Day 62
View from a hammock.
Last night, right around the time I would have been starting dinner — tacos, we’d decided earlier in the day — I was sitting on the couch and the mere thought of opening the freezer for the taco crumbles was more than I could handle. I declared that I would not be making dinner. I got in bed. I coped for several hours in my bed, while my family fed themselves and left me alone. At 10:30, approximately five hours after I’d vacated my family, they all finally went to bed. I should have gone to sleep, but J and I turned on Schitt’s Creek — we are on season 4 — and watched three episodes. A few minutes into the third, I could hear his breathing slow and knew he was falling asleep. I was tired, too, but I kept watching. It was the open mic episode. I think I might need to watch it again. I was drifting off but I need to hear that song again. I am a sucker for a romance and wow, that moment. I want to watch it again fully awake.
And yet, to be fully awake I would need to sleep, something I have not been successful at in a while. It has been days since I’ve slept soundly for more than a few hours. I’ll feel tired, turn off the light, and 15 minutes later pick up my Kindle to read, eventually falling asleep after midnight only to wake up in a cold sweat at 4 a.m.
This morning I lost my temper with two of my kids, who were bickering as kids will do, thriving in their bickering, a slow crescendo to alternating “shut up”s. I was trying to do work, actual editing work, moving words around the page, trying not to use the term “recognized” again in an award citation. I needed quiet. I needed my kids to not bicker. I needed to get this work done so I could do more work, piles of work, waiting for me, because I always, always feel behind. And finally, I lost it. I got out of my chair and yelled up the stairs. And within moments of my returning to my desk, the bickering resumed. And I lost it again. louder this time. Empty threats thrown up the stairs, my voice strained from the yelling.
I had about 20 minutes before a meeting so, naturally, I decided to put in a load of laundry. My own laundry. Just mine.
What have we come to that I am passive aggressively washing only my clothes?
I was still on edge, and still exhausted from at least five consecutive nights of sleeplessness, when I logged on to my next Zoom meeting, at which I did not keep my cool. And when that meeting was over, switched the laundry over, returned to my computer. All day I have felt a kind of rage boiling somewhere between my gut and my throat. Even after it escaped me, twice, it has not dissipated. Now, I still feel angry, and I have added myself to the list of people and scenarios I’m angry with.
I saved myself this afternoon, or tried to. I cancelled a meeting. I finished out the work day, returning to more award citations and responding to the most urgent emails. I tried to organize my to-do list. And then, I grabbed my Kindle and went out to the hammock, where I read and dozed for a while before getting up and heading in to make dinner. Twenty-four hours from my “no tacos tonight” declaration, I made tacos. I’m hoping that the next 24 hours are less fraught.
We all have bad days sometimes, of course. I have days where I am short tempered because of stress, or because I’m so busy and trying to figure out how I can be more than one place at a time — a juggling act I am so accustomed to that I’m certain I’ll fall right back into the routine when it returns, even if it takes years. But having a bad day when there is literally no escaping the environment causing the bad feels like entrapment. Or it did today. And I am desperate for sleep and quiet. Oh what I would do for quiet.
Today’s notifications and headlines included:
“1,685 new cases, 167 new deaths reported as Mass. has 3rd highest testing day yet.”
“States continue opening as global death toll reaches 300,000.”
“Ousted vaccine chief: The virus is still spreading everywhere.”
And this terrifying one: “Talking can generate coronavirus droplets that linger up to 14 minutes.”
So I ask, think, overthink, wonder, despair … Will we ever fully understand this virus?
I’m so tired. It’s 8:30 p.m., and I am going to read and hope to fall asleep early but not too early and sleep until at least 5 a.m.
Stay safe, everyone.