Day 166

In my notes app, where I keep all kinds of things, including a series of notes titled “Writing tidbits,” i have a note titled Slow. Seething. Rage. When I open it up, there is nothing there.

I’m curious now. Reaching back into my pandemic brain, trying to remember why I jotted that down. Where it is from. A book I read, perhaps. Though it isn’t in quotes. Was I describing my own feeling at the time that I took the note, on June 6? I cannot remember. I can’t grasp where those words came from. Why they are three distinct words, capitalized, separated by sentences.

I found the note when I went to look for an idea to focus today’s writing. For the past few days I have felt the accumulation, I think, of the entire 166 days of our current state. Or, of the losses that my children continue to endure. Or, of the responsibilities that fall to me every day. Or, maybe I’m just feeing the effects — emotional, physical, psychological — of being back at work after a week off. But this week, I have felt a slow creeping panic. I realize that now. I can put a name to it, having seen the three words on my phone screen:

Slow

Seething

Rage.

I am walking around doing the things that need doing. The dishes mostly, and other chores having to do with feeding myself and my family. I am showing up at my work desk, sitting in my chair, attending the Zoom meetings, launching a publication into the world, writing communication plans and preparing presentations and blocking off time on my calendar for non-Zoom time.

And I am unsettled. I feel unsettled. Everything feels difficult. Almost — and here I struggle to find the best word — unnecessary, insufficient, inconsequential. I want to feel useful and productive and successful. At work, but also at home. As an individual, a parent, a caregiver, a person growing into the next person I’m going to be. Instead, I feel like I am going through the motions, experiencing emotions and evaluating them almost as they arrive. I’m smiling now, I think. Is it because I’m happy? Or, because I want my children to perceive me as happy? Or, because I’m appreciating the nice weather today? Or because I know what book I’m going to read next? Or that I’m enjoying the current books I’m reading?

I can rarely settle on it, that feeling I’m trying to identify. The reason for the smile (or the frown, tears, impatience). No matter what, I realize, what I’m feeling feels off. Incomplete. Or I adjust into the next emotion while I’m trying to understand the first. Still, feeling off.

And while I knew I wanted to sit down and write tonight — I felt the pull — I worried I wouldn’t have anything to say. I worried that I would do just what I am doing now: Pouring words onto the screen without any clear intention, direction, plan, central idea. This is the kind of writing that makes me most uncomfortable. Because it feels self indulgent. This processing in real time that I’m doing. These words that are landing that are just for me and yet I intend to send them out, make them public, ask others to read them.

There have been almost 180,000 people in our country who have died of Covid-19. Probably more. And certainly more to come.

There are wildfires in California.

Hurricanes (plural) barreling down on the Gulf Coast.

Another Black man shot by a police officer a few nights ago. Shot. In the back. Seven times. While his children watched. I had to explain to my 11-year-old tonight why the NBA game she wanted to watch wasn’t on. Why the players didn’t play, instead speaking out against racial injustice. Demanding that more be done.

I don’t have the capacity to articulate this to my children. Not in the way that I feel I should or in the way that I feel I should be able.

And yet. What choice do I have? I do my best. I stumble on the words. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. I just want it to stop happening. And I feel guilty. Guilty that I am feeling stressed and uncertain and on the brink of collapse some days — though it feels dramatic to say that. But I am safe. Safe from so much of the violence and vulnerability. Safe and able to spend time thinking about all of the thinking that my brain insists on each day. Each minute of each day (and sometimes night, too). And as I struggle to tie up this post, these paragraphs, in a neat conclusion I realize that the reason it’s hard — tonight and most days and nights — is because there is no end. There can be no lesson yet. No conclusion.

I am just here. Watching the numbers climb. The unrest continue. The poll numbers telling stories I don’t want to read.

And it nearly physically hurts me to try to uncover the next layer of truth that I’m hovering above right now. I can’t do it. Not tonight. Tonight I’m panicked, perhaps enraged. But also numb and tired and sad.

Stay safe, everyone.