On absolutely amazing days like this, when the air moving around you feels like the wind’s caress, the pockets of sun and shade dance across the ground as the leaves move, your very skin feeling lighter and less oppressive.  On a day such as this, which you can’t even imagine in the dark dank days of winter – how can the horrors of the world coexist? 

Thoughts of war, cancer, needless violence, anorexia and body dysmorphia, seizures and convulsions, burns and heartache, loneliness, listlessness. . . how can all these exist on a day such as this? 

When some unnameable something grips your head and heart, a firm and gradual tightening of the vice.  When everything around you says, be well, enjoy – and your brain clamps down. 

It must be for times such as these that the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique was created. 

But I’m not in acute stress.  And when I’m done counting and grounding, the things that wound me up will still be there. 

I am living my low-level constant state of anxiety that seems to be this season of life – with friends more like family and family who need support and kids who need parents no matter what age they are.  With health scares and inconsistent schedules and interrupted sleep. 

On a day such as this, I need to sit right down in the center of it and soak it in.  If only I could exist there.