We've Moved

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/panicfun/posts

2020

I started practicing smiling in the mirror a few times a week so that my muscles would still remember how. I guess some part of me still has hope that I'll need a smile again and that things will get better.

I lost faith in people in general a long time ago, but I think that was a pessimistic assumption and not evidence based. This year I watched as my entire country auto cannibalized on their selfishness and cruelty, and I no longer wonder if I was too harsh.

I saw people protest about haircuts and restaurants. They lashed out about the injustices of self-sacrifice of the smallest nature. Meanwhile, mothers could not have their partners with them during ultrasounds, and children could only have one parent with them in the hospital while they were scared. 

I heard how much healthcare staff suffered, and watched as they were disrespected instead of appreciated in ways that matter. As they sacrificed time with their loved ones for yours. As they got infected. As they lost co-workers.  As their mental and physical selves broke down. 

I knew corporations were uncaring about their employees, like we all know, because we have worked for at least one. We are saturated in dependency on large companies decisions. To not offer paid leave. To fire everyone possible. To refuse to ask clients to leave if they aren't wearing a mask. To insist you keep coming in even if you aren't well. To spread illness and keep grabbing the dollars out of your bodies like piñatas that were broken a long time ago.

I had an assumption before that the government would not take action to save us if there were ever a disaster. I hate how right I was, and what that means for all the lives changed for the worse and lost this year. Politicians held up charts showing that only .2 or .1 percent of people will die. Those numbers are nothing, they said. 

I witnessed my child grow up too much in one year. Asking me why people were still going out, why the government wasn't doing more, and watching her lose faith in people too. They have been inside all year except for walks and playing in the yard.

 I stay up at night involuntarily worrying about what this means for yet unforeseen future disasters, and my children. There is no more hope in planning for the end of this because so many unknowns remain, like a choose your own adventure book where none of the options look like a good choice. And you aren't choosing the adventures. The entities all too happy to squeeze the populous for every dime they're worth choose. The people actively campaigning against science and reason choose.

I watched on the news as statistics got grimmer, as lives lost turned into the numbers we have always been to them. Is this what freedom feels like?

20 million cases total in the US

150 grocery store employees

150 children under 14

2900 healthcare workers

300 educators

350,000  mothers, fathers, friends, children, brothers and sisters lost in 2020

291 thousand new cases today (US)

1.7 current death rate (US)

3361 new cases today (Tarrant County)

99% ICU occupied in Tarrant County

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/grocery-workers-short-stint-as-heroes-is-over-but-the-dying-continues/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/23/us-healthcare-worker-deaths-covid-19-pandemic

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus/2020/04

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/

https://www.tarrantcounty.com/en/public-health/disease-control---prevention/COVID-19.html

Wonderful weather this morning, isn't it?

In what feels like the apocolypse I wonder what the hottest accesory of the year would be. Masks are too obvious, and for some reason, too political.

No, if 2020 is the year in question, umbrellas are the clear choice. Why? Because you should always be prepared for the coming storm.

Lightweight.
Unassuming.
Get them from any store.

The uses for this often overlooked item are endless. In 2020, what new ways can you use an umbrella?

Will you-

Protect from tear gas deployed by the police, on the front lines of a protest against police brutality?

(REUTERS/LINDSEY WASSON JUNE 3,2020)

Use them as a personal shield against particulates?


As a social distancing tool in public?


As a weapon for when people don't observe social distancing?

Whatever this is?


The possibilities are endless.

How will you use yours in 2020?

The Serotonin Shuffle

When anxiety and depression battle for dominance, the only loser is the host. They both win. They trade off minute by minute and at the end of the day I can declare if it was depression or anxiety that was at the helm most of the time. I am getting better at looking functional, I think. Taking a half dose of anxiety medication in the morning and another at night is keeping the debilitating attacks at bay. I finally got more CBD oil and it has helped, minimally, with anxiety, depressive episode duration and function during both.

Its harder to write during depression days, and I feel like the words don't flow as easily, they aren't as pretty. It doesn't feel like art, it doesn't feel helpful, but it feels more necessary than ever to do. 

I always wish to trade whichever type of day it is for the other, but it is so wearing. Anxiety used to be mania and I was hyper functional and I didn't sleep and I got every little chore done- and I had something to show for my brain malfunction. It has been about seven years since it worked that way. Now I am trading debilitating depression for debilitating panic. Is depression better? It can be full body, it often is, it is sometimes impossible to get moving. Panic attacks are half physical every time so I go down trying to control the physical symptoms. I guess using probability that depression will let me keep moving, it is possibly better than panic. 

I haven't wanted to eat lately. It makes cooking for others harder. It feels like my anxiety is laying dormant in my stomach, taking up all the space, generating extra bile, waiting for its turn.

I think my brain is extra broken right now. The depression is felt full time but if I get completely distracted, I can forget how bad it is. Unfortunate that there is not a lot of distraction from depression. Just more depressing things, to read, to hear, to take up space in my head.  

My favorite thing that my brain does is that sometimes it uses its intrusive thought function typically reserved for making me feel suddenly frightened, and it'll insert a song or idea that makes me ridiculously happy for -uh- minute. I think those are my last molecules of serotonin unchained and deregulated flopping aimlessly through my brain.

I cannot connect.

