Plain Old Vanilla
Of all the memes, "keep calm and..." bothers me the least. Actually, most of them don't bother me at all, but maybe that's because most memes pass by with such speed that I miss them before I discover them.
"Keep calm and..." has had staying power. Maybe because it's easy to stick something at the end and apply to whatever internet/life/current moment that it needs to.
Personally? I'm an original flavor fan.
"Keep calm and carry on"
I suppose British stoicism is fairly well known. Keeping calm and carrying on isn't just a motto, or a life goal, it seeps into the bones, until you are waking up every morning, getting dressed and facing the day.
Or as I call it, my current life.
I often term it as surviving versus living, but keeping calm and carrying on got me through college, two major parental illnesses, the discovery that my college degree was worth shit, and the sudden passing of my father.
(It isn't ignoring that all those things happened. It's acknowledging that they did and understanding that the world does not care or wait for your recovery, in fact, one must go on.)
But the other side is that by maintaining the calm and not letting life stop me is that it creates an illusion. I look like I have my shit together. I act like I have my shift together. When people ask me how I am doing, I am doing just fine. Vulnerability creates closeness, but I cannot be open.
I keep calm and carry on, and it is my life jacket and the cement block that is drowning me. It gets me up, but it walls me in. It saves me, but it isolates me. It creates the very fog that I am trying to get past.
So what do I do?
I keep calm.
I carry on.