I’m not ok

facebook status message

On Sunday I posted this status message. I figured I needed a day to breathe, and grieve, and wrap my head around how far we still have to go, and then I could pick myself up and get on with things, as I have done most days since this nightmare began.

But Monday was not, I have to say, a huge success. Neither was Tuesday. I spent a lot of Wednesday in tears. Sure, I’m dealing with other things aside from lockdown. My hip is brutally sore and some days I can hardly walk, parenting comes with daily challenges that don’t stop in a pandemic (in fact some of them come with bonus complexity now!), I’m trying to exercise, lose weight, manage my mental health. My mum is dying the slow, brutal, drawn out death of dementia. I’m trying to work productively, be creative, be a decent contributor to the running of the household. Life doesn’t become a cuddly soft toy just because we’re living an extra nightmare right now.

But it’s the view out Melbourne’s windscreen that broke me. The extended lockdown. The strict limits on visiting friends and family. The one household we can bubble with once the 5km limit is lifted – though the necessary infection rate to make that possible seems impossibly out of range. I had naively assumed we could tough it out and then go back to the way we were in June, which, of course, is nuts because look what June did to us.

And now, with a sense of irony that is classic 2020, it’s RUOk day. Well, no. I am not ok. I’m not sure that anyone in Melbourne is. I’m losing perspective, losing contact, losing concentration, losing my cool. All year I’ve been fantasising about post-covid reunions that seem to recede with every step I take towards them. Every time I dream about them, they are a little harder to see.

I go to meetings just to see familiar faces, but I keep my own video off in case I cry. I’m sad, and I’m lonely, and it’s too, too hard. And I know all the tricks about gratitude and kindness and focusing on the positive. But sometimes the need to apply all those tricks starts to feel like an obligation to be permanently chipper. And I have no chipper left in me right now.

Sometimes, I think, we have to be real. To allow ourselves to be sad. To grieve. To pine. And I think it’s amazingly important that we talk about it. Because sometimes the relentless positivity is too much. Sometimes a smile is further away than we have the strength & resilience to reach today. And sometimes we need permission to cry.

This isn’t forever. We will come out the other side. But it won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, and it’s never painless. And it’s ok to howl into the void for as long as you need.