Mind the Gap

I have been browsing my writing. Just a few samples here and there. Noting the gaps--like the big one where I posted on the eve of 2020 not knowing a global pandemic would shut down the world and then didn't post again until just last week. Feels like that would have been a good time to write. During a pandemic. 

Write about survival mode, collecting oldest and his gf from their rental to camp out in our basement bedroom for five months, the middle home as college was closed and R and I getting a week to figure out how to be online college instructors. There were days of washing groceries, yelling at my mom and step-dad to get their asses home from Florida before the boarder closed and scouring the internet for toilet paper and masks. It was exhausting and scary and bitterness flowed unhampered at every #qualitytimewiththekiddos" posting of crafts and puzzles and tiktok dances from those who found themselves at home, not working. 

It was all hands on deck at our place with oldest actually getting his first post graduate job---all through the magic of online interviews. His company embraced the online work experiment and has given up much of their office space and there is no such thing as mandatory in-office days four years later.

Youngest got his first job in retail stocking shelves at 14.  We called them "front line workers" and healthcare workers were isolating themselves from their families so they could continue to go in and work to save others.  We celebrated them with evening applause parties, send in food and watched videos of PPE scars, exhausted doctors and struggled to believe shortage meant having to decide who got a ventilator and who didn't, while we prayed for a vaccine.

 I have to say, I am pretty good in a crisis so part of me, the not so secret socially anxious person, enjoyed the break from this incredibly LOUD world of chit-chat and expectations and drop in visits and guilt every time I turned down some family event because peopeling is just too much for me. Yes, peopleing is a verb---to me. Or peopley ie. I would have gone to the event at the park but it is just too "peoply" for me. 

But people died. A lot of people died during the pandemic, including my step-dad. The world went from lavish funerals to "celebration of life to be scheduled at a later date", that often lost steam and meaning 2 years later when people could gather again, and many didn't bother. Million of people vanished and not a lot to mark their lives. Graduations were cancelled, fathers couldn't attend the birth of their own child, death bed visits were limited to one person....maybe.... kids spent years away from traditional school, and freezer trucks lined up at hospitals to hold the dead as morgues were full. 

We are left with a lot of broken things, the worst being healthcare. My most recent visit to the ER just last month it was the first words out of the ER doc's mouth, "The medical system is so broken",  he squatted, his back against the wall, eyes staring at nothing. This is not something you find particularly comforting when you hare arrived because you are in so much mental anguish that you are seriously considering ending your own life. 

Once I explained how I thought dead was better than alive, he opened up to share his own mental health struggles and I sat with my mouth open in shock.  If I were to leave this earth there would be a small impact, to those immediately within my circle, but to lose HIM would mean so many people would go unseen, unaided----what is happening??

Everyone was apologetic about the wait time in ER. I think I was in and out in 6 hours which is half the time it took me to even get seen for my last breakdown in Brampton. However this time they didn't want to keep me. I was torn between wanting to stay and wanting to go home and crawl back in my bed and cry and cry. But there is no space, not enough care, and with R working mostly from home this summer term, I had a better chance with family.

So here I am, back in front of the computer, trying to see if I can find myself in my old posts.   The few I have read seem to be written by someone else.  I read one to Sisata, "Brave and curious came to me during meditation and these will be my  guiding principles for the year" my voice all sing song sweet.

"See, I don't feel that, right now that feels like someone else talking!"

"Well you are using 'that voice' when you say it. That is not your voice. You need to read these in your own voice now.  It wasn't fake at the time.  Lose the fake voice and read it again."

Hmmm. Good point.  When I tried my real voice I could sense something familiar around the edges.  I could see how they could be true, even if I didn't FEEL them to be true.  

The reality is, I am not the same person as I was then so it's ok if I can't FEEL me in these words. That was a different me.  But, I will hold onto the overall tone and feeling. There will be dark times, there will be light times, there will be out of proportion catastrophizing and there will be days of peace.  And those day, which are many, when I feel stuck, I can try to take comfort that I have been in a similar place and found a way out and can do so again. Writing was a pretty big part of this, so I'm going to see if there is a place for that in my recovery now.