What is it like to be you right now?

Why I will no longer respond to "How are you?"

First off, I just wanna show some appreciation for y’all out there, the tens of you who actually open and read this lil ditty every week. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote something NOT about food. NOT about social media. I wrote something personal. And boy, did it get a lot of reactions. Good reactions. Positive reactions. Empathy. So thank you for that.

It’s made me feel empowered to share maybe a bit more of my vulnerability, of what it’s like to be me right now, as I continue this very personal journey through grief and loss.

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I had to stop it and make this note. I wish I could remember what podcast it was so I could give them proper credit, but ya girl listens to A LOT of podcasts, so I fear it is lost to time.

Photo by Anh Tuan Thomas on Unsplash

But the gist was this: instead of asking people “how are you?” what if we asked “what’s it like to be you right now?”

I’ve been asked “how are you” about a hundred million times in the last 7 months. Sometimes it’s a passing phrase (I have a neighbour who asks it so automatically I no longer answer with anything more than a wave) that means nothing more than “hi.” Sometimes it comes from a stranger, and I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to trauma dump on them, so I smile and say “great weather we’re having!” or some other such polite nicety.

With my friends, I often ignore the question entirely or I ask if they want the societally accepted answer or the real truth. Because I don’t know that I have ever, once, in the past 7 months, felt like the real, true answer to that question was “Good. I’m doing good.”

Are there hints of good? Shades of goodness? Does happiness dapple my life like sunshine through the trees? Yes. Of course. But I’m also sad. A lot. And generally speaking, when people ask you that question, they aren’t expecting your answer to be “I’m really sad because I’ve had immeasurable loss in my life this past year.”

I would argue that “How are you” has become problematic since the pandemic. Maybe since Bowie died, even, which appears to be the precipitating event that started this whole dumpster fire. Nothing feels binary any more. Nothing feels fully “good” or “bad” (okay, safe to say 99.99% of what’s going on right now in the US is bad) these days.

Was the pandemic bad? Sure. People died. Bad. But there were also some good things that came out of it; connections with family, a return to a slower kind of life.

We can all generally agree that losing a loved one is bad. But there are good parts, too. I’m grateful that my dad isn’t suffering any more. I’m grateful he has peace, now.

It’s all so complicated, this thing called life.

So, what’s it like to be you right now?