Day 10

Okay, after my “try-to-stay-positive” post of a few days ago, I had a really bad day yesterday. Nothing happened to me; I didn’t get sick, find out I lost my job, or run out of toilet paper, but I was still feeling bummed out (no pun intended) all day.

I’ve been trying to emulate Dave, who has been turning off his devices for 12 hours, between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m.. and that’s been great– even with constant cheating I’m not looking at my phone nearly as much as usual. (Update: my helpful iPad stats say that my social media use was up 79% last week) Yesterday, though, I cheated first thing in the morning and glanced at Instagram. Unfortunately, the first post I saw was from a woman I follow (don’t know her personally, but I’ve been enjoying her posts for years) who had something really tragic happen in her family. I won’t give you the details, because you don’t need to be where I was after reading it, but the point is, it made me terribly sad and that feeling didn’t really leave me all day. Of course, I’m just a peripheral player in her life (like, I’m not even on the periphery, I’m more than a football field away from her periphery), so today I already feel better. It’s still very sad, but I don’t feel it as much. That’s how time works for minor ailments and hurts, which include the giant hurts that occur to people you don’t know. Your body and mind adjust, fend off, and defeat them.

While I was feeling terrible yesterday I thought about this: throughout these crises, whether they be wars, famines, pestilences, or pandemics, life and death continue unabated. Okay, maybe with some acceleration or deceleration, but there’s no stopping those two forces. The life force and the death force. Babies are born, people die… So, what if on top of just getting through this crap and being alone almost all the time (or if you’re lucky/unlucky with your family) you have a death of a close relative that comes up suddenly. What then? How does one cope? That’s no minor hurt that will be brushed off in a day or two, and you can’t even gather your friends and family around you for support. That’s what made me feel extra terrible for my IG friend yesterday.

But, that was yesterday, and for whatever reason I don’t understand, I feel better after a few hours sleep. With what’s going on we’re all feeling tender; even if I’m doing fine in most respects, my worries extend to all my friends and to FB and IG friends that I don’t know personally, and then out to the larger world where people are suffering on a large scale. It takes very little to bring on the tears these days. It’s like I’ve got an injury that’s barely had a chance to grow an onion skin over it and every time something bumps it the blood flows. But, like I said, that onion skin has grown back and I’m feeling better. Until the next time…

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Everything is changing so fast. Though every day the isolation looks like it’s going to last longer, and is pretty scary and worrying, I know it will eventually be over. What will the real new normal look like? Will everything just go back to how it was? Will we have learned something about ourselves and each other that will have lasting positive effects? We are certainly living in interesting times…