?

When I was a kid, my Dad installed a monkey swing for me in the backyard. It was a wooden disk with a rope running up through the center so you could swing in every direction. I feel like I am on the swing right now. When the swing moves to the east, I flip into a rage. Then the swinging motion shifts north and I am sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing while Josephine brings me all of her toys and two of her bones. There’s occasionally a direction the swing goes where I mellow out, but only long enough to shift into a new direction. There’s a large basket of fancy chocolates at work that someone gave our department as a thank you Christmas gift. I am embarrassed by the number of them that I have shoved into my face on the days I am actually in the office. Not taken a bite and savored, but eaten without even really taking a moment to taste it. I do a lot of online window shopping at some very high-end expensive stores. I spent an hour browsing around the Container Store website, dreaming about putting all of our food into clear boxes. My right collar bone is sitting almost half an inch higher than then the left one.

Eneviatabley, someone will ask me at some point in the day ‘how am I doing?’ and I always respond with “I’m good.” Because I am a liar. Really, I lie to spare the person who asked me that dumb question in the first place. Also, I lie to myself as if mental health has no playground here. I’m still COVID free, my family is still healthy. We’re alive. We still have our jobs. ‘I’m good’ seems like a reasonable thing to tell people. At night, just before I go to sleep, my grief settles in next to me and whispers memories into my ear. They are not always good memories and many nights, I place my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut tight until my grief gives up or I succumb to exhaustion. Usually it’s the latter. The winter months are never really my better self months. Toss in a country I no longer recognize and a pandemic that’s killing about four thousand people a day and I am truly not my better self. Every venture outside of my home is stressful. I don’t think I even know how to talk to people or be around people. I’ve become feral. I’m a hormonal, feral, chocolate devouring Homo sapien and I will eat your children. Or maybe just their fingers.

Not really.

Only maybe.

I don’t write all of this so that you know what’s really going on with me. I write it all down here so that I know. It’s me taking inventory of my own mental health. It’s me telling myself to stop working so hard at making it look like I’m doing well. What many of us do not stop to consider is just how exhausting it is pretending to be okay and how that added exhaustion just makes everything harder. Writing everything here is a reminder to allow myself to feel the things I am feeling in that moment. It’s me telling myself that it’s okay to shove chocolate into my mouth like it’s the first meal I’ve eaten or sit on the bathroom rug and cry. Or just sit anywhere and cry. Because it is honest. Because I know that swing always shifts directions and eventually I swing around to a better mood.