Cancel the noise

Have you found yourself on edge lately, as the news plays in the background while you juggle your health issues, responsibilities, and everyday anxiety? It's not just you. IT'S LOUD OUT THERE.

Getting away from my stress triggers feels like playing a game of PAC-MAN. Turn right, threats of violence on TV, turn left, nerve pain, and post-op rash. COVID-19 vaccines have been approved and released, but we are nowhere near where we should be as far as actual immunizations. Even my house is feeling the stress. Within 2 weeks, my irrigation pump went out, my fireplace clogged up, and nearly poisoned us all, and my tile floors started popping up at 4 am (sounded like gunshots). Now I have to walk across the hallway like it's quicksand. Sometimes the best way to cope is just to laugh. There are so many things in this world too scary to laugh at... so I laugh about how my house has decided to fall apart and how my leg battery chooses when it wants to charge and when it wants to beep loudly 8 times like a bomb is about to go off before it dies.

The world won't do you a solid and walk up behind you to place a pair of noise-blocking Beats headphones over your ears. It's up to us to find out how to cancel the noise. I've been working on allowing myself to do whatever feels right at the moment without any guilt. A reality show Netflix binge? Sign me up. Reading a book about literally anything other than what I am dealing with makes my imagination run wild with distraction. Pulling the plentiful weeds out of my backyard is what I call productive lately and if anything it's at least satisfying. As mundane as these activities may seem, they are mood busters and helpful tools when it comes to my mental health.

Most of last year and the start of this year had no script. No one was prepared for the challenges and tragedy of it all. Cancer and disability are much like that. We're learning how to make things better as we go, step by step. Scientists working to end this pandemic have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and yet they find ways to tune out the chaos and focus on what they know and what they can learn to control, helping them adapt to the unknown.

Creating silence when there is none is the skeleton key that opens doors to places we never thought we could reach.

I hope this helps remind you that you are not alone in this loud place and that you too have the power to cancel the noise.