Hello! My chosen name is Kris. I am a early 40s, cisgender, college educated, able bodied, white female. I’m not always great in person, sometimes waxing overly positive or waning too quiet. My brother and sister rescue pair of black cats and I are located in the Mid-Atlantic, USA. I am a late diagnosed, multiply neurodivergent person. I would like to normalize the imperfect lives we all lead so we can lift each other up.
These flash fiction pieces will explore the life and mind of Lissa, an art therapist in her mid forties, single and childfree, except her dog Bert. Life never seems to tire of pitching Lissa changeups and she’s doing her best to keep her head above water.
Caveat: this post was written nearly 3 years ago, on June 2nd of 2022, and has lived in my drafts folder ever since. Some of the life described below has changed, some still feels unchangingly current. No edits have occurred other than the addition of this small aside, added on May 5th of 2025.
I am tired. I’m tired of feeling absolutely crushed by world events, the political nightmare that is my country (hell, the world), and seeing the effects of climate change. I am tired of jumping and going into fight/flight/freeze multiple times a day in my own home. I don’t know the last time more than a day went by where I didn’t feel absolutely steamrolled by the thought of the future. I’m just so fucking sad and exhausted.
I accept that happiness isn’t someplace we get to live. It’s an emotion, just like sadness and anger are, so are joy and happiness. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep. Other times, I eat until I am uncomfortable because that is a discomfort that I can control (unlike the daily rides on the sadness and rage rollercoaster). Then, I feel crushing guilt because there are so many people struggling to have enough to eat and here I am just fucking eating so that I feel something that I have control over. Happiness is a rare beast in my life these days.
I’m sharing this because 1) I am not ashamed and 2) I hope that if you see a warped reflection of your own feelings here, you can know that you are not alone. Also, feeling these things does not make you abnormal or weird or anything along those lines. You are a human, and you are doing your best. This is part of being human, not all the time and it isn’t everyone’s experience.
Attempting to live up to societal standards while recognizing them as lies meant to keep us in line and sell us crap we don’t need for a life that doesn’t really fit our innermost, true selves can feel annihilating. It fucking hurts. On top of that, there are all of the great problems in the world that we are faced with, whether directly or indirectly on a daily basis. Violence, inequity, increasingly extreme weather. Is this how we are supposed to spend our lives? Being bland consumer robots doing things that do not fulfill us because it’s our job or it’s what we’re supposed to do? It can’t be. It just cannot be. Each of us is meant for more. That is my peace of hope. This cannot be all that there is.
If any of what I’ve said resonated with you, you might be wondering, “What now?” Honestly, I’m not one hundred percent sure. Finding help, a support person or group, and/or finding something that feels right in your heart or gut, that does no harm to you or anyone else, and running with it could be options. We are human and imperfection is part of our humanity. Empathy for each other and our selves because of our imperfections is also part of our humanity.
Personally, I’ve started therapy and believe that is as good a place as any to start. (There are options out there that may make therapy surprisingly affordable. I know it’s hard, but try to be brave and ask. There is no harm there.) Medication might be in my future. I’ve started running again. I keep circling back to meditation but struggle with a daily practice. I write most days (maybe I’ll share some in the future). I am trying to reincorporate things that make me feel better or help me relax. Specifically things that aren’t eating and streaming endless entertainment through screens.
I don’t know that any of that is the solution, but I am in a space where I am willing to do the work and hang on to the hope that there has to be more to life than this. I encourage you to look for what works for you in any moment that you have the energy to do so. This could mean turning to a trusted person and asking them for help. If you have no energy to find a therapist, maybe they can help you find one. Or simply be there for you and let you know you are not alone. Because you are not alone.
If you’ve read this and are thinking, “Lady, I don’t get what you’re saying. I am a little concerned though…” No need to worry. I am fine– in the sense that I am at no risk of hurting myself or anyone else. Even if this doesn’t ring true for you at this precise moment in time, there’s a chance some of it might ring true for you at some point down the road. If that happens, I want you to know, you are not alone and help is available.
Have hope.
I’m sitting outside. It’s 52 degrees in the sun but I’m sitting under a patio umbrella because the sun’s a bitch to my skin and I had a choice: get out of the house right this very second or put on sunscreen and possibly implode from rage. So here I am, shivering in the shade to avoid doing anything I might regret. “Why?” you might ask. Why am I sitting outside, bracing for each chilling blow of the wind, when I could be inside where it is a temperature controlled 68 degrees and there is no wind? Because, frankly, if I clenched my teeth any harder I would have a dental emergency to attend to in addition to everything else.
This may beg the question again, “Why?” The usual list, I suppose. Some of what is driving me to this state I am able to name with pinpoint accuracy. For instance, a cat (darling though he is) that NEEDS to be physically on me 24/7, and not in a chill way, but constantly moving, pushing, demanding never-ending pets and attention. While it is nice to feel wanted and needed, can’t a woman have 5 minutes without a cat pushing her coffee cup over? Or there’s the bf who is forever and always both dissatisfied and angry at his job. Or there’s the sheer insanity of how much work it is to get photos backed up from an iPhone to an external hard drive. That shit used to be (relatively) easy. Now it’s a battle of what technology is going to fail and at what point. The list continues and nothing on it is inherently life threatening, I’ll survive. I might develop hypertension along the way though (and that can be life threatening, hmmm). You might have your own list, the little things that overtime are rubbing your patience for them… raw.
Anyhow! Then there’s the shit I struggle to pinpoint. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar? It feels like a general malaise and discomfort, leaving me certain in the knowledge that I am off my fucking path. Also, I have no idea how far I am from it. Or in what direction it might lay. I am lost and surrounded by a dense forest, largely made up of the needs and demands of others. So much so that I feel like I cannot peacefully carve out time to even try to find my path, or that I would be allowed to follow it should I be so lucky as to trip over the damn thing.
Yes, I hear you. This is a privileged situation in which I find myself, and one you may also find yourself in. My basic needs are mostly handled, at least as defined by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I’m not going hungry, there’s a roof over my head (normally, right now there’s an umbrella), etc. Now, I’m searching to meet those psychological and self-fulfillment needs that Maslow also pointed to. Here’s the thing, while there is a massive black hole of inequity in our world, and there are people struggling to meet their basic needs, that hole does not mean that once your own basic needs are met that you won’t notice other gaping black holes that feel like they threaten your very existence. Like at some point, one of them is going to collapse in on itself like the dying star that it is. It’s not like my existence is even very important. I mean, it is to me but that’s because if I were to cease to exist I’d be dead (duh). I believe we are all meant to do more than survive. Maybe our paths, the ones that you and I are looking for, will solve problems that are standing in the way of everyone getting to meet their basic needs. But I think it is important to acknowledge this: knowing that you’re not on your path, your purpose, can feel crazy-making.
A common, if witty, “definition” for insanity* goes something like this, “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” My question is, what is it called when you feel trapped, you keep trying to make changes, but in the end you wind up living the same day, over and over again? Is this what leads to insanity? Is it where part of you gives up and you stop making changes, but the hope hasn’t died so you keep hoping that something will change?
Here’s hoping (ha) that neither part dies. That the sheer existence of that hope, hope that something will change, will allow us the ability to keep trying. To keep changing, searching, growing. I know the path is out there. I know it in my core. My shivering, chilled, aching teeth core. And I know yours is to. It has to be. Right?
*This is not commentary on individuals battling medically defined insanity, rather a commentary on the general sensation of being out of control associated with recognizing that your true self and the self you find yourself living as, presenting as, being wholly out of alignment.
Trial and Error Plus Hope 