Felt appropriate to talk about the newness of all the new things in my life on a Monday. It’s a new week, almost a new month, and for me, a whole new everything.

I’m sitting here at my desk, peering out the window at the snowy, tree-lined landscape, dotted with coyote and deer tracks traversing the freshly fallen, white blanket, looking through the swirling line of smoke from my aromatherapy diffuser, into which I put far too much faith and hope for calm, punctuated by a playlist of lo-fi beats that remind me of a loft I never owned, in an unknown city, and relishing in the peace and authenticity of it all.

I jumped off a cliff, and landed here.

Divergent boundaries. Two bodies moving apart, causing a rift valley.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details, as they are unimportant. Life’s tectonic plates shifted, and an oceanic trench was born. It swallowed me whole, into the abyss. No breath. No chance of survival. Submission.

A sad ending, sure. But also, a beginning.

There are aspects of my old life I’ll miss, terribly, including the naievete of a woman who chose to believe in the potential of her life, in the beauty of tangible things, in the glimpses and crumbs of happily ever after, that she chose to ignore so many whispers of caution until the songs were sirens and no longer could be avoided.

I was so focused on carefully curating a version of me, that I forgot the real version of me is better than anything I could ever design or fabricate. That insincerity stole years from me.

But oh, the years ahead of me, full of owning my want, and joy, and peace. I’m white knuckling it from here on out, and I’m not totally sure of my footing yet, but here we are. One step.

Let’s get this out of the way…

SORRY MOM AND DAD.

Right. So. About that.

A small aside before we start chatting about my ass soreness? I have trepidations about sharing this whole topic with the universe, i.e., the 7 people who read my blog, because it seems once I put something out into the ether, almost without fail, it fails. Or disappears. Or, spectacularly, goes sideways. Kind of like when I was dating back in 2015, and I’d inevitably begin sharing with my family details about “this GREAT GUY…”, when almost on fucking cue, the entire operation fell to pieces, and I’d have the breakup text just as I wrapped describing our 2nd date and how I couldn’t wait…*ding*…hang on…oh…*everything ok, Sher?*…oh, yeah…just…that story I just recounted?…DISREGARD.

Here’s to hoping my chapped ass doesn’t ghost on me.

With every fiber of my being, I want to weave this story about how I bought a Peloton without it dripping with privilege and that annoying Goop-like, white girl basic cult feel, but I don’t know if I can. So, bear with me.

I sucked it up and bought a Peloton last November.

OK I KNOW SO DID THE REST OF THE WORLD, SHERRY. YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL.

Yes, Karen…I get it. Ya done?

I’ll admit, I had super low expectations of myself, and in a part of my brain I don’t like to talk about, I resorted myself to the idea this was gonna be a fly by night thing, and like every other workout/exercise/gym/effort to better my health, my ADHD would kick in and I’d be on to the next thing and the Peloton would collect dust and be sold off at a deep discount, and I’d regret buying it, and spiral into some self-hate exercise about my impulsivity and how I’m a quitter, which then turns into the YOU SUCK song. Oh, have I never introduced you to the absolute car crash of a catastrophe that is my psyche? Welcome!

Much to my shock and awe, I’ve embraced this trend to such an extent that I LIKE IT. I keep doing it. I have this whole ritual where I pick out my padded bike pants (because, y’all, even though I have more than ample padding in the caboose, that seat is TINY and hurty and there is NO shame in my game of wearing pants with a giant maxi pad shaped cushion sewn into the crotch and backside to protect my nethers from all that time in the saddle) and matching sports bra, and I click into my cleats, clip into the pedals and ride. I was about to say, I ride like the wind, but let’s be real. I ride like a light breeze. Like a toddler blowing bubbles.

Then, there’s the sobbing.

Peloton instructors, I imagine, attend some sort of seminar to develop their therapy styles and integrate that with their rides and I AM HERE FOR IT. All of it. Whether I need someone to yell at me about how GOOD I LOOK, remind me to LOOK UP (which, how do they know I’m always looking down? It’s uncanny) and drop my shoulders, or whether I need my gay bestie to crank some Britney, bitch, and tell me how damn fine I am and that he’s going to FUCK UP my SHIT, or the Mom-like instructor who tells me to put away my metrics and numbers and ride, and think about the backpack full of all the stuff I didn’t ask for, and didn’t need, and to drop the backpack and listen to the music and just ride and oooooh, here come the tears. Have you ever been riding a weighted stationary bike at 15mph and just started SOBBING uncontrollably, in front of a screen which reflects your ugly crying face back atcha and thank goodness you have a towel to wipe the tears?

And, before you know it, it’s the end of the class, and I didn’t die, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow and do it again tomorrow? Cool.

Stay hydrated my friends.

Your shine.

The world stole your glimmer, snatched away like a faceless thief in broad daylight. That shimmer, accessible only by memory, exists in some parallel presence, in some previous iteration of you. The old you. The you before the universe prolapsed, hurdled to the ground, and dispersed into an infinite dust and light. Here you are, in the now, barely trudging through fog and rain and floods even under crystal clear blue skies.

The voices lie so well, weaving tales of a dullness lasting forever, deservedly tarnished, never again to catch the light that lit a path through the blackest abyss. Your reflection deceives, too, an image of ill-fitting puzzle pieces stitched together by a wounded mind.

I see you, hurting, dying slowly inside, dismantling a bit each day until, eventually, only the hollow shell remains.

Here. Take my hand. Come home.

Rest. Even if the darkness knocked you to your knees, shut your eyes, stay there for just a moment, and contemplate the vastness of your noble strength. Do you feel that? Sit. Be still. Listen with your soul. Did you feel the ground quake? Breathe in the peace that exudes from all around you, exhale the noxious notions plaguing your healing.

The journey back to the light starts inward, to you.

You. The center of universal love. I know, that sounds far fetched. Once you embrace the boundless possibilities, you’ll begin seeing everything through a new lens. One that hones in on the immeasurable love and light in all that surrounds you.

Here, the unloving heal and understand.

The unloved discover the ritual of loving themselves.

What a gift, to love, a sacrament never to be undone. And from love, comes infinite radiance.

Welcome home.

I’ll love you until pigs freeze over.

Each morning, I peek in your room to ensure you’re considering thinking about what it might take to will yourself out of bed. You’re usually already awake, perusing Reddit or snuggling your cat, which is never surprising because your Dad and I hit the kid lottery for sleep. An image of the morning after you began sleeping through the night, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3ish months old, forever etched into my memory – opening my eyes to sunlight, an unusual sight for a new mom of twins, turning to your father, and seeing his disheveled concern, nervously clutching the baby monitor, white knuckled, held up to his ear, carefully listening for signs of life. From that day on, hardly demonstrating FOMO or any interest in burning the midnight oil, you usher yourself to bed without much fanfare.

In stark contrast, your arrival into the world sent shockwaves that reverberate, still.

You and your twin sister landed a bit head of schedule, and while the gruesome details remain unimportant, you entered this world teaching me my first of many lessons in motherhood; sometimes immeasurable beauty lies just on the other side of pain and fear. You blossomed into a roly-poly mop of blonde curls, icy blue eyes, and so… much…energy. All of it, honestly. Case in point, you never walked. You commando crawled, then came the more traditional crawl, then, upon witnessing your cousin run down the hallway, you steadied yourself up on your feet, threw all of your 18 month old caution to the wind, and took off in a blur of Garanimals and giggles.

Another lesson learned that day; when in doubt, always take the next, small step. Or five. Quickly, and in the direction of those you love.

We never expected preschool to prove as challenging as it did for you, and that early experience still regretfully plagues my Momma-heart all these years later. Never did we imagine how overwhelming the input of a classroom of rowdy three year olds would be on your sensory system until we got THE call. The fear and anxiety proved too much and, in an act of desperation to control your environment, you took a swing at your teacher. The sobbing bellow coming from you, behind a locked bathroom door, nearly wrecked me then and the mere thought still activates an instinctual response to GO TO YOU. To rescue that little boy and hold him, as tightly as I can, until your howls and weeping stop and you fall asleep in an exhausted heap, in my arms. That day was both the worst and the start of a new, exciting adventure with teachers and professionals who more than understood you as a diagnosis, but adored you like one of their own. A different tree, but family nonetheless.

To them, I am forever grateful because they gave me you. The real you.

