Trapped In The Inhale

For some time now I have been tossing, turning, struggling, a little lost, a lot lost.  Life, family, ups, downs, worries, joys, all of it.  Like so many of you also experience, one day still bleeds into the next with COVID, international news, local strife, and deeply personal struggles dominating every waking moment.  The waking moments so fraught, so full of the potential to be bad, that I find myself clock watching, eager for another bedtime to roll round, if only to escape for a brief period into the jumbled bliss(?) of sleep.

I sit at my desk a lot and watch my hummingbirds. They have become a metaphor for life of late.  Fluttering, wings constantly in motion, one place to the other and back again.  I marvel at their speed, their singlemindedness, their purpose - find the sugar water, drink the sugar water, swallow, rinse, repeat.  Try to avoid becoming prey in the process.

As I sit here, I have been going back through DGMS posts, seeing where we were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago when our routines got swept away, when uncertainty replaced the boredom of the everyday, when life became more precious as death began to circle ever closer.

I was rereading a post from last year around this time and much of it resonated deeply with me.  So if you recognize a portion, or a  turn of phrase echoes, know that I pulled some directly today as I write...

I have spent the past five months in "quiet" trying to muddle through things.

I warn you now this post may ramble and meander.  It is personal, to be sure, yet may stray into the global, the political, the virus.  I beg your indulgence as it may also stray into your feelings, feelings that have made you feel adrift or frozen in place, too.

Quiet, for some moments there are no words.  That has been a long running joke with my kids.  A line spoken, often with a finger placed to the speaker's mouth.  A line meant to be funny, a line that often is.  A line intended to let the funny just play out without the help of additional words.  

Lately, the line has circled my brain nonstop.  A brain that is usually at the ready to sit at the keyboard and eviscerate, to double entendre, to make up new words, to provoke thought, to incite laughter, to incite rage.  A brain that sometimes just has to have the outlet of writing - an act akin to vomiting on said keyboard.  That so many come here to feel validated, less alone in your thoughts, see your muddled feelings translated into rants - it has always been humbling.  Yet when the words won't come, when one day passes into the next, and no words find their way into this space - it becomes a personal shit spiral of sorts.

That's where my words have been trapped of late.  And I appreciate the private messages and emails asking if everything is ok, where I have gone, etc.  It's nice to be missed.

There is certainly no lack of things on which to expound.  The world is a big crapfest of news on the hour.  But sometimes, there is just too much from which to choose.  And I cannot.  And as one day has blended into the next, I keep reminding myself that while my personal struggles are holding me hostage, we all continue to live through unprecedented times.  That no man or woman is an island, despite all of us being forcibly islanded by this pandemic.  And make no mistake, this pandemic is still ongoing.  A new variant, even more easily transmissible is beginning its wave through the populace.  It does not matter if you have pissed and moaned about it for three years; it cares not whether you believe in it or not; and it certainly does not care about your boredom factor with it.  It was, and continues to be, an extinction event.  

Extinction event.

Those two words are harsh, but we are still in the thick of COVID and, as our selfish behaviors are allowing COVID to continue to spread and kill, harsh words are still necessary.  Our country alone has lost 1,014,114 people.  Globally, the world has subtracted 6,215,966 lives.  The United States accounts for over 16% of deaths to COVID-19.  Because we are selfish pricks, too self important to be inconvenienced by a swatch of cloth across our faces, too filled with certitude in our own health to bother getting vaccinated or boosted, or boosted again, and far too many far too willing to believe that the vaccine contains Satan sperm - no, I am not making that up.  That is the latest mental bullshit being peddled and believed by the weak minded.

These same simpletons who believe themselves to be infectious disease specialists because they belong to a FB group are now also international relations / war experts because they read The Federalist.  Ukraine is not real to them, as their simplistic nuke-em-all grandiosity reveals.  They could not label it on a map.  They have no understanding of what could happen, why we cannot just throw up a nuclear warhead.  Like so many Russians, they, too, are only informed by those with seriously vested interests in keeping them in the dark, stupid, scared - in Russia, Putin controls the information, for our own cadre of dullards, it is FOX.

With so much going on externally, matched by that which roils inside, it is hard to not feel weak.

