How to Feel Joy a Week Before This Election
On the simple thing that made me feel *overjoyed.*
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When was the last time that you felt joy? When was the last time that you felt overjoyed? For me, it was last night when I wrote the below essay, and it came from a very, very unexpected source—and one I think we can both learn from. But let me start at the beginning…
I can’t tell you when was the last time I laughed, to be honest, so remembering when I last felt joy? I don’t think so.
That’s not to say that I don’t laugh. Sure, I laugh. I laugh during fun conversations with my 4-year-old, I laugh when I hear my husband’s sexy giggle that still makes my heart flutter every single time, and I laugh if I watch something funny or hear something funny or joke around with friends over text.
But overall, my experience in this world isn’t one with tons of laughter and happiness. That’s not to say I’m not happy sometimes, because I am. It’s just that the world is difficult these days.
As someone who immigrated to America at just eight years old, I embodied the successful model minority image. Despite knowing about the world’s ills before 2016, I was mostly a very hopeful and optimistic person. I’m not anymore.
And after having a miscarriage, giving birth in March 2020 as the entire world came to a stop due to the COVID-19 pandemic, getting diagnosed with ADHD at age 35, and losing a dream job due to the ongoing death of the media industry, and suffering up-and-down burnout for the past four and a half years… Well, I am just no longer the person I was—that hopeful immigrant and American citizen since age 16 thank you very much—before the elections of 2016 and 2020.
(I’m sorry, y’all, I didn’t realize when I started writing that this essay would turn to politics. I didn’t really want to go here in what is ultimately a happy piece but, well, I guess I’ll see where this creative juice gets me.)
I have a good life, and I like my life. But fuck, the world is hard. Life is hard.
Life is both mind-numbingly boring and oh-please-unalive-me-because-its-so-monotonous and just fucking hard and always hard and constantly hard and never-eases-up hard. Like, fuck, why can’t the cycle of “life is hard” just stop repeating?
Simultaneously, it is a whirlwind of chaos, a tornado of words and memories and thoughts and distractions and anxieties and, yes, even dreams and tiny moments that make this fucking hard life in a hard world actually worth living.
And it’s all just so neverending.
Aren’t you just exhausted? I know I am.
But guess what? Right now, I don’t feel exhausted. Right now, I don’t feel bummed about the warming state of the planet or angry about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or wondering for the millionth time what the fuck I can possibly do to prevent the re-election of the orange dumpster fire of a failed 45th president of the most powerful country on the planet.
Instead, right now, I feel elated.
I feel joy. I feel tenderness. I feel excited. I feel wonder. I feel amazement. I feel… oh so many things that are all just combining into a perfect storm that makes my heart feel as if it is literally about to burst out of my chest in a wondrously consuming feeling that I can only call OVERJOYED.
I. AM. OVERJOYED.
I honestly can’t remember the last time that I felt this oh so fucking good. I mean, I’m sure I’ve felt this way at least a few times in the past 9 years since you know who shouted about Mexicans being rapists as he announced his bid for president. But whatever, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I feel overjoyed right now.
I feel so overjoyed right now—in this moment—that it’s like I want to jump out of my skin, go jump around on some rooftops, and end up dancing the night away under the Milky Way.
And the best part? I am overjoyed over an incredibly simple, very tiny thing. That exact kind of tiny thing that will sometimes just strike you straight in the heart and remind you why in all actuality being a conscious being in the grand vastness of this country, this world, this planet, this solar system, this galaxy, this universe, this mysterious mystery beyond the beyond of what we can ever hope to know as the tiniest of tiny specks in this unfathomable reality is… honestly kind of the only true miracle we’ll ever know. Our mere existence, as they say, is the miracle.
I am overjoyed because tonight, after a very long day at work, a hair appointment, running 2.5 hours of errands, and spending the better part of my evening sitting on my living room floor while I sorted clean laundry into the new closet organizers I’m stupidly horny for, I watched the sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies, Enchanted.
That’s right, I just watched Disenchanted on Disney+ for the first time, and I have experienced the most incredible feelings during the movie and now afterward.
I am freaking overjoyed, my friends. OVER-FUCKING-JOYED.
Okay, I know, I’m not actually just here to brag about these amazing feelings I’m having. I have a point, I promise.
The reason I am telling you about my feeling overjoyed is because I realized something after the movie finished: I waited 23 months to watch a sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies because, what?, I thought I didn’t have the time? Couldn’t make the time? I pretended like I didn’t even care about the movie much anymore, so nobody in my life who knows how much I fucking love Enchanted wonders why I didn’t watch Disenchanted the minute it was released. And asks me about it. And I have to tell them the truth.
