The first step is to determine whether you even want a grip. This is important. Don’t skip over this step.
If you decide you do, In Fact, want a grip, proceed as follows.
Any time you hear something that resonates, that is encouraging, or Feels True, write it on a post it note and post it to the wall in front of the desk or next to the bathroom mirror.
When you are by yourself in the apartment or the car and you begin to feel overwhelmed by dread or worry, begin belting White Christmas. If you forget all of the lyrics, repeat the ones you know.
Temporarily take up kick boxing, the kind with the punching bag not the kind where you hit or get hit by other people. Jab cross. Jab jab cross. Left and right hooks. Theoretical.
Rearrange all the furniture in your apartment.
Box breathing: in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, out for a count of four, hold for a count of four. Again.
Get rid of things. Get rid of clothes. Make way.
Go to the garden down the street where the person who works there tells you to hold a scoop of compost in both of your hands and feel the worms crawling around. No talking. Remember? You helped them with the compost last fall. You witness a cycle complete.
Drive with your sister to Riis beach in January and jump into the frigid water. Sprint back to the car feeling invigorated.
Buy a stuffed orca from Ikea and when your friend tells you to name it Orctavia, listen. It might also help to call it a killer whale; something about ferocity.
Join a basketball league that plays every Sunday and learn to keep score. When the referee tells you to remove your earrings so your earlobes don’t get ripped in half, listen.
When a teenager on the mall tells you to be happy and believe in yourself after calling out to you, asking you if you’re trans and telling you her friend is trans, tell her yes I am and tell her thank you and heed her. Isn’t it that simple.
Wake up at 6 am to run (okay okay, jog), put yourself in the midst of the first unearned light of the day.
Rearrange all the furniture again, especially if the energy in the apartment needs a drastic shift. It’s your energy.
Choose at least one idol.
Eat a cookie. Alternatively, give up sugar.
Make a two foot by three foot collage that looks like a paper window.
Those smelly markers your friends sent you for your birthday? Smell the neon green one, mint flavored.
Light a candle.
Play pick up basketball on Monday nights in Major Owens Rec center but only after April because of the way the crepuscular hour light streams through the half-block-length window, golden and nearly blinding. Don’t forget to bring your ID.
Get a haircut.
Heed the train conductor who says firmly over the loudspeaker: look around, pay attention and if you get lost, ask somebody.
Sit on the stoop and turn your face to the sun.