How are you today?

No, really. Take a minute to answer that question honestly. It’s easy to knock back a quick response of “oh, I’m fine, how are you?” It’s almost a reflex in our daily lives. People ask us how we are and we don’t even stop to think about a true answer to the question in front of us.

I could say I’m fine. I might admit that there are good days and bad days but that’s probably as much as you’ll get from me. Maybe, if you really pushed me, I’d admit that I’m scared. That I’m stressed and struggling to focus and filled with an almost constant sense of existential dread.

Might cut the conversation a little short.

Things around the world are starting to shift. Doors are tentatively opening, for better or for worse, and people are peeking a glance at the crumbling ashes of the world’s economy. Sure, I’m stressed about the economy—sort of. I don’t understand the economy enough to be entirely clear on what I’m stressed about. But I know it’s Really Quite Bad.

Yet, as the paths out of our homes begin to be paved by frantic politicians and some semblance of a future begins, it’s not the economy directly that I worry about. The United Nations is already warning of a global mental health crisis, another health crisis that we, as a global society, are wildly unprepared to tackle.

At the end of last year, when pandemic was not a regular word in our daily vocabularies, Business Insider reported that millennials mental health going in 2020 was looking disastrous. This is not a new discussion—that younger generations are suffering higher levels of stress and burnout than previous generations at their age is widespread knowledge by this point. But rather than boost services to support more people throughout the community, mental health services from the U.K. to Canada have consistently borne the brunt of funding cuts.

Generations already worried about securing permanent, career-building jobs or being able to afford to, maybe, one day, buy a house are now walking into a world in scraps. I feel for this summer’s round of graduates. Many of us already well out of university are finding ourselves right back in the same position.

A recent article by the New York Times points to research that young people starting careers in the midst of “an economic crisis are at a lasting disadvantage. Their wages, opportunities and confidence in the workplace may never fully recover.” And we’ve never seen an economic crash like this in our lifetime. An entire generation of workers who, even in years to come that may bring economic upswing, may never have security in their jobs in the way that we, as a society, have understood in the past.

That’s before you even think about the emotional impact of the past months themselves. The affects of this extended period of isolation or lockdown won’t disappear with the joy of sitting down with your friends again. In six months, stay at home orders could seem like a distant memory—yet, the emotional trauma of such a high-stress, anxiety-inducing period in our collective lives could last years into the future, whether we’re aware of it or not.

For frontline workers, particularly those in healthcare, it’s been suggested that the trauma of this pandemic could be something akin to that experienced by war veterans returning home. As with previous world wars, many of those battling at the epicentre of the crisis are young, some hustled right out of their final months of training straight into teeming hospital wards.

We are the generations of the future, the ones who will build the world of tomorrow. I have a lot of faith in us, a lot of faith that having watched old men bumble around with no concern for anyone but themselves for long enough, we will do better. But I’m scared for us. I’m scared for how we shoulder the burden of this world, of the multitude of problems that have not gone away while the world is sick, be it climate change or war zones or treatment of refugees and immigrants. I’m scared for how we bear that burden as we simultaneously struggle with our own mental wellbeing.

How am I today?

Moments of peace, amidst a sense of chaos.

Today, honestly, I’m alright. Last week, I really wasn’t (demonstrated in itself by the fact that I’m writing this four days after it should have been posted). Last week, I spent an entire day shrouded in a cloud of complete despair. My roommate knocked on my door mid-afternoon to ask how I was feeling.

I looked up from where I’d been curled in a ball on my bed watching Schitt’s Creek for approximately three hours. “I’ve just realised I’m turning 26 in two weeks and I have no job, no partner, no stable living situation, barely any savings, and no prospects to fix any of those things.”

She hesitated. “I’ll make you some tea,” she suggested.

(I feel a little bit less alright now that I’ve remembered all of that).

Right now, keeping going has to be enough. Right now, if I manage to get through my morning workout, scribble down a hundred words or so on my novel and cook myself a meal, I feel like I’ve succeeded. I am, in respect to a lot of people, in a good position right now. I am physically very healthy. I’m financially supported, at least for the time being. None of that invalidates how I feel, though, and I think the first step I have to take is in accepting that.

I am anxious. I am sad, a lot of the time. And that’s okay to admit.

I hope that however you’re feeling, today, tomorrow, or the day after, that you remember there is always someone out there who knows how you feel. Remember that there will be a future.

It's Okay to Not Be Okay