I do not like feeling weak.  I hate it.  I suck at it.  I am a person who can forgive everything in another person, yet cannot do the same for myself.  And that is where I have been floating.  That is where the quiet has had me trapped.  No matter how self assured I come off in this space, no matter how wonderful my life looks from the outside, no matter how strong my track record has been for handling adversity - I am no different than you.  I am made of the same fears, insecurities, doubts, and stumbles.

Frozen.  I used this word to describe to a friend how I have felt.  She got it.  Instantly.  It was not a long message thread - it did not need to be.  It took only a few lines of admission and understanding to immediately feel seen, less alone, validated.  

Which is what finally got me to sit down here today.  Maybe you are feeling the same.  Spinning in place.  Knowing there are things to do, get done, yet they stay untouched day after day.  Maybe you are frozen, too.  It's ok.  With all apologies to Elsa, letting it go is easier sung than done. I keep thinking about how things look on the surface.  The whole iceberg theory of what we see vs the enormity of what lies beneath.  The Titanic was not sent to the ocean floor by what passengers could see above the water line.  The devastation took place below.

We are all functioning.  Going through the motions of our lives.  And that makes it look, to others, that we have our shit together, that we are winning this battle, our every battle.  And maybe we are on a day here and there.  But right now, it is more likely that we are treading water, breathing in fear, exhaling uncertainty, and exhausted.  And on those days if the most we can do is get dressed, fix our hair, and feed ourselves - THAT IS OK.  Some days, good enough is good enough.   

In my life, there is much good, excitement, things in the calendar to chart a course towards, but even with them, I feel caught in the inhale because there is so much uncertainty, strain, helplessness as well.  The phone rings at the wrong time of the day, and my heart stops.  Too many pieces of carpet beneath me, any of which could be yanked at any time.

Still processing my father's passing in November, I am now juggling the three remaining older people in my life - worried about their every breath, their cognition, how to plan, to gently push them towards what is in their best interests.  I am so mindful that autonomy means the world to me, and that stripping away even a layer from someone else is more than unsettling to them.  But when push comes to love, sometimes there just is no other choice, sometimes there just are no choices to be left in their hands.

I have estranged family members, evicted from my life for hard and fast reasons long ago, who have been forced back into the tiniest of crevice because of Dad's passing.  I do not wish them ill, I never have.  I just do not wish them to be in my life, or in that of my precious family.  I have one who is quickly heading to the jail cell or the grave - deceit, fraud, drugs, you name it.  And were it not for my mother's involvement in that son's life, I would keep my back completely turned, protecting my family.  But seeing how he affects her, how even a text message erodes the soil beneath her feet, I cannot completely step away.  She is vulnerable - not only because my father's passing is still a gaping hole in her life, but because she is a mother, and it has to be pure anguish to see one of your children, adult though he may be, turned into such a toxic waste of a human being.   My recent road trip with her, to see two of my daughters, was marred by the intrusion of him on multiple occasions - extorting money, attention, peddling lie after lie after lie. 

To say I am overflowing with anger in that arena is an understatement. 

I live in fear of the phone ringing because others in our lives are facing health struggles and adjustments, and we sit so many states away.  I want to exhale, I do.  Yet here I sit, trapped in the inhale of life.  I know so many of you get where I am at, what I am trying to translate. 

Our panic, our anger, our helplessness are all part and parcel of what makes us such an amazing species to begin with.  We are complex.  Our brains still a largely uncharted wonderland.  Our brains completely in charge of how we are functioning through this crisis.  Adrenaline, cortisol, imagination, daydreams, dream dreams, nightmares - the quantifiable and the ethereal - all working to manage us across these waves and eventually to safe harbor.

Am I rambling?  Sure.  But if you see yourself in this, keep going.

Superfluous and vanity laden as it may seem, there is a collective struggle in this regard as well:  we have gained weight - as much physically as emotionally, especially in the past three COVID laden years.  And even though working out may be part of your regimen, as it is mine, that weight refuses to budge much if at all.  Again, it's because our bodies, our brains are in charge.  They are protecting us from this very real threat.  Your brain perceives the collective trauma and is acting as it was designed.  So forgive yourself the extra padding.  Buy new pants if that is needed.  And for God's sake, eat the damned ice cream if it makes you feel happy.  

