I Am Living Two Lives

I am living two lives. 

One is slow and quiet and enjoyable. It’s the one where I get to relax at home and spend time with my kids – time I’ve never had before. And time I’ll probably never get again.

The other one is cloistering and overwhelming and frankly quite horrible. This one keeps me awake at night and locked inside during the day and far away from the people I miss most.

Everything’s okay – and nothing’s okay.

On one side of my COVID mirror, productivity is down. I should be writing. I should be filling notebooks or computer files with stories and anecdotes and observations – and potential blog posts. I should be – but I’m not. Because I just don’t feel like it.

Fortunately, I’m not a complete and utter lump hidden under the bed clothes. Right now, my personal productivity is measured by my amount of dog walking and meal making and tv watching and book reading. I’m a drill sergeant helping my son organize his weekly school work – ensuring he sits down and gets it started, watching over him as he checks his items off the list and submits them into the educational ether.

***************************************************************************
Still not a subscriber to Pencils and Popcans? Why the heck not — it’s free!
***************************************************************************

The kids are good – they are well-fed and well-rested and starting to venture out socially. They get along with one another and in a blink lash out with hurtful words. Some things never change with our without a mass pandemic.

Their hurt and disappointment and upset and fear are hidden behind a mask of normalcy and contentment. Anxiety leaks out of them in strange and atypical ways that I could never imagine. They are smiling but they aren’t truly happy. They’re laughing – but they’re scared.

Is it my fault? Are they picking up on my own anxiety? Or is the fact that I’m not anxious causing them worry? Am I trying to normalize the abnormal to the point of causing them pain?

The other day I sat on the edge of my daughter’s bed and told her: “I can’t imagine being a teenager right now. This must be absolutely awful for you.”

And I meant it. Because I can’t imagine going through what she is.

Not only could I not conceptualize living through a scary pandemic as my teen self – but I couldn’t picture any sort of scenario where I wasn’t allowed to attend school; where I couldn’t go to my part-time job; where I was banned from seeing my friends; where being out in public could literally be a matter of life and death.

I tell my kids what I always tell them when life gets difficult for us (it has before – and it will again): “A few months from now. Maybe even in a year or two – we will be together and we will think back to this very moment we are living in right now. And we will wonder how we got through it. But the point is we will have gotten through it. Somehow.”

It’s not always easy to imagine a better tomorrow when you are living a strange and challenging today. And being present and grateful while looking ahead can be mutually exclusive.

But every now and again, it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to not want to be where you are right now at this very moment. It’s okay to think about what the future will hold and imagine that whatever it does – it will be better than right now.

So we are enjoying what we can from each groundhog day while hating every minute of it. We are living in the present while looking to the future. We are happy and sad. We are thankful and ungrateful. We are confident and panicked.

We are all doing fine. And we’re getting through this. We’re good. We honestly are. But we aren’t okay.

None of us are.

We are living two lives.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin