Self-Affirmation
Taylor Dann
“Hey, I love you,”
Statements made into the mirror. The calm cold reflection glinting off the silver surface as you utter those words. Self-affirmation, or maybe just practice, or maybe trying to feel that connection – any connection – with somebody, even if it's only a pale shadow of you. You looking back at you, disheveled, because who needs morning ablutions when you're not going anywhere anyway.
I know what it's like to spend time alone. I never knew how to spend alone time.
“Relax.”
That's the advice I get most often, or maybe, “Just let it go.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“It's ok to feel alone.”
We all know that, but it is easier said…
That kind of thinking is not in my nature. Loneliness, anxiety, self-doubt…that just sounds like every other morning, but without the distraction of direction or work to keep me from spiraling down a self-preservation sink-hole of stress and feelings of inadequacy or aimlessness. Rather than sitting at a desk alone in the office, we are sitting at home doing the same thing. You would think a couch would be more comfortable. There are some comforts you did not expect to miss. Like car rides to work. You might be alone, but you are surrounded by others zooming by. Your own bodily lack of movement is its own tension.
Well, I guess it's Tuesday. So I made it past Monday and one-hundred and forty-five other days of house-boundness. Just X days to go—an unknown variable. Nothing like a light at the end of the tunnel to keep the anxiety away. Was it this bad before everything stopped?
You tell yourself, No, but know it may well have been. Were you less tense? Less anxious? Or were there simply more distractions. TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. All these friends but still isolated, even before isolation. When you measure your life by whether you have accomplished enough to garner the respect of others, measuring your worth against history and expectation, life can be a treadmill of inadequacy. Lines continuously drawn further out in the sand to exceed others, to become excellence.
In the absence of those external pressures, without outlets, without movement, sometimes it’s all you can do just to look in the mirror and practice some self-affirmation.
“Hey, I love you.”
Taylor Dann is an attorney practicing law in Santa Barbara, California. He has always had an interest in creative writing and wants to further the idea that writing is for anyone and everyone, and is a great form of expression. @TayDann