Things have been difficult in a mild, incomprehensible way. There is a thread of malice dressed in quarantine and COVID-19. There is overt, violent confrontation I see via social media due to the spotlight on the Black Lives Matter protests and the near-constant shows of police brutality and murder. All of it is both far from me, and yet I am a part of these systems and communities and my actions affect others.
I am working from home, and have been since March 16th, 2020. It's been three months. I've been anxious and irritated and have felt limited and frustrated. My home is a shared space, we are moving and renovating and nothing is easy.
I am grateful for the job. For a salary. I am grateful for the health of my mother. For the living space. For the neighborhood and for being quarantined over the summer, and not in the dead of January. I have space to quarantine. I have a bed. Running water. Abundance.
It's been difficult financially. The moves. The furniture. The renovations. The working from home. Getting a desk. A keyboard. A screen. Having more costs working from home. Eating here more. Groceries are more expensive anyway because of the quarantine.
I'm sick of my cooking. I want to go to a restaurant with my friends. I want someone else's cooking.
It's difficult managing the renovations and the project file with the city. Their requirements are many and their answers are always vague and in my second language. It's difficult managing my mother and her expectations while staying aware of this being her project and her money. Staying patient is a challenge. Managing contractors is hard. My mother doesn't always understand clearly. She says yes when she should say she does not understand and wants clarification.
Sometimes I regret taking on this project - because I don't want the added responsibility. If it weren't for my mother, I don't know that I would be here. I would be in a small, manageable place.
On good days it all feels great. But on bad days it feels like too much responsibility, when all I want is a safe hole in a wall I can crawl into.
But here we are. I have a dog and my mother, in a duplex we're rehabbing. I don't know that I'd have the will if I were alone. I'd want no responsibility and the ability to curl up and hibernate without too much loss or complication. I don't want anybody to depend on me.
I've been weaning off my medication, and I now take the smallest dose every few days, until I will have none left. I don't know that I am more depressed than I was - I just think I feel it differently. I feel it in my chest. My body. I don't know what long-term affects have taken root in my brain, or how long it will take to seep out of me. I've always been depressed. I will always be depressed. It just hits differently. It lives in me differently. I think I'm less numb to it.
All of this feels like a lot, but I don't know that I have the capacity to see the big picture, or to really understand it all. I know eventually I will be able to have some perspective, but for now that feels far away and alien to me.
I don't see friends. I don't go out. My days are all very similar. I feel stuck and confused. Every day is the same, yet there are also new horrors. Not near me. But horrors I can see, and horrors I can't look away from.
Time keeps moving forward. I'm 36. I feel as if so much of my life is just trying to get through, struggling up a hill, resting to to survive - I don't know that my life will ever look like anything else.
Even with perspective, the last looks hazy. I don't know what a clear view looks like, or what use it is to me if I am set in my ways, and unable to imagine new ways of being.
I am my own company, and have been for three months, and I am an intense, dark person to be around. Moments of brevity are not enough to lighten my spirit. I've always been this dramatic. I've always had this weight, only it's been physical for the last decade. My weighted body, that keeps people away and insulates my near constant pain. My low level hum.
