Much more than melancholy.

You can stop reading this post if you have not experienced any anxiety, depression, worry, or melancholy over the last several years.

If you made it through the last few years of COVID, (the fear of the disease and the infection) and you find yourself feeling better than ever- emotionally, mentally and physically, you can also stop reading this particular post.

If you have been completely unaffected by the insanely crazy antics by politicians, government officials, and citizens choosing to be violent in the "name of freedom", you also will be uninterested in this post.

You can stop reading this post if you were not deeply and humbly sorrowful over the incredible racial injustice that we have seen globally over the last few years, and over the centuries.

Finally, if you feel that women currently have equal rights to men in the US, and you feel that women are paid equally and treated fairly, I recommend you don't read this post.

A funny thing has happened over the last several weeks. I've felt a shift. A negative shift in the collective culture and the energy I pick up when I'm around fellow humans (friends, family, and strangers). I'm not a medium, psychic healer or shaman, but I believe that empaths pick up on energy, feelings, and non-verbal cues in a way that non-empaths might not. You know that feeling? You walk into a room, and there is a collective heaviness in the air. The kind of environment where you feel uneasy, unwelcome, and uncomfortable. Yep, that is what I have felt.

Whether I'm meeting a good friend for lunch, or going to the grocery store, or having a video call with my breast cancer tribe, or at the gym, or yoga studio, or at a restaurant, I feel a heaviness in the air that I cannot explain. The decision to write about this feeling has been gnawing at me for weeks. I kept wondering if it was just me. Then, I kept wondering if it was just a small group of my vulnerable and honest friends. But then it kept happening. I was noticing the feelings of melancholy almost everywhere I went. What solidified my decision to write was having dinner with one of my best friends. She further confirmed that my uneasiness and suspicion about the mental state of our global community is declining. She shared her thoughts on how cognitively our world has drastically changed over the last century. For thousands of years, we only had to worry about a small regional community. Now, we have access to global news on an overwhelming scale. To an empath, or even someone who doesn't consider themselves an empath, this furry of non-stop news that includes catastrophic storms, government fraud and corruption, gruesome war, and unprecedented gun violence, and on and on and on, is beyond overwhelming. We know that there are real global threats, and we have no idea how to fix them.

But this is so much more than melancholy. It's anxiety, worry, fear, exhaustion, frustration, and in some cases, mild/chronic/severe depression, ALL rolled into one. Just like my friend pointing out that our brains cannot process the global world we now live in, I would also like to point out that this world moves at a pace that our brains have also not adapted and evolved to handle. I've had numerous conversations with friends about the "hustle." We are EXHAUSTED from the hustle- the work hustle, family hustle, keeping up with the Joneses hustle. Exhausted simply isn't a strong enough word for how most of us are feeling right now.

I guess the bottom line is that I feel like I'm waiving the white flag for all of us. We all might just be a little bit more than melancholy, if we are honest with ourselves.

Again, I'm not sure if I have any answers, but I can assure you that you are not alone if you feel depleted, tired and anxious.

We are in this together. Let's stop acting like everything is okay and be more open and honest about how we are really doing, so we can hold each other up and provide support.