Anxious days make me feel like I'm connected to everyone else's pain in a visceral way. I'm so empathetically sorry for everything going on in the world that I can feel events in my bones.

Depression days I cannot feel things, I cannot emotionally connect to the world around me, and then I feel like a monster. There's a lot of shame in depression for me.

Its furiously loud and quiet at the same time. Too many ideas, no processing power left. Too many thoughts to identify, too abstract to find a way to talk about, even if I felt connected to the world around me. Too much. I hope that talking to myself, to you, and to the void, will somehow help.

So on days like this, if I can do basic things I've won. If I can make myself type out a poorly worded blog for the sake of self-care and cook something for the other people in the house, I'm a fucking gold medalist. 

Severance

For as radical as I would appear, I cannot seem to master radical acceptance. 

I'm afraid that I will not be able to accept the things I cannot change. I will certainly not be living life among people during a pandemic. At a time where scientists, doctors, researchers, epidemiologists generally agree that we are rushing to open and congregate; I'd imagine hearing that my therapist agrees does very little to sway your opinion either way.

I've been seeing her for anxiety related problems for two years. She always listens diligently and thoughtfully and then works out measured reasons that I don't need to worry about the specific intrusive and catastrophic thoughts we discussed.

I rambled my ramble about all the reasons that I became panicked again. I told her how I was in stasis with my anxiety until the state opened back up. I was as close to peace as I'd known in 2 years because it seemed like people were doing the right thing. That there was unity in a fight against an unseen enemy, and that people were willing to protect each other by staying home. We finally found a united cause.

And then everything crumbled somehow.

The news became less about front line providers who were getting applauded and people singing from their balconies and more people protesting that their rights were being stolen by closing the state. Less about visible pollution reduction, and more about people attacking other people for not wanting to expose their immune compromised selves or loved ones to the virus by staying home. I am not talking about the argument that "we need to work to provide, so the state needs to open" but "we need to cull the herd- tough shit if you can't be outside; that's not our problem. We refuse to wear a mask to protect you. We will not stand 6 feet away from you. MY freedom. MY choice. YOUR choice is to stay in."

Divided we fall.

I explained how I'd felt that petulant quality in the world at large for so long, and that when we all went inside to save each other, that feeling went away for two weeks. When it came back seemingly stronger and more outspoken than ever my panic went through the roof. My anxiety said: I told you people generally don't care about others. I told you they were self serving, not to be trusted. I told you being among them was dangerous. And just like you cannot tell who has the virus by looking at them in a grocery store, you cannot tell which ones are infected with anger and apathy. And which of them are armed misanthropes. Which ones would be willing to shoot you if you worked at a store where you were paid to tell people to put on a mask before entering. How long until people wearing the masks are in danger as well because we are perceived as weaker, or supportive of mask wearing in general?

I'm not just afraid of the virus, I'm afraid of so many people. Not only are they spreading the virus willingly (or ignorantly), they are angry at people who are afraid of the virus (instead of being angry at the virus), and many are unpredictably violent.

I rambled and my therapist listened. At the end of the session, she still had good recommendations to help me navigate my anxiety, but for the first time she couldn't negate the legitimacy of my fears. 

Now other people can see them too.

(Artist is Radici Studios)

Vernal equinox

Everyone's reading the rules of engagement

And everyone's starting to doubt them

Everyone's reaching to put on a seatbelt

But this kind of ride comes without them

I want you to think of me sitting and singing beside you

I wish we could meet all the people behind us in line

The climb to the crest is less frightening with someone to clutch you

But isn't it nice when we're all afraid at the same time 

(Amanda Palmer- The Ride)

3.22.20

3.23.20

It's all changing so fast out there, isn't it? The epidemic went to pandemic and then lockdown in a few weeks.

My heart started skipping successive beats again. I am grateful that I got my xanax refilled right before things started getting crazy out there. It takes about an hour to kick in; maybe a few minutes less if I chew it or put it under my tongue before swallowing. Its important to recognize how critical time feels when you're waiting for something important.

There is a poignancy in the juxtaposition of the pandemic's 'arrival' in North Texas. As i'm watching the case counts go up I am also given time to watch flowers bloom and leaves return to the trees with my children. We just passed the vernal equinox, headed toward days filled with more light.

We are resetting.

As we suffer and fear globally, stories of kindness, ecological restoration and even people reaching out across partisan lines to check on neighbors. People are offering to shop for others who cant or shouldn't be out. Like we are waking up to remembering the  humanity that joins us, at least on this level. I love that. We are team human, not us vs. them. In isolated moments, I see people recognizing that more in the last few weeks than I have over the last few years.

Its been quieter. Less cars, less air traffic. I swear the air feels cleaner outside.

We are waiting for answers. We are waiting for supplies.

Mindfulness can come from fear of the unknown. I have found myself feeling things deeper, tasting food more fully, and appreciating rare moments of peace more than before. I don't know what's coming. I can't fathom the many different paths the world will react with after this is over.  But I know how much I love my family. I know how grateful I am that, for this moment, everyone remains well. When we emerge from this, I pray that we remember what it felt like to be afraid together.

How it felt to need to trust that everyone was going to do their part. To know that the future was no longer in your hands. To depend on your fellow humans for mercy and kindness.

In this season, we have a chance to do better. We need to take it. For the betterment of our quality of life, our families, our planet. 

I pray we are changed. I pray we are moving towards the light.