I usually traffic in a delicate mix of glib and raw-wound vulnerability on the blog (and in my life), an unlikely mixture that can act like a potting soil for good writing, but sometimes misses the mark entirely if it's not calibrated right. In times of great stress, I struggle to find words: to write about The Thing is to dive, screaming, into the flow of lava; to write about other stuff is to whistle past the graveyard in an inauthentic way. I struggled with this in 2018, when family and personal traumas were fresh and so painful. That year, I could barely write a word. This year, both the global struggles and the weird work of staying home have not been a juicy source of inspiration.
Writing about anything other that The Big News feels like I'm ignoring something painful; maybe the truth of it is, 2020 has been my smallest year yet. I've been at home, with my family, trying to breathe through the ways my/the world has been upset. I've undertaken some interesting projects and made some new friends, but without the fascia of daily routine and alone time, I feel shitty. This wasn't downgrading from Italian vacations or high-powered work; I had a weekly yoga class at the YMCA and a matcha latte. My life was already pretty teeny.
So let me say this: I'm tired. I'm tired of my child, whom I love with my whole heart, because his need for me is constant. I miss preschool, those nine hours a week that were strictly mine. I miss naptime, gone since last fall, when I could snatch 90 minutes of midday focus. I miss playdates, where he could socialize and I could work on a cooking project as two young boys interrogated a line of Hot Wheels cars. I'm tired of begging for a bit of time to myself, an hour here or there, because my husband's work has been stressful for him (usual) and the transition to work-from-home has compounded it (unusual). I'm tired of going to bed after 11 PM, because I need an extra hour to unwind, and when I get under the covers I'm actually nauseous with fatigue. I don't do anything except normal things—cook, hang out with a four year old, Instagram—and my brain is always buzzing with things I should be doing or could be doing. I miss flow state, where I could slip into work or making or walking for an hour or two, and at the end, I was calm. I don't feel calm. I miss calm. I miss privacy.
I don't know how to plan for the future. For the past few years, my goal has been getting my kid to kindergarten, and then I could reassess. I could go back to school, make lists, research, and I could figure out who I'm meant to be. I have struggled to find this sense of self and purpose for such a long time, and kindergarten shone like a beacon—a bit of time to sit with myself and figure out, at the age of 36, what I wanted as an adult. My question swirls around space and place, friendship and community, celebration and love, dance and food, creation and impermanence. Do I want to be a wedding planner? A community events expert? A ritual-maker? A writer? A cook? Do I want to work in climate change, local food, design, housing? How do I harness this herd of cats that are my interests, hobbies, passions, and skills, into something coherent and salable that also puts food on the table? What do I have to do to invent my realest self? And how does that work fit into a world that seems to be gasping for air as we live in it?
And yeah, I know how self-indulgent that sounds, how woo. I know that to sitting and staring into space and thinking, "shit, what am I?" is the work of someone is fundamentally probably pretty okay, or at least isn't currently worried about where rent money will come from. But even still, I feel a bit unmoored. Doing meaningful work is something that makes people feel, you know, meaningful. And hanging out with a preschooler, largely without adult company, is lonely work. There's a reason that wine-mom culture is a real thing.
Everyone is suffering and I feel awful asking for care, but I want it. I want someone to bring me food, to offer to take my kid for an afternoon, to tuck me into bed. I've been getting such nice cards from my far-away friends, and seeing one in my mailbox is a literal jolt: good feelings, delivered! And I do my best to return the favour. Sending a card out feels a bit like putting a seed into the earth. I don't know if anything will grow, but I can do the work and hope for the best.
I miss being with people who really know me, who can interrupt and say, "You know, I've always seen you as _____" and offer some bit of insight. I think this is why astrology apps and memes are on the rise: we want someone else to see who we are, know us, and then lead us. What we need is guidance counselors for the middle-aged; what we get is an Instagram account. It's also why I mourn old friendships so deeply: losing someone with ten or fifteen years of knowing who we are is losing a bit of our own history. Some people relish this reinvention, pushing towards more authentic versions of self and relationship; me, I just feel sad.
Lately I've been thinking about shadow work and trauma, about the Death Mother (thanks, Toko-pa!), but also about envisioning the kind of place that I would like to be. I've been summing it up thusly: I want a closed door but with laughter coming from the other side. I want to be alone, but also with. I know it's contradictory! I need time apart to recharge, but without feeling like I've been abandoned. 2018 was abandonment on a personal level, a painful reckoning. 2020 was great upheaving loss on a global scale, but I do see that we didn't abandon each other. We're learning this new way, and it's hard work. It's all new. But I didn't abandon the long-term search for meaning, even in the cracks of time I get between begging my child to eat a peanut butter sandwich and begging him to each some chicken nuggets. I don't think anyone else did, either.
We open the mail. We dial our phones. We write long, indulgent, maybe-helpful blog posts. We read the headlines and then put down the newspaper. We tend to our children and to what is on the stove. We grieve what we've lost in small moments, as the rest of the year washes over us like a wave.
