It’s bad. Physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, I am deteriorating.
You’re with me, right??
It’s slow and insidious, but it’s happening.
There have been clear signs over the past five months. The inability to focus. Apathy towards writing. A lack of creativity. Bouts of pure malaise.
Then, last week: Parker wanted a dance party so we started bopping around the living room. Twenty seconds in, I was winded. I’ve been taking long walks several times a week and figured I was in decent enough shape, but I realized then how weak I am. I haven’t done yoga, lifted weights, or gotten my heart rate up in months. It’s not healthy.
Mentally it’s just as bad. Simple math problems trip me up. Names and ideas evaporate just as I’m about to speak them. God forbid I have to form coherent thoughts for dialogue. I’ve read plenty of pieces about other people feeling this way, the mind described as a sieve, soup, murky, muddy, foggy – each metaphor is apt. Frightfully so.
I’ve been impressed by people who have leaned into the sheltering. Who are working out relentlessly, learning a new language, experimenting with cooking, doing home improvement projects, writing fast and furiously. I walk around from room to room, deciding what needs tidying up, what I should be reading, if there are any cool art projects I can do with Parker. And then I do none of it.
That’s on good days. On bad days, my body and heart are so heavy I find it difficult to care about anything but Parker’s emotional state. I mean, when our dickhead president threatens to hold school funding, when Congress doles out relief packages to millionaires and politicians instead of actual small businesses, when cops pepper spray and drive cars into crowds and fucking kneel for nearly nine seconds on a man’s neck until there’s no breath left, when you see shops in your neighborhood that have been there for generations are suddenly closing, when you see your beloved city boarded up, when you know the richest executives are getting richer while the average family is struggling and afraid, when you can’t see much less hug your parents, when your child cries because they’re lonely, when you can’t take a break because there is literally nowhere to go, when you hear about people berating strangers in the street for wearing a mask (for wearing a mask, not for not wearing one), when you think of all the single-use plastic being used now and all the rollbacks of environmental protections, and you see the world on fire, exacerbated by greedy, shameless politicians and shareholders… well, you can really just about lose it.
Some days I do. I cry. I snap. I grind my teeth. But mostly I try to just focus on how incredibly lucky I am. We are working, we are healthy, we have options. Our families, friends, neighbors and community are resilient and inspiring. There are so many good people doing amazing things. This is some shit. As horrible as all this is, we have to live through it. Hopefully discover something new about ourselves, rise in ways we haven’t before. It’s fascinating to think of what we will remember in hindsight. Which moments, emotions and experiences define it all. Hopefully my soul and my biceps will recover.