The truth about being constantly exhausted, constantly worried, constantly wondering what’s next, constantly wondering why now, constantly just constantly and endlessly throwing wooden log after wooden log onto the raging fire that is my ADHD brain. Who wants to hear about all that stress all the time? Fuck, even I don’t, and this is literally me.
I just let myself be too busy to even think about whether I might be able to find a sliver of time in my schedule to watch this sequel that I should have known I’d love, and then I promptly forgot that it even existed. At least part of this is because although I used to be our household’s primary Disney watcher, that honorable title has now fallen to my 4-year-old, so the recommendations I get when I do pop onto my account are, well, not really very adult-Disney-fan-friendly.
But somehow I stumbled upon it during my rare childfree visit to Disney+, and tonight—with my butt on the floor, laundry to my side, and closet organizers to my front—I clicked play on Disenchanted.
Watching this cleverly-written, laugh-out-loud movie made me squeal over the myriad of inside-baseball-Disney-Princess-movie-references dropped throughout. It was just goddamn delightful to someone like me who appreciates the nostalgia and loves how that’s used to advance a new kind of story.
It was delightful, clever, funny, sweet, hilarious, hysterical, inspiring, creative, and just every other lovely word I can think of when I find myself struck by the arrow of New Hyperfixation Cupid.
Get what I’m saying here?
I finally did something that I should have done one year and 11 months ago: I made time for and finally watched the sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time. And I loved it so much that I allowed the movie to envelop me in its warm glow.
Falling in love with Disenchanted as I watched it made me feel this incredibly overjoyed feeling, a feeling that feels so much more magical and special because it came from the tiniest simple thing. It came from a movie. Nothing huge or expensive or amazeballs. Just a movie. Just a fun, clever, lovely movie that made me laugh and cry, and feel everything in between.
As much as I know that tomorrow morning I’ll wake up, and this feeling will have faded, and I’ll have remembered that in a week the people of the country that I call home will decide whether we hand over the nuclear missile codes to an over-qualified woman or a walking Off-Brand Cheeto that will set off a nuclear winter the minute that some rando on the internet whispers that Putin talked shit about him. As much as all of that is true, the feelings I feel right now are true, too.
For much of this year, the phrase “two things can be true at once” creeps into my mind on a loop. It comes up all the time, in all kinds of different places, in all kinds of different conversations, with all kinds of different people, about all kinds of different topics… it’s just there, reminding me of itself, over and over and over again.
Okay, I get it! Two things can be true at once.
Say it with me: Two things can be true at once. Two things can be true at once. Two things can be true at once. (DEEP BREATH)
Right now, my truth is that everything feels so impossibly hard so much of the time, and also that it took courage for me to allow myself to find the time and space for this kind of joy. I honestly didn’t know I was that brave.
And so, once again, two things can be true at once.
So remember that today, and tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and in your very next breath. Two things can be true at once. And yes, one of those true things might be that the next four years will be a living nightmare that I’m not sure any of us will survive. And also that you’ll hate every minute of it, but you’ll make it through.
(Fuck, y’all, I really did not know my brain was going to go into this election anxiety space but tonight was an exercise in just going with that oh-so-magical writerly flow where your hands just can’t stop typing. And this is what came out.)
And in the meantime, here’s my advice for feeling joy today, a week before the election: Go watch a movie or two or 17 until you feel elated. Just, like, go do a thing you know you’ll love but that you always tell yourself you don’t have time for. Seriously. GO DO IT! You deserve to feel overjoyed, too.
And remember: You can feel both election anxiety and some sort of joy today.
Before I end this essay, there’s one more thing I need to add to the list of things bringing me joy today—and I am writing this the day after I saw thte movie as I edit this piece before sending it out into the world:
The Disenchanted writers totally redeemed themselves after previously wasting the talent of one Ms. Idina Menzel—aka the original Elphaba from Wicked the Broadway hit that is making its motion picture debut next month—by not giving her a single song in the original movie. But everyone came to their senses in Disenchanted… and yes, it was so, so good.
Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.
YouTube! I meant YouTube.
And yes, Disenchanted was absolutely a worthy follow-up to the soul-affirming splendor of Enchanted.
Also… Remember to go watch that movie! Seriously. Go. Go now!
What’s something small, simple, tiny, or seemingly insignificant that made you smile, laugh, or bring you joy lately? Or what’s something you can commit to doing in hopes of feeling joy this week? I’d love to hear from all of you!
Abrazos,
Your friendly neighborhood bisexual Latina mom with ADHD and a neurodivergent kid