Maybe for you, this time, your struggles and fears, translate to tears always standing at the ready, threatening to fall over the next detergent commercial.  Let them.  Tears are an emotional release of the most wondrous kind.  This morning, while still in bed and scrolling Instagram, I watched a "first look" -  groom seeing bride - and dissolved.  I was that country song brought to life, "I have tears in my ears from lying on my back crying over you."  I lay there letting them come, sobbing, until the wave passed.  

Crying over strangers.  Well, that was my first thought.  The reality is those people were just the catalyst for tears that have been waiting to fall, attached to my every emotion over so many people in my life.  And when I finally emerged from my bed, I was better for the liquid exodus.

Perhaps you have availed yourself of therapy to help work through this ongoing period of uncertainty, through your own personal hurdles.  GOOD.  I say that in caps because the stigma of even slightly wobbly mental health needs eradicated.  Quite frankly we could all do with a therapist on our side, ready to listen, help us sort through our thoughts.  If you broke your leg, you would not hide it and try to just get on with things, correct?  Your mental health is no different.  And there is no shame in that.

I think often about the now 1,014,114 families who have lost someone to this virus.  The horror of the loss, the unfinished way in which so many goodbyes have had to play out, the fears that must linger in their minds at even the slightest cough in another loved one.  Then I watch as state after state encourages its citizens to now act like COVID has magically gone away.  It hasn't.  And with each passing day we are advised of the latest variant on the loose.

We are still mired in this pandemic.  If you have been vaccinated - that is great.  Boosted?  Even better.  Double boosted?  I'm proud of you.  I got my second booster yesterday, and despite the flu-y feeling and an arm with pain that is akin to being side swiped by a semi truck, I am so thankful it is available.  Yet it does not mean you will find me cavorting unmasked anytime soon.  There is no certain Get Out Of COVID Free card.  If anything, my multiple doses mean I must now stand as the best example of how to continue to be cautious, protecting others.  

As I sit here watching my hummingbirds, my thoughts also turn to the people of Ukraine.  A democracy fighting for its life, apartment buildings demolished, concert halls and cul-de-sacs destroyed, school plays never to be seen, weddings planned and abandoned, babies being born into turmoil.  People exactly like you and I, torn from their homes, atrocities committed against them, lives never to be fully lived.  The feelings of helplessness for them shares space with the feelings of thanks (and guilt) that I can sit here safely watching my tiny birds feast on sugar water.

As I type this meandering post, I am feeling a thaw of sorts, and for that I am glad.  I am feeling the rage, the fear, the uncertainty that has sat silent for weeks and months, feeling it finally work its way to the surface, to the keyboard.

I am angry.  I am.  I am scared.  I am.  I also know joy and love.  I do.  And in the midst of my own challenges, I remind myself that there are so many like me, like you - honest, decent, forward looking, open hearted, open minded people.  We outnumber the racist, bigoted, lunatic, conspiracy loving, warmongering horde.  We wear our masks and get our shots because we want to protect ourselves and our loved ones, but also because we want to do our part in the societal contract.  We believe in the societal contract.  That so many others are selfish, self absorbed, hate filled, hubris laden, intellectually famined wastelands only adds to the burden we carry.  Like my abhorrent sibling, they cannot be reasoned with.  We must simply attempt to secure the safety of ourselves and those we love, and watch as the inevitable wreckage occurs. 

For some moments there are no words.  That moment is not now.  And as I sit here typing, finally feeling it all, freeing it all, unfreezing it all - with all apologies to my poor keyboard - it feels good.  

We are all still living through a shared trauma.  On so many levels.  And we all have personal burdens carried deep within, quietly facing them daily.  But I am not alone.  And neither are you. We are trapped in the inhale together.  Feel that.

Comments

[Nikki in nyc]

All I feel like doing is laying down in a dark room with a cool cloth on my head. I am caring for my mom right now (damn cancer) and I am exhausted. My last nerve is just about shot. And the crapfest going on around me in the outside world just weighs me down more. Wreckage indeed.

[SK]

Thank you Linda

[Connie Liakos]

Thank you for putting into words what most of us can't. This is me, too.

I'm so glad that you're back at the keyboard. I check a few times every day to see if you have written. You're always a bright spot in my day when you do!