I don’t have the words to articulate how much I’m not okay right now. Even to say that much makes me feel the weight of my privilege and comfort. The fact that it’s taken this long to become aware of just how…terrible…things are… I just don’t have the words. Outside of the murders, protests, riots, curfews, martial law…overwhelming weight of the possible collapse of our society…THERE’S ALSO A PANDEMIC.
I’ve been home, quarantined with my son, boyfriend, 3 dogs, and 2 cats since mid-March. My son has been to see my parents once, and that trip just about pushed my anxiety over the edge. I’ve gone to the chiropractor once a month, and to various stores a handful of times. Matthew has left maybe 2-3 times.
Thankfully – thankfully – we’re both able to work from home full-time during this. But the struggle is REAL, y’all. I have a hard time focusing on the best of days (hello, ADD) but now that I’m home with, well…my son, boyfriend, 3 dogs, and 2 cats….just…ugh. I wish I could see what wfh would be like sans child, but like I said – the few days he wasn’t here were so much worse for my anxiety that I couldn’t even take advantage of them. I have guilt over ignoring him while trying to work and guilt over not working when I try to make time for him. Meanwhile I’m barely giving 60% of myself to either of them at any given moment.
Today was a truly shitty day at work, too. I’m not gonna drag you down with details, but I’ve made mistakes that separately aren’t TERRIBLE, but together…aren’t great. So I had a mini meltdown. On the phone. With my boss. I’m still not sure how all of that is going to play out, but I’ve got another project that – no pressure – I definitely cannot fuck up at all in any way. I mean, everyone makes mistakes. God knows I’ve made more than just these two. But these two happened basically back-to-back, and involve “more important” people than my average project.
But! It was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, and motivated me to find a new therapist. I actually never made it back to my last one after I was given the homework assignment to write out my thoughts surrounding pregnancy/babies/marriage/divorce/blah that ended up spanning like four posts but all-in-all was pretty therapeutic for me. We started our quarantine like two weeks after that, and I had to cancel my session then never got back in touch during quarantine.
I told Matthew today that it feels like the harder I try to get things sorted, the less control I have over any of it. I’m not even trying to do big, grand things like remodel my living room (although I do want to do that…like real bad). It’s just like “Concentrate on work for more than 30min at a time.” or “get my child down for a nap before 3pm.” how about “go to bed before midnight.” Oops.
It’s just like…hey, by the way, you know how you struggle to stay focused and motivated at work? And how you feel constant mom guilt for not doing more, being more, for your child? Why don’t you try to do both of those things at the same time? Oh, and also – don’t forget about the pandemic that probably won’t kill you but might kill you and your kid’s probably fine but also the long-term consequences of this virus are still unknown. Meanwhile, the powder keg of racial tension that has been building since, oh, I don’t know – colonizers showed up to obliterate the Native Americans…how about we go ahead and set that off. But don’t worry – the reality show star joke of a POTUS that has been actively dismantling every good step forward that the country was taking? He’s threatening to declare martial law.
*breathes into a paper bag*
So, anyway – I have a to-do list again!
I need to know how to find a grasp onto stability again. For most of my adult life, I was the more focused person in the room. It made it easy to feel in control. Then I spiraled a bit (a lot), but had really started to pull myself out and into a more positive/hopeful place. Then fuckin’ BAM! 2020 came in like Miley Cyrus’s proverbial wrecking ball, yo. I’m tapped out. I’m done. Stick a fork in me, bruh.
There are so many tips and tricks that I’ve started and inevitably stopped over the years to try to get better than what I am. No matter how positive the results, it’s only a matter of time before I stop doing whatever it is that may or may not be helping. I speculated to Matthew that this could be similar to someone trying to quit smoking…but how do you quit not-starting things? Because screaming “JUST DO IT ALREADY” into the void that is my brain has never worked and continues to not work as I advance deeper into my 30s.
Feels like something to blame my ADD, anxiety, avoidant attachment disorder on…but then I also feel like blaming all my problems on things like ADD, anxiety, and something I read about in a news article once is a cop out. Which…yet again can be a feeling best blamed on ADD, anxiety, and avoidant attachment disorder.
There’s just a special kind of hopeless that comes with being aware of all your problems but not knowing how to overcome any of them. And that’s when the world around you isn’t going up in flames…my personal struggles are sometimes a relief to focus on now in light of every-fucking-other-thing happening in the world. I’ve got slightly better odds of figuring out how to fix myself than I do figuring out how to fix humanity as a whole.
I actually opened this editor to make a post about the awesome plant shelves that Matthew built me. But I guess I needed to get all of this out, too. So here are two of my newest dudes hanging out in some skull shot glasses that I def don’t need to be drinking out of anymore. lol! I got the bamboo from my best friend ever (sorry, all other friends), and I got the air plant as part of a set I ordered for Matthew after he killed the succulent I gave him. The ones he had were doing really well! In mid-March. When he left them at work to start quarantining.