My apartment complex. Empty, eerie, and kind of beautiful?
Hey friends. So this is a fun time, huh? I’ve been trying to figure out what I can do to be helpful right now, and thought I’d try to get this site up and running again to inform, support, connect and entertain at least my own small community of friends and acquaintances who are parents, doctors, actors and more.
For today, I just wanted to acknowledge the incredibly schizophrenic time we are in right now. I for one, bounce around between calming, panic, grateful and snarky thoughts, intermittently ricocheting from one to the other and back again about 500 times over the course of my day.
My calming thoughts go something like this:
I can’t control a lot of things right now, including other people, so just take some deep breaths. *whooooooo* Notice the beautiful sky! Focus on here and now and the people I love, and do my best to give them helpful information and perspective and joy or relief. Eat some ice cream. Meditate for ten minutes. Do some writing. Focus on the present, like the beautiful moment in the park where my daughter and I are playing on the ground, and she pushes off my stomach, her soft blonde curls glowing in the sunlight as she gives her giggle that I wish I could bottle up and save to hear when the panic thoughts kick in.
My panic thoughts go something like this:
Should I order powdered milk? Would my daughter drink it? We should buy a 5-lb bag of dried beans, and another of rice I ordered a 5 lb bag of oatmeal, and a giant bottle of bleach our apartment in LA is spacious as far as apartments go, but still one level with limited storage space so where exactly could we store a makeshift root cellar? Maybe I can learn to can apples while I’m at it and make a lifetime supply of applesauce for our baby, and store it under the lean-to I build with wood I salvage from my living room furniture and place on our teal and grey balcony, right next to our succulents and cactus and I’ll hook up the generator I make out of coffee beans, paperclips and a battery. I need to go back to work as a doctor I literally have contacted five different companies with no responses yet I hope my husband will be ok as he works in a hospital that has TWO cases of regular masks left and is still following the ridiculously strict criteria for testing that exist because of the lack of tests. Dammit, my daughter skipped her second nap for the third day in a row. WHAT IF SHE IS READY TO DROP THAT NAP I NEED SO MUCH?! I’m having nightmares about a zombie apocalypse. Et tu, brain? Are we headed for a recession? Probably. Are we headed for a depression? Maybe… Are the Russians seriously putting out misinformation during a time like this? Who the hell knows? What if I run out of milk? What if I run out of acne medicine (don’t judge, I’m in my mphgh-thirties and still have acne). Can I take my daughter to the park (please God, because we BOTH need to GTFO of this house)? Emphatically, YES. Can I take her to the pharmacy? Maybe I won’t… Will people stink-eye us because she has a runny nose (she ALWAYS has a runny nose)? Yes. Will I be putting others at risk? Maybe. What if I run out of (perish the thought) ice cream?!
Um, yeah. I have a LOT of panic thoughts.
And that’s not even including all my fear and panic over expected medical system overwhelm/massive number of deaths/public health crisis/pandemic side of things. I’ll explore that in future posts (insert self-aware winky face here).
Sidenote: On the topic of misinformation, if you do nothing else when you go to share something on social media, at least search for it on Snopes first. It’s a wonderful, non-partison fact-checking site devoted to debunking rumors, misinformation and fake news. Even they can’t keep up with the sheer quantity of garbage coming out right now (they call it an “infodemic”), but it’s a starting point.
And a break from the panic thoughts… awwwwwwww.
Then there are the grateful thoughts:
My husband and I are in a fortunate position because I can easily stay home, for now, and take care of our one, single child. We are in a privileged position because aforementioned husband is a doctor, so he has some job security right now. We may be able to help people we care about because of this. We are both healthy, and while there are some reports that this virus DOES actually have severe effects on some children and young adults (I’m looking at you, Spring Breakers swarming the beaches in Florida), our little family unit will probably be ok. Our parents and older family members also have good support and overall health, so hopefully will also be ok. We live in a time when technology allows us to connect socially, even across great and small physical distances. My daughter gives hugs now. She makes me laugh and smile, and she loves us like crazy. My husband also makes me laugh and smile, and his hugs help me feel peace. He is amazing with our daughter and took her into the other room last night for an hour so I could peacefully watch an episode of Picard, uninterrupted. And perhaps most importantly of all these things, I had the foresight to buy not 1, but 2 gallons of ice cream at the start of this week.
Aforementioned husband told me that not even Coronavirus would stop National Wear Your Fedora to Work Day. And yes, I did believe him.
Then, there are the snarky, fun thoughts:
Hand hygiene. OK. I can do that (even as my knuckles turn red and crack). My 15-month-old? Her favorite game right now is to identify her body parts, and it almost ALWAYS goes “no” (nose), “muh” (mouth), “eyeeeeee”. Perfect. She also loves blowing kisses, putting her little hand up to her mouth and making a loud “mwah” noise as she pulls it away. Then puts her hand, well, everywhere obviously. Adorable and very unsanitary. So of course, her least favorite activity these days is hand washing, right up there with diaper changing. She screams and cries and pulls away as I gently wipe her tiny chunky fingers with a washcloth, or run them under the water. Hand hygiene. Ha ha ha. It’s ok. That’s why we’re staying home. Oh, and all those posts I see from people who are being productive right now, or using this time to “introvert” or to practice self-care. I mean, those all sound awesome. And yes, if you can do those things, you DEFINITELY should. I’ll try to when I can. But for now, please excuse me while I go make my daughter put her diaper back on after she pulled it off for the umpteenth time while playing pop-up peek-a-boo with herself in the mirror (which yes, was simultaneously completely adorable and forehead-slappingly frustrating).
Basically, I think a lot of us are circling these same patterns of thoughts: calming ourselves, panicking, and trying to find humor or beauty in this history-defining moment of our lives. It is objectively SCARY right now, like, in all the ways.
But at the very least, if you’re not already, I encourage you to make space for the grateful thoughts, because in a time like this, gratitude can help us stay functional. In fact, it’s been proven that gratitude helps mental health, and even lowers the risk of depression.
By contrast, social isolation is a risk factor and result of depression, so if you find yourself teetering or fully falling into a depressed state, try identifying 3 things that you’re grateful for right now (be specific). And then call someone you love. We really need PHYSICAL distancing with social CONNECTION right now. This article has a nice summary about this, though the last paragraph is weird (I think focusing on gratefulness by highlighting how much better your life is than others is not the healthiest approach to gratitude).
So, I am going to try to share my thoughts here over the coming days. Try to alleviate some fears, but also give honest, accurate info to the best of my ability. Hopefully entertain you sometimes, let you know you’re not alone. Help myself feel less alone too.
And as I sat down to write this (my attempt at something productive during this time), I had just put my daughter down for a nap. I thought, “OK, 10:43, so she should sleep till about noon probably.” Ha ha ha. I should know better than this by now. It’s 11:20 and she is not yet asleep. To her credit, she has been quietly babbling and amusing herself as she runs from one side of the crib to the other.
Butttttt. Why the f*** is she not napping?!
ADDENDUM: I went in and gave her her pacifier and lovey, which had been thrown to the ground. She fussed for about two seconds and then promptly curled up and went to sleep.
God, I love her.