I often tell people it’s easy to love your kids, because it is. But, do you like them? Would you choose to spend time with your children if they belonged to someone else? Maybe most parents would, but that’s always stood as my yardstick for my success in parenting. Sure, part of the job is to prepare you for entry into society as a law abiding, productive adult. I’d argue that’s the smallest part of parenting. Say please, thank you, hold doors, pick up your trash, pay your bills, and your taxes, and keep your hands to yourself. I think we’ve pretty much got that part down.

Recently, I made some monumental changes in my professional life that allow me to focus on shoring up my physical, emotional, and mental health. A pleasant side-effect of such a shift permits me to spend more quality time with you and your sister. I relish the insights born from chats on our car rides to and from school, the steady stream of astonishment over acuity and wisdom you demonstrate far beyond your years. To wit, someone asked you if you even knew what a fax machine was, the comment dripped with sarcasm and certainty that you did not. Your response? “Yeah. It’s like a copy machine. But it copies…(pointing your finger in a far off direction) over there.” If the IOC included sarcasm as an Olympic sport, you’d live atop the medal podium, most decorated in gold.

How proud I was to see you put someone in his place.

Mostly, because that’s so unlike you. You defer. To your sister, to the group, to the family, hell…you often defer to the cat and dog so as not to upset their apple carts. You love so deeply, with an empathetic heart and a clever, kind soul. The mere thought of someone taking offense to your jokes causes a disturbance in your force. Suggesting you disappointed anyone sends you reeling for days. While I acknowledge winning at this parenting thing and raising a conscientious, kind, self-aware, tolerant feminist, I admittedly get low marks for not yet teaching you the value of self care and the need to sometimes disappoint the people you love the most when it means prioritizing yourself. I promise to work on that, post haste.

The other morning, we cracked the fuck up over some Reddit thread you found that mixed idioms and metaphors and created new ones, like “you opened this can of worms, now lie in it” and my personal favorite, “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.” After thinking about it, these “malaphors” resemble a verbal Picasso masterpiece. Sure, the overarching idea of the subject is understood, but Sir Pablo’s journey to achieving that portrait meandered and twisted through some pretty interesting turns. Your childhood and path to being an adult resembles something similar. Seriously, raising you took a whole village held together with popsicle sticks and duct tape and glue and prayers, and burned to the ground a few times from an errant lightning strike, but we rebuilt and are still on track to arrive at our beautiful, priceless destination.

Some days, I catch myself wondering how my kids will describe their childhoods to their therapists.

I’m not that disillusioned to believe growing up in MY house won’t result in the need to pay a well-educated stranger while they sit comfortably in a well appointed office, recounting stories of raucous dinners or “that time my Mom… <insert some inappropriate off-the-cuff commentary here>”. I’ll help pay, since it’s partially my fault they’ll be there.

My son even reminds me of this inevitable fact several times a week. “I’ll file that under ‘What I’ll Tell My Therapist'” he’ll snort at the dinner table after some episode of getting poked with a fork or me pretending to steal his food.

It’s all in good jest, lest anyone think we aren’t a loving family and I never poke hard enough to make a mark or draw blood. What kind of mother do you think I am?

Yesterday, I invited the kiddos to accompany me on a run to the grocery store, which, coincidentally, sits in close proximity to a Starbucks. In the age of COVID, a trip to the overpriced coffee giant stands as one of a select few motivations to propel my ultra-introverts out of the house. A fire, I’m guessing might supersede a Mocha Frappuccino, but I can happily neither confirm or deny. They raced to the car, under the promise of refreshing caffeinated beverages, and we drove to the plaza.

I think back 12 short years, to their toddler and preschool days, and how I dreaded leaving my house with kids in tow. One kid ran away from wherever I stood, the other was non-responsive except when I shouted her name. My full time job consisted of organizing playdates and speech therapy appointments and psychologist visits, and searching for pants that didn’t dig into my son’s sensitive skin or discovering a new hair detangler that allowed me to brush my daughter’s hair without a violent, screaming fit of rage. I desperately wish the term neurodivergent entered the lexicon back then. If 2008 me saw the acceptance and understanding my neuro-atypicals receive at school and in the wild, she’d sob with surprise and awe.

