A Post about Now
Remember desktop computers and how they needed to be occasionally de-fragged? I’m feeling that way these days. The last 8 months have required such a weird cocktail of survival mode, denial, hope, and Ecclesiastes that my poor little quivering mass of gray matter has itself divided into so many compartments it could qualify as a bona fide 1980s Caboodle. I could get into all my specifics, my family’s, but there’s not much point to that. The truth is that some people technically have it harder. Some technically have it easier. But I’m pretty sure the universal truth lies somewhere on a scale of frazzled to decimated.
Maybe it’s about how many kids you have or don’t, whether you live alone, have roommates, have a partner. It may very well be about whether or not you still have gainful employment. It may be about your risk factors, your levels of anxiety or tolerance of ambiguity. “It” is your ability to cope, or maybe even to “sur-thrive” (which, I get, but, geez. Can we all just quit trying to be a rich lady on Instagram, or whatever, for 4 freakin’ seconds (yeah, I’m a rich white lady who happens to be on insta… pobody’s nerfect.)).
I’m just a chick from Texas who grew up on the Left Coast and considers herself broodingly artsy but also a master at pain tolerance and self-denial, but I still have my thoughts and may as well share’em. You and your awareness of neurobiology may well be THE thing controlling your ability to cope. Religious people (like me) may take issue and say, “It’s about faith! It’s about remembering Who is in charge, Who loves us.” We’re not wrong. I know that. But, hear me out, God invented and understands how the human brain, nervous system, body, and endocrine systems work, and it’s via these systems that we feel and, maybe, I don’t know… (see earlier statements about my qualifications…) even believe.
For many years now (my whole life?), I’ve had an ability to be keenly aware of how my body feels, what it can do, and how other bodies and people are feeling too. “Empath” is not the wrong word, but I can’t say that it’s right. What I’m feeling from others, from myself these days is a kind of desperation. For sure, good Americans that we are, we’re doing desperation in our own, INDIVIDUAL way. But, let’s be honest: there is a LOT of freaking out.
Do you know what freaking out is for? Protection. Saving yourself. Warning others. Those behaviors are managed by the amygdala. Do you know what memories, emotions, and creativity are for? Progress. Preservation. Salvation. Those skills are managed by the right hemisphere. The left brain and the pre-frontal cortex are good at figuring things out. They are great at deciding what the heck ought to be done. Some people, like epidemiologists, economists, and doctors, are trained, experienced, and empowered to use those skills during this time. But, most of us are using our logic, our planning to obsess over how to work-out, how to schedule zoom calls, how to eat, how to look for a new job, how to maintain some semblance of relationship with the people we love. These things are all too little and too painfully huge to engage well. So our amygdalas kick in one hundred times a day. Our right brains search for ways to make and to dream. But everything is different. The resources have changed or, sadly, disappeared.
Today, I drove into town to buy some fresh, Penn Cove mussels from the sweet village grocer. I planned to come home, slice shallots and fennel with my 12 year old, and open a bottle of sauvignon blanc. “I’ll warm up that tired loaf of bread,” I thought. “I’ll tell Alexa to play an Avett Brothers station.” I got home. My body was sore, tired. My mind was freshly distressed and confused. I’d seen an old, dear friend in the store. We didn’t know how to even properly say “hello.” There was no hug, not even a proper catch-up. I’d listened to health and travel correspondents on NPR discuss how to approach the holidays. Listeners had questions like, “Can I go see my 97 year old mother? Can I hug my grandkids? Can I let my college kids come home?” Damn. (And bigger words too, but I’m working on my palatability.) I pulled into the driveway and moaned to my own image on the phone screen but also to a friend on Marco Polo, “I’m so spread out. So mixed up. Distracted. I think I need to be de-fragged.” The mussels went in the fridge, the wine to the counter, and I curled up on the kitchen island for a bizarrely long time to lay my head on the current fruiting body of the never ending, underground fungus that is laundry. The still-warm stack of bath towels provided the best moment of relief I’d had all day.
Speaking of mushrooms, the amanita are beautiful right now but toxic. I live in a f’in’ fairy wonderland. Today the trees bent so gracefully yet terrifyingly from side to side in the aggressive wind that I was inspired and wanting to check my home-owner’s policy all at once. “It’s good that they bend,” said my 12 year old to the frightened 8 year old. “It’s when they are dead that they don’t bend, and they become a danger to everyone.”
All this mishmash to say: Can you still bend? Where are you getting stiff? Are there branches that you just have to drop? Do you understand the how and the why of your worst days, your worst responses to the “stimuli?” Can you call your behaviors what they are: responses? These questions seem to be the primary concern in the mental health triage of COVID-19. Do you know what you don’t know? Who can help? What’s the embarrassing thought that you should probably get on Marco Polo right now to say before it eats you alive? You know, I hope, that I’m bold enough to ask you because I’m asking myself.
I am becoming more and more aware that the ability to acknowledge our own crap directly tracks to our ability to bring a fresh roll of toilet paper to the people in our lives who need it. This phase is so lonely! It’s so difficult! It’s laying our world and ourselves out for all to see like never before! But, like a miserable time on the toilet, it’s by no means an experience exclusive to us, even if it is intimate and a little gross.
So as not to leave you with poop talk (our work reflects our lives and our primary audience. I have four kids ages 5 to 12. The defense rests.), let me tell you a quick story. The other day, during school hours, my kiddo was becoming increasingly distressed. He was hating himself and was getting pretty dang close to hating me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me! Am I going insane??” he cried.
“No, baby. You aren’t going insane. You are having a hard day during a really hard time of everyone’s life.” After lunch, when normally he’d get to join in the screen-time happy hour with his siblings, I urged him to go on a walk with me. “There’s a lot to see.”
After over an hour of cold cheeks and muddy boots, we had waved at neighbors, gathered specimens, and caught each other’s elbows when a tree root got in the other’s way. By the time we tromped back to the house to make hot, decaf tea, he was ruddy, winded, and smiling. “Do you feel insane now?” I asked.
“What? OH. No. Everything is fine. Just hard.”
EXACTLY.
The brain and body need to process the stimuli they encounter, and right now, it’s rough. These things take longer. But all the while, the brain changes, the body can relax or strengthen, and the soul can go in and out over a 5 count breath.
Inhala. Exhala.
