Sad

San Diego, California

Tonight I’m sad. 

For the first month of sheltering at home, I felt like I was doing well. I kept up with the kids’ NTI work, and I did my own, logging my hours on a computer document while checking on the kids, connecting them to their Google Meets and Zoom meetings and making sure I got to my own. I got everybody outside in the beautiful weather, even if it was only for a family walk. I herded everyone into the car for drives. I played games and watched movies and inhaled books like air. I talked about how well I was doing, how I didn’t really miss all the extra, how it was so good to be at home. I got mad at people who complained or who disregarded the new mandates.

Then, on Saturday, I felt my optimism slowing down, and on Easter Sunday, I fell apart. It’s like I was cruising along on my bike, laughing and joking, and when I checked over my shoulder to make sure everyone was safe behind me, I slammed into a wall. I haven’t been able to pull myself totally together since.

I should have noticed this coming, I guess, when I realized I was having trouble sleeping last week, that silly anxieties were waking me in the night, and I was making up problems to worry about. But ignored it and insisted I was fine; everything was fine...until the exact moment it wasn’t.

This week, I’ve been rereading Shauna Niequist’s Bittersweet, a collection of essays centered around the idea that life is both broken and beautiful, and I relate to that so strongly right now. I believe in the importance of the simple, beautiful things in life and in the importance of creating that beauty for yourself and others, and that those things are the treasures that help make us whole. It’s what I’ve based this site on. 

But sometimes life is a mess, and for any of it to change, I’m going to have to be able to recognize what my triggers are and think about how to combat them. I’m going to have to recognize fear, however cunningly it masquerades as attention to detail, carefulness, niceness, or that landmine for me: control. Only in the last few years have I realized how thoroughly I let fear get its roots in me, and weeding it out around the newly growing strength and clarity of mind is still quite a challenge. 

I don’t like being this sad. I want it to go away and to take the fear and uncertainty with it. But I’ll say this: tonight when my kids got out of bed and came to my bathroom to give me hugs while I was brushing my teeth, I nearly cried with the sweetness of it. And when my good husband paused by the couch where I was stretched, staring mindlessly at my phone, and offered me his hand, I took it. 

Tonight, in a season of great loneliness and weariness, those little gestures are lifelines pulling me out of a hole, and even in the midst of this sadness, I think about how kind yet small those gestures were, and how when I crawl out of this again, I can be that lifeline for someone else, even if I’m just offering them a hand, even just like this, online.