A Year Later, Kinda Feels the Same

A glass of wine is making me feel great right now. This glass of wine has been calling my name since 11am, but I persisted beyond the siren’s call and waited until 9:30pm. I did post an instagram video and checked my phone fifty-five times in an hour to see the likes, so that seems to have filled the wine void until the wine seemed acceptable. Why is this my reality?!?! COVID parenting, y’all. The sweetest damn mess I’ve ever been a part of. I’m equal parts proud and enraged by my children at any given moment of the day. I’m aimless and exhausted. I break the COVID rules, then turn and judge others who do the same. Each of us carries our own degree of ok-ness as we shuffle through each strange continuum of time.

I’m curious tonight what we’ll remember about this year or two marked by living through a pandemic. I’m scheduled to get the first vaccine tomorrow and while I have some people cheering me on, I have others who are worried and questioning this decision. And this, my friends, is how this whole year has felt in my brain. Intense highs and intense lows, contradicting “truths” and hearing about disgusted opinions of “those people” on all sides. My brain and wellbeing doesn’t respond well to such polar differences. My subconscious is begging for middle ground, common ground. I want physical safety AND mental/emotional safety. I want something reasonable to latch onto, but the very definitions of reasonable keep shifting. 

As much as I’ve felt out to sea many times this year, my capacity to weather such storms has held. While my sweet, enduring husband would say this has been one of the most difficult years of his life, I can confidently say for me, it is not even close. Working through personal storms takes the cake and while I definitely long for times of peace across the larger institutions of our country and world, I have been able to stare into the bleak places outside of me and know there is hope. There have been times in my life where everything on the outside seemed grand, but on the inside I carried no hope. The despair, the fear of going to sleep just to wake up and start another day, the longest winters, these feelings went on for years while the world went on seemingly without missing a beat. Remembering those years, nearly a decade, the desolation that ultimately brought me to a place of healthier living has helped me in the year or two of COVID. Therapy and patient friends, God’s kindness and the falling away of religion’s chains, Neurofeedback and being attentive to new things that could help, all of these most difficult yes’s lead me to today. I want to take hip-hop classes. I want to find time to write. I want to take more ownership of my body and my life. I want wisdom and the gut feelings of discernment to keep my feet planted. 

Nothing feels in control right now, the never ending pivots forcing me to release something every single day. It’s an uncomfortable reality, BUT I’m trying to view my reality with expectation. A dear friend, Katie, is almost always excited about change. When I come to her with some news of change or fear of change she lights up and responds with, “Oh how exciting! Now we can see what God is going to do.” I usually give her a bleak smile, as my initial response to change is to get cringy. I immediately want to shed my skin like a snake and hide in the desert till what I know grows back, but I feel like I have no choice right now except to sit in the uncomfortable and hope the refining brings glorious beauty. Springtime beauty after a long harsh winter. I’m sitting in that hope today and my finished glass of wine is helping my imagination blossom with flower gardens. These things grow best in the decay, the shit in the soil. It’s all gonna be ok.