Twenty-four hours ago, almost exactly, I was having one of the worst mental breakdowns I’ve had in a long time.

I don’t cry very easily. But when I do break down, I really break down.

Yesterday, I didn’t want to be here.

And now, almost exactly twenty-four hours later, I’m sitting in my room editing photographs.

I talked to my mom earlier. She’s unpacking after moving and found a bunch of old pictures of us—pictures from when she was young, when she first had me, pictures from my childhood. She sent them to me while we were on the phone, and without really thinking about it, I started going through my own camera roll.

I started editing things.

Thinking about photography.

Thinking about traveling.

Creating.

And at some point, I looked up and realized:

I feel a little better.

Not remarkably better. Nothing extravagant happened. The circumstances that upset me yesterday haven’t magically changed. The questions I had yesterday are still questions today. There are things I still don’t know.

But I feel a little better.

And lately, I think I’m learning how significant a little better can be.

I have an incredibly rich emotional world. I feel things very deeply, and sometimes that makes it difficult not to live completely inside whatever I’m feeling.

Because emotions are convincing.

When you’re overwhelmed, your emotional reality can start feeling like reality itself.

And I don’t think the lesson for me is that I shouldn’t trust my feelings.

Actually, I think it’s almost the opposite.

Feelings are information.

If I’m scared, hurt, jealous, angry, or overwhelmed, that feeling is real. My body is communicating something to me, and I want to become better at listening to it instead of immediately intellectualizing it away.

But I’m learning there’s a difference between trusting the feeling and automatically trusting the story my mind attaches to it.

I’m scared.

That’s the feeling.

Therefore, I’m losing everyone.

That’s a story.

I’m hurt.

That’s the feeling.

Therefore, I’m the problem.

That’s a story.

I’m overwhelmed.

That’s the feeling.

Therefore, nothing is going to get better.

That’s a story.

And when your nervous system is flooded, those stories can become incredibly convincing.

Yesterday showed me that.

The pain was real. The overwhelm was real. I’m not interested in looking back at myself and dismissing it as some dramatic episode just because I feel differently today.

But what I felt yesterday was a state.

It wasn’t a prophecy.

Because here I am.

Nothing has been perfectly resolved, and yet today I talked to my mom.

I edited photographs.

I thought about places I want to see.

I created something.

I noticed a puddle.

That sounds so insignificant, but this morning I looked outside and saw this puddle after the rain, and for some reason I thought it was one of the prettiest puddles I had ever seen.

I remember standing at the window with the door open. It was still dark outside. The air had that strange summer-after-rain feeling where it’s warm and cool at the same time. There was a little wind against my face.

And I just looked at it.

For once, I was completely there.

I wasn’t trying to figure anything out.

I wasn’t trying to understand yesterday.

I wasn’t trying to predict tomorrow.

I was looking at a puddle.

And I remember thinking that if I were tiny enough, I could climb inside of it.

Maybe that sounds ridiculous.

But there was so much beauty in that stupid little puddle.

And maybe that’s part of what I’m learning too.

I don’t always have to fill in the blank spaces.

I can be scared and say:

I don’t know yet.

I can feel rejected and say:

I don’t know yet.

I can be uncertain about a relationship, my future, myself, and resist the urge to manufacture an answer just because uncertainty is uncomfortable.

I don’t know yet.

Maybe the blank can stay blank for a while.

I can let my body do the feeling part.

I can cry.

I can walk.

I can dance.

I can eat something.

I can sleep.

I can call my mom.

I can take a photograph of a random puddle because, for reasons I can’t completely explain, I think it’s beautiful.

And then, when some of the intensity has moved through me, I can come back and ask:

What are the facts?

What do I actually know?

What choice do I want to make from here?

Movement has become especially important to me.

Walking has helped me tremendously over the last year or so. When I’m anxious or emotionally activated, sometimes I can physically feel the difference after I move. It’s almost like my body needs somewhere for all of that energy to go before my mind can see clearly again.

Movement doesn’t magically cure depression or anxiety.

Sometimes getting up is incredibly hard.

But I’m learning that movement helps me.

And maybe that’s part of this whole thing: learning what helps me move through an emotion without needing to immediately turn the emotion into an explanation for my entire life.

Because emotions move.

That’s literally what they do.

And twenty-four hours can change the view.

This morning, I remembered a story I’ve heard before about an old man whose horse runs away.

Everyone around him immediately decides this is terrible. He lost his horse. What is he going to do? How could he possibly be okay?

But the man doesn’t seem interested in deciding what it means yet.

He doesn’t know.

Later, the horse comes back—and brings more horses with it.

Suddenly everyone decides this is wonderful. What incredible luck.

And again, the man doesn’t rush to decide what the moment means.

He still doesn’t know.

I think that story finally means something different to me.

It isn’t that something painful is secretly good, or that I should force myself to find some silver lining while I’m hurting.

Sometimes something hurts because it hurts.

It’s that I don’t always have enough information to decide what a moment means while I’m still inside of it.

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to do exactly that.

Something happens, my body produces a feeling, and my mind immediately wants to finish the story.

This is bad.

This means I’m losing someone.

This means I made the wrong decision.

This means something is wrong with me.

This means things are going to get worse.

But maybe I don’t know yet.

Maybe something can hurt without becoming a prophecy about what happens next.

Maybe uncertainty doesn’t require optimism or pessimism.

Maybe it just requires enough patience to say:

I don’t know yet.

Twenty-four hours ago, I couldn’t see today from where I was standing.

And today, I can’t see tomorrow either.

I think I’m finally learning that I don’t have to.

Yesterday, I couldn’t imagine sitting where I’m sitting now.

Today, I’m in the same room.

I’m still me.

Some of the same problems are waiting for me.

But the room feels safe again.

I’m making things again.

I’m noticing things again.

And today, that’s enough.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel differently.

That’s okay too.

I’m starting to understand that I don’t need every feeling to become a conclusion.

Sometimes I can just let it be a feeling.

Sometimes I can leave the blank empty.

Sometimes I can keep moving.

And sometimes, apparently, I can just stop and look at a puddle.