Five Years to the Starting Line

 What is an inactive blog except just another notebook filled with thoughts, even if one you bothered to revise? 

A lot has happened in the past few years. Hitting COVID still full of grief, still full of hate for a body I felt had betrayed me, one that still refused to work as it should, was... both a blessing and a curse. In some ways, it felt as if the world was grieving with me. In others, it allowed me an extended period to avoid any attempt at returning to normal. 

Because normal no longer existed. 

I could hide behind a screen, throw myself into work, worry endlessly about my children and childcare, and argue that my broken body didn't matter if no one had to see it. If I didn't have to use it in the same ways. Falling down in grocery store asiles reaching for the top shelf, aside. 

My 2019 surgeries resulted in a hernia, which needed another surgery, which was put off for nearly a year because of COVID dealys. Another form of limbo piled on to the perpetual limbo we were all living. This was all supposed to be temporary. 

When things started to return to normal schedules, normal expectations about leaving the house, about interacting, about dressing in real pants, I felt left behind. How dare the world move on and heal when I was still struggling to survive?

But I went through the motions. And while much had returned to normal, much had not. The extra workload I'd taken on over the pandemic did not go down, and truth be told I had already been doing too much. Too much because I'm me and can't say no? Too much because it was a welcome distraction? A busy mind can't easily cry? 

But a new form of depression was creeping in. I was no longer enjoying the things I most enjoyed. I was getting burned out. Because being burned out on life in general apparantly wasn't enough. 

My requests for help, for dispersed responsibilities, course releases, or at least a raise to recognize the additional labor, were all denied. 

I nearly left a job I love, colleagues I adore. 

But a last minute meeting changed... not everything, but enough to make the best kind of difference. 

And I stayed. 

But I was still mentally and emotionally wiped. 

I've spent the past year intentionally doing as little as possible. So many summer days were whittled away doing nothing more than breathing, dreaming, story binging. So many typical responsibilities, let go. I learned to say no.  

I wrote, shortly after losing Lettie, that some part of me would die with her. I confirmed that it had. While I had done what I could to keep myself on this Earth for my boys... I'd only succeeded physically. 

While I felt like I was doing so much, looking back, I see how absent I was. These large spaces of disengagement, of working late, of sleeping early. Removed. Sometimes physically, but mostly mentally. There but not there. Too tierd, always too too tierd. And often phsycially incapable of doing what I once had as a mother. They never lost my love, but they had lost my prescence. Despite all the things I was doing outside the house, I was still drowning. 

Sometimes drowning looks like swimming, a playful thrashing. 

It wasn't all for naught. There were bright moments, highlights, days I felt more alive than others.

Weirdly, in some unexpected ways, my struggles made me a better teacher. I kept expecting my evaluations to plummet. Instead, they stayed steady or improved. I had let go of trying to prepare anyone for the cruel inflexibility of the world as I had been taught. I had embraced grace, and every possible way I could give it. For I had received it from so many I loved in 2019, so many I worked with, and I could no longer fathom a world in which it could not be given. Radically arguing that instead of designing classes on what we've been told the world is, designing them on what the world should be.

I opened myself up and learned how much my students too were hurting. Their loses, their struggles, their mental health. And this did not exclude my own children, who needed so much support in school, through new diagnosis, through new growing pains. But throwing myself into helping others, was not the healing I needed. And served me no extra dosing of energy for taking care of anyone, least of all myself.  

And, my body continued to rebel against me. Bad reactions to medicines and birth control. Bad healing. An inability to lose weight no matter how hard it felt like I was trying, and I had so little effort left to give. Constantly increasing migraines which became the norm. A string of doctors who seemed to never quite understand. A long term side effect from COVID, which I eventually caught despite my best efforts: Trouble breating. Still trouble breathing. Does this inhaler do anything?

And mental health... while I had been required to go to grief thearpy in 2019, I was assigned a therapist, who, while I could tell she cared, she literally just did not have the time for me. Those appointments didn't last long, neighter by appointment or continutation. By 2020, they were done.

A bad start? A doubling down on bad news? A body that couldn't keep up? It was all too much. 

I nearly broke entirely last year. 

And then, the rest. The saying no. The finding of empty time. 

Which gave me some space to address a few physcial issues, finally, though not all. And mentally, so much is better now, but I'm still finding my footing. Still reconnecting with me. 

But this took, no joke, 10 months. I can't imagine recovering from burn out with a normal work schedule, yet that is the reality for most. I'm grateful for the time I had, the space I was given. Yet, even still, it's weird and difficult adjusting to a schedule where everything isn't high priority. 

But it also means having space to look back. To realize how much I lost, gave up on, and forgot about. The pieces of me left behind just trying to survive.

This summer, it will have been five years since everything fell apart, and I'm finally ready to really start to heal. To try. And step one is an assessment of all that's fallen apart in the wake of my grief. I've lost of lot of myself, and that includes my passion, my writing, my ability to juggle expectations like a magician. But I've learned a lot as well. 

And I'm writing again because... it's a part of me, that while dormant from time to time, never really dies. And because I'll never regain or rebuild or rediscover or newly discover anything if I don't start trying. Even if it's just another false start. Even if not. Even if it's quite a climb ahead. 

By Shadowtuga, Deviant Art