How are you, lovelies? Ok? Coping? Unsettled? Weary? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
I’ve popped up on YouTube for the first time in a long old time to just have a collective moment for where we’re all at, and what we’ve come through in the past nine months. Specifically to detail a real sense of unease that loomed large in my lovely, lucky little life while the heat of summer 2020 thawed us out of full isolation. We are painfully aware at this point that there are boundless ways this pandemic has taken hold, and it was here, when the worst was presumed over and the world had begun to open its doors and breathe a sigh of (short-lived) relief, that I lost my footing.
Ironically for a while my type 1 diabetes felt like the most consistent thing in my life, which as anyone living with type 1 knows is so ironic it’s laughable. A need for someone or something to depend on me surfaced due to its palpable lack, and where there was no consistent work or partner or family or flatmate within physical reach (I should add this pre-dates support bubbles), type 1 ticked away, fulfilling its lifetime guarantee. Outside of the clicks and beeps that have become an extension of me, I didn’t articulate a single creative thought for months, such was the gloomy melancholy that presided over me for a while, leaving me questioning huge parts of my life while I sat a little bit numb, a little bit empty and a whole lot unsure – paralysed into doing precisely nothing productive at all with a nose pressed against the glass of a life I couldn’t reach.
And while I was ‘fine’ by many standards, there were waves that came crashing even though I had perspective on my many blessings. It feels strange to recall it now, as I thankfully feel more grounded (for today at least), but I thought it might help to recount it because I’ve sensed flags waving across the internet and in phone calls and on walks that suggest a third lockdown is proving tough in different, nuanced and surprising ways, and it can sometimes feel like you’re the only one wondering what on earth it is you’re feeling as you quietly unravel, staring into a void cloaked in a global invisible threat with what feels like an intangible, unreachable horizon.
That first initial lockdown which swallowed the globe feels like a surreal dream, and yet somehow here we are, back again. So if you’re reading this with an uncertain rumbling beneath you even though you can acknowledge and appreciate that your life is full of so much, I see you. The seasons will shift, this situation will shift and we will shift, but in the meantime I feel as though we shouldn’t avoid feeling what needs to be felt in the messy middle, wading through the shades of grey in our own way, in our own time. 💛
1 Comment
Jen, this is beautifully written and expressed. No small task given the extreme emotional pulls and trauma the world is experiencing.
Something that my dear friend Molly reminds me of often is that, as you note, we are surviving a pandemic (and more). It is enough to simply keep our lifeboats afloat, and it is completely normal and expected that we struggle to do so. The seas are rough out there and our lifeboats are small and fragile relative to the stability we normally have.
I’m with you in feeling what we need to feel. Knowing that others are feeling the same helps!