it could be now.

I spoke to my therapist this weekend, for the first time in weeks.

We’ve ebbed and flowed, she and I, sometimes going months without meeting (whether in person or over the phone), sometimes twice in a week.

It’s been ten years. May 2010, desperately searching Psychology Today for someone who could help me,

support me,

hear me,

see me.

May 2010, before millennial was a term and before therapy was trendy. 22 years old and unravelling quickly.

Now, nearly May 2020 and I’m quite certain I’d be dead without her. At the very least, not alive. If that makes sense to you, perhaps we have some things in common.

We talked Saturday morning, over the phone, as we have for weeks and months and years, between Massachusetts and Colorado (and Australia, and Vietnam, and Thailand). No insurance has covered her for at least four years and so money pours from my pockets — but no better thing to spend it on, I always say. I will gladly give her my money.

Coronavirus is of course the topic d’jour which is really just an extension of our myriad other conversations of late: home, belonging, place, connection. Suddenly those things feel magnified 1000x in our world, being forced to stay in our homes, put so much on hold, live in-between. We were not ready for this.

Adriene Mishler wrote a love letter on Sunday, live streamed on her YouTube channel, a line catching my eye:

As I wrote last week, if there was ever a time to re-energize, re-connect with your willingness to sit with yourself, care for yourself  -  it could be now.

My therapist, in her soft spoken way, said:

If there was ever a time to stay in place and exercise everything you’ve learned over the past ten years, it could be now.

It could be now. It could be now.

Perhaps.

2010 saw blogging and new connection and an ease that comes with less social media.

2020 could see that, too.

A full circle.

A reset.

A distillation of values,

priorities,

desires,

needs.

At home, and beyond.

My dear friend Carmella wrote:

All of this time to revisit and reflect on my past self makes me want to document all of the moments again.

Going back. Bringing back. Unearthing here,

now,

again.

It could be now.