Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
“The mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid, and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. You’ve had that feeling?”
— Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I had one of those days yesterday. A ‘Mean Reds’ day. The kind where even the good stuff feels off balance.
The kind of day that you feel in the center of your chest. Like a brick sitting there, keeping your heart from beating properly and your lungs from filling completely.
Days like that, it feels like the veil between the life I think I’m living and the one I actually have is whisper thin. Usually everything’s okay doesn’t feel like an illusion. It feels real. And then there are days when the Mean Reds hit.
I’m not talking about a tragic day here. The Mean Reds aren’t a response to tragedy. They’re usually a response to something in your life being off-balance.
You know you’re having a Mean Reds day when a thousand little things go micro-wrong and maybe a couple of things go really wrong, and suddenly the weight of everything and everyone depending on you just feels too big.
I started to write today about how to stop the Mean Reds. Or maybe how to avoid them. How to get that brick off your sternum so you can take a deep breath again.
I realized something, though, when I closed my eyes for a minute and really thought about it. The Mean Reds are hard and they suck. No one wants them.
But I think they might be necessary.