Yesterday I was overwhelmed and that feeling still persists today as I have more work than I can handle coming at me again today. I tried to stay up late last night and get a jump on it, but the computer Gods decided I should go to bed, I couldn’t get into my Remote Desktop no matter how I tried. The thought of having to talk to IT at 7:30 pm made me want to hurt myself. So I decided it was a sign and that got me headed towards bed early. I was grateful because that is all I really wanted to do. Sleep. Rest. Replenish.
Despite the return of my now archenemy busyness, my head feels a little foggy. I am tired a lot and feel drained. I know this isn’t the virus because I feel fine, and I have talked to others and they are in the same place, tired, lonely, bored and overwhelmed. I think it is pandemic dementia. This creeping and pervasive crud that has invaded our lives and utterly turned them around. Up is now down, down is now up. Everything that we used as markers for our lives, has become altered. Regardless of whether we were people people, we all seem to have this ever increasing fear of the proximity of others. And if you are single, this brings new challenges to the already mired dating arena. How exactly is one to date, while maintaining social distance? The struggle is real.
The other thing I have noticed, is that I care about things less. Things that used to really get me riled up, I just don’t care about as much anymore. I am not sure I can even give examples. I am still a freak about my house and yard (that will change on my death bed and not before) but tasks, chores, things that I used to be most compulsive about just languish on my to do list. I really care not at all whether they ever get done. And to anyone who knows me, this is a shocking relevation.
I never have really had a down time during the pandemic. I didn’t have time off of work or even a lull in my workload. I know that makes me lucky but I did not get to clean out closets and re-sort my life. So I remain overstocked in my clothes department and have had it’s purge on my list of things to do for months. Never, ever have I had something exist so long on a list that is really updated weekly, with all tasks checked off and done. Now I am really becoming a slacker, gone the drive to get things accomplished which is a good thing, anything that makes me less intense is probably a benefit for all, but there is also an attendant apathy that is really driving my lack of interest and follow through.
“What’s the point?” Is a mantra that is appearing more and more regularly in my thoughts and speech.
My linen closet is also a shitshow. And anyone who knows my Monica from Friends tendencies would be appalled. I am not me, and all indicators of who I used to be, should be on high alert that I am headed for some sort of life changing meltdown, and yet, I am ok. I really don’t give a shit about my closet or cleaning or if I ever do anything about them. Something in my psyche has become unmoored to the accomplisher/doer person I used to be.
I find myself loving and living for idle time where I can just stare off into space. Afternoons spent reading on my swing bed or hammock. I can’t wait for the warmer weather to return so that I can float aimlessly in the pool. Nowhere to go, nothing to do.
I know I am not the same person anymore but seems as though I feel incompetent to explain this to others in my life. How do I tell you what is going on with me when I have no clue myself? I just feel a little lost about who I am, what I am doing and how I feel about it all.
My head feels cloudy and unclear. No storm clouds brewing there, just white fluffy clouds that obscure me from me and I guess you too since I can’t even really articulate why I feel the way I do and what it all means.
There is usually a panicky feeling that comes with lost and this applies here to...although I am not sure that is actually true. I feel more like I just have this blind acceptance that all is well and I am fine and this is all ok even though I have no idea what is going on, life doesn’t feel at all like it used to and I have no clear direction to what I am doing. It is just all ok to be a little lost.
I feel like I arrived in a new city with a plan and some commitments, but while going from one place to another, I got lost and instead of deciding that I needed to immediately figure out how to get unlost, I just decided that lost was ok, like exploring lost would now be my purpose and mission, and the rest of it, the places I was supposed to be and plans that I made, just aren’t important anymore.
And I can tell by this rambling, repetitive rant that lost is a hard thing to articulate to anyone else. Because the pervasive and underlying feeling is “I don’t really fucking know...” About pretty much everything.
I think the pandemic unmoored me from the idea that life was really mine. It isn’t. I can be taken out of this life thing at any moment, lots of people have died. Lots of people are grieving. Lots of people’s lives are forever and permanently altered. I am on borrowed time every day and that thought alone has caused me to reevaluate everything, all at once and has left me conclusion-less. I really don’t know...
So I feel a little bit of lost, and I guess that is ok. I guess it really doesn’t matter if it isn’t ok, I am just here living life and there isn’t much that I can do about a lot of things. So I guess my plan is to wander the lost landscape of my present life and try to notice the color, texture and contents with an acuity that I lacked before the pandemic (I refer to this time now as bp - “before pandemic”). I moved at such speeds before that I missed the nuances of my life and now I feel almost drowning in the nuances, so much so that I can’t really see the path anymore. I am alternatively floating above it so high that I can’t really see where the fuck I am going or feeling so under the path that I have lost all perspective.
There is a lot to be said about being a little lost. Anything can happen because expectations have been removed when you resign yourself to your lostness. I don’t know where I am going and that is oddly ok. Somehow the pandemic has brought a feeling of free floating into my life and with that an abiding peace that comes from living in the moment...
My head is cloudy and fogged and a bit soggy from all the moisture. But I am more present than I have ever been despite the inclement mental weather. What it is to just be ok with life, unresolved, unmoored, unfamiliar to the life I used to know. It certainly isn’t what I thought would happen and that has turned out to be the biggest gift. Sometimes, perhaps, you have to get a little lost, to be found.
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