Wiskey for Breakfast

I can count the number of times I’ve been alone, like all by myself with no one else around, in the past year on my fingers and toes.  Without taking my shoes off.  Someone I respect about these things said once, “You don’t appreciate solitude until you have children.”  I would amend that to “Especially when you’ve been living in a global pandemic.”

This morning, it’s late, and Ryan has left for a gig.  The kids are asleep still because they’re baby teenagers and they probably snuck screens till the wee hours of dawn.  Their new favorite game when Ryan and I give up and go to bed at 9:30 at night.  The dogs are outside, the cat is asleep in my bed, and I am actually alone for a minute.

We’ve been leaving the windows open, it’s that wonderful time of year where it’s in the high 70s late in the afternoon, and the high 50s at night.  It’s cold in the house and everything smells like spring.  I can wear all my fluffy clothes and drink hot tea while listening to the birds.  It’s a perfect morning.

I should be grateful.  I should feel content.

Instead, I’m panicked.  Full of anxiety that’s been raging through my mind for the past few days.  Despite that, I have no energy or willpower to drag my carcass one more step.  And that’s how it feels.  Like I’m dragging my terrified meat sack around; white-knuckling through my life and doing mostly what needs to be done by sheer stubbornness.

I don’t know why now the pandemic has finally gotten to me.  Or maybe it’s just the slow ratcheting is tight enough that now I’m noticing. 

Or maybe it was the Facebook posts from a year ago that keep popping up in my feed.  It’s been enough to make me hide my phone from my sight and dread any beep or ting I hear.

A year ago I got the chance to be home with my family all the time.  There was no specific time anyone had to be anywhere.  It was amazing.  Like the first month of summer vacation.

I was so freaking happy. I could avoid people outside my family and focus on having fun together.  At the same time, I created ways for my kids to have stronger relationships with their grandparents, and our little pandemic pod was perfect.

We couldn’t go many places, we hiked and took the dogs for walks and rode our bikes.  When we didn’t want to go out, we make pasta from scratch and taught the kids new ways to cook.  The kids adventured in the woods outside and hung hammocks over a creek.  We spent afternoons in my in-laws’ back yard eating takeout and talking.  

It was an amazing couple of months in many ways.

And now, now I spend all day saying no to the kids just plugging themselves in again.  Ferris is awesome about entertaining himself with his art projects.  But they are Projects.  With real art supplies.  Messy art supplies.  And I guess the “messy artist” is a stereotype he wants to live up to.  I know how to get India Ink out of towels, acrylic paint off clothes, and how to live with pencil shavings, scraps of paper, and small bits of clay stuck to everything in his Arts-N-Craps Zone.  (Which is a third of the great room.)

We have two neighborhood kids who are part of the pod that Ferris loves to hang out with.  They come over and scream at each other while playing Super Smash Bros, or talk while they all work on separate screens in the TV Zone.

Zane has made friends online, both from school and a digital eSports camp he found and we paid for.  He’s now got a smattering of friends with names like RubyChicken, Fish, and Danhebo that he begs to play with all the time.  He hides in the office with the blackout curtains drawn shooting bad guys and robbing banks.  I try to get him to go outside and can only stand so much pushback until I cave because I don’t have anything left in me to fight him with.  And it’s the only social contact he really has.

I’ve not actually cleaned the house in months, because it’s just so daunting.  Ryan absolutely helps and does chores, but I have to tell him what needs to be done.  He can’t see the clutter, sand, and dog hair.  Sometimes it just feels harder to have him help since I still have to manage it a bit.  He’s been looking for work and trying to get gigs, and the year has weighed on him too.

I feel like I’m cleaning the same messes up over and over and over again.  And when I’m not doing that, I’m making sure everyone is fed (which happens on an alarmingly regular schedule) and that it has something that resembles a fruit or vegetable involved.  Or I’m balancing the checkbooks and reconciling my business accounts trying to scrape money into piles we can use. Or struggling with the kids to try to get their school work done.  Some of it they don’t want to do, so it’s more pushback, but a lot is presented in such a convoluted inconsistent way, it’s hard to tell what they need to do and what can be ignored when a link doesn’t work or a file is missing.  

Like everyone else, I started drinking more than I should in the evenings while watching TV. After reading the above paragraph, I totally get why.  But I’ve stopped for the time being because I’ve been wanting to hit the bottle earlier and earlier and given my family’s prediction toward addiction I don’t think it’s safe for me to keep that up.

How did we go from making ramen noodles from scratch to wanting to have whiskey for breakfast?

I’m struggling.  Struggling hard.

I know I’m not alone, but somehow having solidarity in this emotional mess isn’t helping. Knowing I’m a normal human having a real normal human response doesn’t help keep the terror and apathy at bay.

Next week the kids go back to in-person learning, part-time.  We have to be up earlier than we like, but two days a week Ryan and I will have the house to ourselves for 5 hours. And if he’s working, then I get that 5 hours to myself.

I’m committing to less and less to help give myself some space to do the things I must and keeping up with my Prozac.  I know this season will be brief, and soon things will be better again.  I’m trying to have grace for myself.  Trying to practice my gratitude in a genuine way.  (My loved ones are alive.  No one has gotten sick yet.  I have warm tea on a cold morning, and dogs to cuddle. The gardens are growing.  I have a few minutes of solitude.)

I am trying. And I hope that’s enough.

The kids just woke up.  Zane put the kettle on for me, so I guess I’ll go cook some breakfast - and skip the whiskey.