Daily Dispatches: Day 13 (or Day 4 depending how you look at it)
March 26, 2020
Day 13 (or Day 4 depending how you look at it)
I got my days mixed up today, because I went to the store last Sunday which Mani realized meant my quarantine counting had to start all over again. It reminds me of counting backwards from 100 when you’re trying to fall asleep, or counting down from 10 when you’re meditating. You lose track and have to start all over again, and that is the practice.
So I guess this is my practice now, counting days of self-isolation. If you go from Sunday’s grocery trip, then today is only day 4, but if you go from when I last was out and about, today is day 13. So whatever. Today is today.
Today I saw my wife, my kids, my dog, three clients, and some fellow walkers (and bikers) on the bike path. Actually, the bike path was a wee bit crowded today compared to other days, maybe because the sun came out and it warmed up a tiny bit. This made me slightly uncomfortable and I made a point of going as far around people as possible.
I thought of my newest coaching client – we spent two wonderful hours together on Zoom this morning, and she was telling me that the boardwalk near her house (she lives near the ocean) has been packed, so much so that there’s talk of closing it altogether. Our Discovery Session was fun, creative, and meandering, punctuated by moments when something clicked for her and she said, “Miss Jena!” in a way that filled me with delight and reminded me all over again and for the millionth time why I love coaching.
Pearl and I just finished Forrest Gump. I had only seen it once, when it first came out, and I did not like it the first time though I cannot tell you why. This time, though, I loved it. The scene when he meets little Forrest made me cry, especially now that Tom Hanks has COVID-19. There have now been 25 deaths in Massachusetts. I can hear the sounds of the washing machine, someone clipping their nails in the next room, Chalupa’s gentle snores, and the hum of my laptop. A local friend just sent an email to a handful of Jewish friends who have expressed an interest in meeting on Zoom once or twice a week to say kaddish. This is our life now.
The fact that I just jumped from death to the sounds around me tells you something about how I am coping with loss. I just deleted a sentence about how the loss isn’t immediate, not yet. But then I typed it again. It’s hard to know what to say. Sometimes I feel like if I sit down to write at night, I am spent. Whatever moments of insight I might have had I offered to my clients, like little paper boats. Now it is just me, wondering what those were.
One, I remember, was that whatever we tend to do when things are stressful is likely what we will do in overdrive right now. Do you go into hyper-productive mode or do you burrow in and hide under the covers or do you eat all the salty things then all the sweet things or vice versa or do you stop communicating altogether or do you text everyone you know and fill your schedule with phone dates?
There is no wrong way to respond to this situation. I was telling someone earlier, there is no point of reference. How even the one doc whose story I read sometime this week – the days are blurring together – who was an Guinea during an Ebola outbreak, even he is stunned by the conditions in his hospital. Most of us aren’t ER docs, but all of us, every one, is experiencing disruption of everything we rely on to have a sense of rhythm to our days. We have no road map. We are figuring this out as we go.
I almost cried this afternoon, after the nice delivery guy handed me a dozen plastic bags and several 12 packs of soda and wished me a good day. I was in the middle of a call, but Mani was sleeping and her sleep has been so jacked up so I didn’t want to wake her, and V was out practicing social distancing with her girlfriend and Pearl was in the shower, so my client graciously told me not to worry and we hung up when I saw the PeaPod truck backing into our driveway. When I called her back, I tried to make a joke. “Well THIS isn’t stressful!” And I could feel the tears in the back of my throat.
I’m keeping my imagination on a short leash right now, since it seems to be getting into trouble when I let it roam freely, like a dog who always seems to find the dumpster and gets sick eating trash. No “what ifs” for me, nuh-uh. Well, mostly not. I would be lying if I told you my mind didn’t try to go there.
The reality is that I don’t need what ifs. The reality is that reality is one big what if come true. I find that I am in some ways more terrified of Trump and the GOP than I am of the virus itself, which is saying something.
I’m also finding that I am exhausted. This morning, I got up and had coffee and did some work and then went back to bed for an hour before the rest of my work day. Of course the first thought is uh-oh, fatigue, isn’t that one of the most common symptoms… but then I said to Mani I think it is stress and she agreed, she has also been so tired.
It’s a trauma response, I think, a way of absorbing some of the shock of this, that this is where we are, this is what’s happening. So I’m trying to recognize the ways in which I tend to heighten my expectations of myself when I’m stressed, just when what I need most is to lower the bar all the way to the damn ground. And then I’m doing that – laying it down.
Can you even read this? I am writing in the most stream-of-consciousness kind of way, and I have no idea if any of this is the least bit comprehensible but it feels good to just let words out and not try to track the “making sense” part. Honestly, if you can’t follow, it’s ok. I really don’t mind. I’m just glad to be sitting down to write at all. As much as connecting with beloved friends is grounding and helps me re-center, the introvert part of me really needs this, too, this time when it’s just me in the quiet, not “on” in any way.
I’m yawning now. Pearl is writing letters to friends in faraway places and V just asked me if I have enough brain power to read what she has added to the story she’s working on, so I’m calling it a night. I am thinking of you, you there on the other side of these words, taking in what I’m putting out there. This, too, is a form of spreading something – something like connection, something like care.
I hope you feel it.
If you are able and inclined to contribute any amount, your support will allow me to keep doing what I do and keep the pantry stocked.
Could you use a kind voice on the other end of the line?
Are you wondering where writing fits into this moment for you?
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