Month: February 2021

Going Higher

/ Missy Goodnight / Leave a comment

“When they go low, we go high.” Damn you, Michelle Obama! Yeah, I know, I know, take the high road. But taking the high road is sometimes hard. I do know that it’s better to ignore the people and things that want to bring you down. I know that it’s best to “walk away from trouble,” as Kenny Rogers says, when you can. But come on every time?! Can’t I get into a little trouble?

In all seriousness I’ve been struggling lately. I’ve been struggling to turn my brain off and to keep my mouth shut. I’ve been lying awake at night thinking about all the things I’d like to say to some people. Mean, rude, hypocritical people. Sometimes it’s Texas senator Ted Cruz, sometimes it’s the bully from 6th grade..

When I can’t sleep I just rehearse over and over again in my head. I find their email address or their home address. I write an imaginary letter to them in my brain. A letter I convince myself I’ll actually send. A letter telling them exactly what kind of person they seem like. How they’ve hurt me. How far I’ve come regardless. In spite of. Maybe I’ll make a personal dig at them just for fun. But then at some point I’ll hear Michelle Obama’s voice. She says, “Missy,” she calls me Missy. “Missy,” she says, “when they go low, we go high.”

Damn you, Michelle.

I’ve written, deleted, and written this paragraph about three times. Each time I started to explain a situation, a particular person who is making me upset now, go into detail about what I want to say to them, but I keep deleting it because Michelle Obama says I should. So I do. It’s healthier. It’s better. It used to be that I took great pride in my ability to use my words to make people feel incredibly small, when it required it. But now I’d rather use my words to elicit change, to bring people together, to remind people that we should want the best for each other, even those who may not like us.

We do have to keep doing this, y’all, going higher. I know it doesn’t always feel right, but it’s important. If we stop going higher, who will? If we stop being the bigger person, the kinder person, it won’t suddenly make them better people. It will just make us like them. We will be the people we don’t like and it will make us feel crappy. It hurts our heart and it’s counterintuitive to forgiveness. So we press on, going higher and higher, keeping our mouths closed but our hearts open.

M.

Rest

/ Missy Goodnight / Leave a comment

“Rest is a requirement, not a reward.” I read that sentence the other day on some random, encouraging Instagram account I follow and I realized that this is what I’ve been trying to convince myself of for several weeks now, but it’s actually a really hard thing to do. To convince yourself that you need to rest. That it isn’t you shutting down or not dealing with things, it’s actually a requirement for life. Why is it so tough? Especially for women. Probably because we tell ourselves if we are resting then we aren’t productive. And if we aren’t productive who will get all the things we’ve convinced ourselves that needs to get done, done?

I haven’t been sleeping. At first I thought it was because, you know, life, but when I mentioned this aggressive non-sleeping that’d I’d been having to my Rheumatologist she said, “Oh, it’s the medication.” Turns out some of my medication can cause this to happen. It’s considered an “adverse side effect,” as it’s not terribly common, but can happen to some patients. So she promptly took me off of it, and said it might take a couple of weeks to get back to normal. I felt immediate relief.

I don’t mean I started sleeping better, rather I felt relieved to know there was a reason. I found it easier to give myself a bit of grace when I felt sleepy in the afternoons and went to lay my head on the pillow because it wasn’t “my fault.”

Last week I was struggling with the idea that when I did this, when I relaxed, even if it was just to curl up on the couch with a book (a book I was assigned to read for school) I still felt like I was just being “lazy.” That’s what I told my therapist Patsy it felt like, laziness. But the truth is, it’s not laziness. I just have to work on shifting my mindset.

I don’t need a reason to not sleep, so why should I have a reason to sleep? To rest? To read a book? Why should I make myself fill bad for giving my body and mind something they need when it’s been working overtime lately. Between a global pandemic, an MFA program, a pre-teen, two rambunctious dogs, a partner, a house, a newly-diagnosed autoimmune disease, a shocking family realization, more grief to top it all off, and the pressures of you know, everydayfuckinglife, I can cut myself some slack sometimes. And you can too.

My friend dropped a book off to me the other day that one of her friends wrote. I haven’t dug into yet, mainly on account of all the required reading I’m doing, but I have skimmed it. It’s full of beautiful poetry, but more importantly it’s full of encouragement. Encouragement to give yourself permission to do the things that you need to do in order to keep going. And it sort of sings to me.

So go easy on yourself today, y’all. Let your mind and your body tell you what you need and listen, damn it. No hard feelings toward yourself.

I hope you have a lovely, love-filled weekend.

❤️

M.

This is Us

/ Missy Goodnight / Leave a comment

I’ve been gone, I’m sorry. Or maybe I should say, I’ve been gone, you’re welcome. Depends on who you ask, but the fact of the matter is that I have been gone. But not gone, here, all along. I’m contradictory today which is normal, but also abnormal. You see what I mean? I have been so very busy with the first few weeks of the semester starting up again and really everyday I wake up and I think this is the day that everything will normalize. I mean, Kamala Harris is our Vice President and we have two democratic senators in Georgia and the vaccine is slowly, but surely making it’s rounds, yet here I am, still stuck. Still with all this, what? Baggage? Anger? Sadness? Bleh.

I woke up this morning to the news that AOC shared her Capital story and I watched it on Instagram and I was even more sad, and scared, and angry. Have you watched it yet? If not you should. You should watch the 88-minute video of her telling what happened, don’t just read the headlines. You can skip large parts of her telling people hello and what not, but watch a good 45-minute chunk in the middle and at the end. It’s sad and scary and real. It is really us. It is really America. And it isn’t good.

I don’t really care how you feel about AOC. I’m a big fan of hers and appreciate her and hope that she continues in politics on a more national level, but even if you think she is smug, or too progressive, or too (insert reason to hate a woman) you probably will still find something in her story, in her life, that you can relate to and hopefully that will help make you see that we are all connected. That we all have stuff. That we are all bruised and broken and come from the same places inside.

I don’t really have too much more to say on it, actually. We are a mess. We are in need of someone to help us, to listen to us, to show us that we are not alone, to push us to do more and better things. And to love us. That is what we need.

It’s what the people who stormed the Capital need too. During and after their prison time. Because we also need to be held accountable for our actions. Without accountability we will not grow. Without accountability, love, support, and connectedness we will stay those sad, bruised, angry people.

Stay safe and sane, y’all.

M.

PS… That bitch Marjorie Taylor Greene needs to go. With love, from Georgia.