This is just a blog post. About my feelings.

Considering the Right In Front of My Face Podcast started as a blog, I’m returning to my roots as a writer this week and contributing some of my own thoughts.  Many of you have expressed a desire to get to know me better personally so I decided to sit down and write.  

These last six weeks have been completely surreal.  Having our entire society flip on its head and having to isolate have been harder than I ever could have imagined.  I almost think it’s better that we had no time to prepare because had I truly considered what was in front of us all, it might have been too overwhelming.  Mentally preparing for having your family share a house with no time apart for months on end, with literally no destinations,  is impossible to wrap your brain around.  Maybe it was better to have it sprung on us.  

I think my biggest source of anxiety at the moment is realizing that it’s just going to be me and my kids potentially until September.  My husband is slated to go back to work on May 18th and at that point is out of the picture for help during the weeks. We started back at our loose school routine this morning (today is the end of a 2 week spring break), and it was almost too much for me to take.  My daughter is 5 and wanted absolutely nothing to do with the week I had taken the time to plan last night and was screaming during my 2nd grader’s morning Zoom call.  Which he came out of his room to scream at us to let us know the yelling was distracting him.  Let’s be clear - this was kids being kids. The honest to God truth is that my kids have handled this way better than I have. But there’s still a loud refusal to get dressed, fake crying, real crying, wrestling, and this morning, a tsunami of emotion about this new reality of togetherness gathering momentum in the back of my throat.  

I took a couple of seconds as I was making my own breakfast to take some super deep breaths and try to stay calm.  The one thing I realize with unbelievable clarity is that when I get overwhelmed, the kids get overwhelmed.  When the Rock cracks, everyone does.  They rely so much on my strength; the pressure is crushing, actually, that my calm serves 4 people and I can’t always summon it on command. But I did this morning.  I felt like running upstairs and sobbing into my pillow while they watched TV.  But today, I didn’t.  Today, I took a few deep breaths, I prayed for strength, and I called my mom to see if she could take the little one to just release a little pressure in the house -  thank God I have a family member close who can do it.  

Luke and I dropped his sister at my mom’s and took our dog to the park for a walk.  About 5 minutes into the walk, we discovered about 10 brand new ducklings swimming in the pond.  They’d clearly just emerged from their eggs and he and I spent a good 30 minutes gawking and watching them find their swimming legs.  We walked a lap and saw turtles sunning, dogs playing, and felt the sun.  I calmed down, and wrapped my arms around this feeling of dread that’s now a part of all of our new normal.  I resolved to pick out each feeling that I’m having right now and name them so I can really get my head around them and move forward. So here’s my list.

The first is anger, that little brat of a masking emotion.  I’m so angry that my kids have to be sad and experience this weird grief that I can’t explain.  It’s so much deeper than just missing friends.  It’s releasing a part of their identity for an unknown period of time.  My son is a total brainiac and class clown - the problem is, his friends love his antics at school, but they bug the living shit out of me at home.  I’m a horrible audience for him and so is his sister.  That clowning silly part of himself that gives him confidence is something we don’t value as much as his 8 year old buddies, and that really is miserable for him.  But I relate - I’m not myself either.  The part of myself I like - the grownup, edgy, driven self isn’t the part of me my kids need or value at the moment.  I’m not my best self when I can’t work out or have some time alone to think.  I’m not able to really access my softest emotional availability when I’m cooking 20 meals a week, cleaning, doing laundry, trying to be calm, and figuring out how to kill 14 hours of day with nothing to do.  Manifesting activities is exhausting and it’s just not what I had planned.  6 weeks in and I’m still trying to adjust.  

Which leads me to my next main emotion of guilt.  I fully recognize my privilege that I’m a stay at home mom.  Our life is set up so that I’m not having to  work full-time at a corporate job, so I feel like I can’t be freaked out and claustrophobic.  But I am.  And now I feel guilty about that.  I feel guilty when I can’t be that beacon of calm I’d like to be.  When I can’t take the continual beating of my 8 year old’s outbursts of rage and confusion, I feel guilty when I yell back.  I feel guilty that my meals aren’t always amazing, that my school activities are lame, that I’m tired, and that I’m crabby and confused.  I feel guilty and insecure that I might not be enough for anyone that is counting on me.  And then I feel guilty that I have a beautiful home and am quarantining in luxury but am still having a tough time - like I don’t have a right to struggle - and the spiral continues.  

After guilt and anger,  I feel extremely worried.  This morning, I think my onslaught of emotion was catalyzed by really reflecting on what would happen if I got sick.  Like really.  How would we handle it as a family with my husband truly needing to work? How would I isolate myself with my husband needing to practice dentistry? Who takes care of our kids?  What do we do?  Thoughts like that bring you to your knees, but the stone cold reality is that we need to think about them and have a plan.  But it gets scary really fast.  There’s so much rational fear  - it’s a fine line to keep it within the boundaries of planning and not have it spin into panic. 

And then there’s the unknown.  In the state of Washington, we’ve got a stay at home order in place until May 4th.  Every time our Governor is scheduled to give a press conference (which he is today), I get a little freaked because you just never know what he’s going to say until it’s leaked a few hours before.  It’s that “maybe we are going to be locked in forever” feeling of doom that caught up to me this morning.  Continually walking by closed playgrounds is taking a mental toll on all of us and I see my kids withdrawing.  I can visually see them tell themselves they can’t play and it’s so sad it’s just almost too much to process.  My daughter is literally packing for a trip to Hawaii that she wants to take “when the Coronavirus is over.”  I don’t know how to tell her that it will likely be 2 years before that happens.  I just let her pack and hope.  

And also, yes.  I know people are sick and dying.  I’m aware of all that too - please see guilt and fear above - but I have this cycle of feelings I don’t want to let myself have because of how aware I am that so many others have it worse.  Which has led to me burying said feelings for weeks now and it’s all catching up to me.  Cognitively, I know I need to stay positive.  I need to stay upbeat and together for my kids, but we all have moments where the foundation cracks on the inside and those are the days where I need to write.  Seeing the ducklings helped because the truth is that life has to go on.  We have to keep moving forward even if forward just means killing another day without completely losing it.  And when you inevitably lose it, figuring out how to give yourself grace to go to sleep and start again the next day.