Tag: 052

052 // Small Joys and Strained Gratitude

I woke up early this morning dreading the grocery shopping, the cleaning, and the caretaking. It’s not that I don’t want to do any of it. I’m actually happy to do it. It feels good to do it. It’s only that I am tired and my brain is so full and stretched so thin that I fear a rip, or small breakdown if I can’t find some small escape.

My wife is feeling a bit better. Technically, her Covid isolation ended yesterday, but she still has to wear a well-fitting mask around others until the end of her 10-day possible infections period. So, to be safe, I’ll spend a few more sleepless nights on the couch.

While at the store, I bought her some donuts and some flowers for her bedside. She was happy to get them and it was nice to put a smile on her face. She’s been so hard on herself for contracting Covid in the first place. She’d been so careful, but one night out in a crowded place where masks were a bit impractical was all it took.

I honestly felt it was bound to happen, and I suspect I’ll have my turn with the virus soon enough. I suspect we all will. The federal response and imposed restrictions were so haphazard and half-assed that we never really had any hope of containment. But that was never really the goal anyway, was it? I think all we really strove to do was keep panic at bay. We wanted the virus to spread as quietly as possible so that capitalism and consumerism would be minimally disrupted.

But the missteps of my government and my own lack of control are too much to bear thinking over for too long. All I can hope for these days are small joys and strained gratitude. My little life is as far as I can comfortably contemplate.

052//366

The emotional toll I took yesterday is lingering and I find it hard to shake my sympathies for my coworkers pain and my worried that her pain might become my pain some day.

I’m finding it hard to smile or to laugh and my friends, all going through their own small frustrations and sufferings, are unable to pull me out of this whole and I, in turn, am unable to help them too. And that’s okay. They don’t owe me emotional support on demand and I don’t owe them the same. We have to suffer silently sometimes. We all have to learn to self-sooth.

Today I’m choosing to put my headphones in and let music carry me to other moods. I’ve got my calendar out and I’m filling it up with some writing ideas. It’s looking pretty bare but perhaps one or two pieces a month is all I can, or should, ask from myself.

I’m looking forward to going home and being with my wife. She need not cheer me up and I don’t expect her to say the right things or the one thing that will get me out of it. She doesn’t need to do anything to comfort or cheer me. She just has to exist in the same general space as me and suddenly the world, and I, and right again.