They still struggle, but in ways that resemble more of typical teenagers. Zits and clothes and messy rooms and homework and Reddit upvotes and Dischord live streams fill our days.

Smack in the middle of spring break, nature blessed us here in New England with a 70 degree day, so we made a beeline for our favorite sushi spot in town, ate at a table outside, exchanged memes, and laughed our way through lunch. I sat there, looking at my kiddos-turning-young-adults-I-really-really-adore and the journey of just how far we’ve come wasn’t lost on me.

Two. More. Years.

Two more years, then they’re done with high school. Two more years and my boy embarks on an adventure to some far off land that most couldn’t find on a map to immerse himself in a world of building and creating and exploring and discovery. Two more years and my girl sets off on her own journey, yet unknown, to likely weave her music in some form, or write, or maybe follow her brother, who knows. Maybe she’ll find love. Maybe he’ll finally take his comedy on the road. Two more years and my intrepid partners in crime leave the nest.

I’m not ready.

I read somewhere that babies don’t learn to walk by running a marathon. They get up, give it a go, fall down a lot, get back up, try again, and keep going until mastering the drunk-looking stumble, then teetering into a regular gait, then they run. What a perfect encapsulation of my kids, still mastering the shuffle and gaining their stride, one step at a time. In 15 years, so many steps, so many accomplishments, so many trips and falls, so many restarts, and peeks into their sprints.

But not too fast, kids. Let’s take those next two years in stride.

You are spectacular.

I don’t tell you often enough, and I’m so sorry for that, but I do. I really, really do.  Trying to harness and reign in the sheer vastness of what you are that, to put it mildly, and overly simple, makes me a better person for knowing you, for having been loved by you, overwhelms me to the point of paralysis.  

Almost.  

Because you need cluing into this universal secret that everyone in your orbit already knows, and existing one single second more without you helping author and spin your own epic would do the world such a disservice.

I know.  Right now you’re thinking “this is crazy. I’m not special or remarkable,” and, you’re right.  Special and remarkable pale in comparison to the blinding light of love and laughter that stands as your beacon, drawing in the friends and loved ones you collect like lost ships at sea who finally, after listing and heeling and drifting aimlessly, find your calm shores, a welcome port in life’s storm to rest and love and be loved.  By you.

You’ve been told you’re “too much”, but has anyone ever described the sea as too vast?  Too immense?  Too strong?  Too deep or too powerful?  Never, because there exist no such limits of capacity. No one questions the ferocity of a mother grizzly, the pull of the tide by the moon, the random and total destruction of a hurricane, or the medicinal, calming salve of a tiny baby’s coo.  I count you among these irrefutable forces. Be. As you are. All of you.  

Doubt plagues your beautiful soul, but I challenge you here, today, to acknowledge you as the source of your infinite power.  The keeper and realization of your dreams, the translator of potential into reverence.  The dreamer and lover and doer.  Manifest what is meant for you and lean in.  Listen.  Go be curious. Be wrong. Fail spectacularly. Choose courage, choose bravery, and most of all, choose to soar above the criticism and skepticism rampant in the world and rise above the noise to be everything you’ve ever imagined, and all that I already know you are. 

Love,

Me  

2020 proved the biggest challenge of my entire existance.

It shoveled a fair amount of benign shit my way…mostly situations that involved delaying major life events costing thousands of dollars, navigating complex teenage emotions, and aging parents in the time of COVID, which, all told, claimed zero lives so we’re gonna call that a win.

There was good, too. I spent an inordinate amount of time with my family, specifically regularly disrupting my son’s nightly online gaming shindig with his virtual buddies with a big HELLOOOOOO, a’la Mrs Doubtfire, minus the cool whip on my face (sometimes, because who DOESN’T love a face full of cre…ah. Nevermind…) to check in. Or, redecorating my daughter’s room to clear the massive clutter she’d accumulated, and to reflect her new found obsession with roller coasters, to make up for our summer vacation to Cedar Point, aka the coaster capital of the world, ruined by the virus that shall remain nameless. Or, gathering the entire family, usually via a group text message (our family group is called Jam-A-Lama-Ding-Dong…a play on our other family group, the FamJam…because we’re nerds and proud of it), to assemble at the dinner table for some culinary experiment gone right. I do few things really well in my life, most of them I can’t talk about here, but my cooking skills? They are mad. We spent a lot of time outside, enjoying our pool and surrounding yard, utilizing our three season room, typically just a transition from the house to the deck, it transformed into a second office, a therapy room, a drawing oasis…a chameleon changing its colors depending on the need.

Mostly, though, I spent the year, roughly mid March through the very last second of December 31st, watching Instagram stories of friends and acquaintances, starring mask-less faces in bars, restaurants, and at family gatherings, Facebook posts of others on planes destined for vacations, or weddings. I read (both past and present tense) stories that ripped my heart out of my chest, put it through a blender, and shoved it back down my throat…stories from those working in ER’s, helping patients Facetime loved ones before realizing their fate of proning and a ventilator and almost certain death. My ex-husband, losing his father to heart failure back in April, unable to travel across the Canadian border to say his last goodbye. Canada refused to let anyone from the US into the country back then because we couldn’t get our collective shit together. A very close friend, calling us from the ER, gasping for breath, terrified, and COVID positive, confiding in us his fear, and regretfully wishing he hadn’t “been so cocky.”

He was lucky. He survived. 350,000 others weren’t so lucky.

I mostly distracted myself from the pandemic details by avoiding social media, and with bread baking and rearranging my bathroom closet and throwing myself into work and ALL THE AMAZON SHOPPING. (who else bought a Dustbuster to vacuum the errant hair in their bathrooms? Just me?) But that waned around the time the holidays hit, and reality struck close when my bubble made the difficult decision to forego gatherings with any extended family. Here’s the thing…I like my family. A LOT. We have fun, eat a lot of delicious food, cuss, carry on, and it’s glorious. We agreed the risk of creating our own mini super spreader event outweighed the benefit of spending Christmas and Thanksgiving together, and that was perhaps the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in my whole 45 years on this planet. I cried and yelled and wrung my hands about it for days, because never in my life did I NOT spend the holidays with my family. I clung to the only life preserver I have, the hope of resuming normal holiday functions and operations once this pandemic wanes.

Until then? We do the needful things.

The first sign of the apocolypse is when the extroverts start enjoying Corolockquarancovidown ®.

I started making my bed everyday. Since I was a kid, I NEVER made my bed. Ever. Ask my sister, with whom I shared a room for about 10 years how often I made my bed. She’d say “Uh, fucking NEVER.” Blankets, sheets, stuffed animals, pillows, all in a heap, day and night. I justified my inactions by noting the mess that would ensue each and every night, so why bother? And, she’d be right. But, over these last 187 weeks, among the many things I discovered about myself, I noticed how small gestures, like bed making, bring me peace. Not only do I make my bed each and everyday, I have decorative pillows. Throw pillows. Fancy pillows with buttons and designs that exist simply to plump up the head of my bed and get tossed to the side at bedtime in a pile. I’ve caught my fiance’ sleeping on said pillows once or twice and reminded him, these are not pillows to be drooled on, sir. We’re people of substance and elevated standing so do me a favor and STOP LAYING ON THE FANCY PILLOWS THAT ARE JUST FOR SHOW. We have utilitarian pillows, relegated to the back of the pillow pile for exactly those purposes, and I’d appreciate your cooperation in this new bed making endeavor.

The first horseman is the bed making.

Not to be confused with bread making. Another of our new hobbies up in this piece. Me, the bread maker, and my family, the carb obsessed bread tasters/devour-ers.

Then came the cooking. All the cooking of all the things. Can’t stop cooking and I’m exhausted from cooking. I killed my sourdough starter because I neglected feeding it because I was distracted by assembling a charcuterie board or experimenting with my immersion blender. Schrodinger’s cooking.

And cocktails, old timey style. Hey kids! Screw high school chemistry! Wanna know a real life skill that will get you further in life than algebra? Knowing when to ease up on the bitters in a Manhattan! By the way, use the good bourbon and I like it neat, thankyouverymuch.

I’d personally like a few minutes in a room with whoever designed the Zoom/Teams/Other video call happy hours, and subject them to my particular little slice of hell, which includes listening to one participant’s end while said Zoomer/Teamster/Video caller wears headphones. “Oh….yeah….gr….great….yeah…oh my guitars? Yeah, I play…on occasion…12 string…OF COURSE I CAN….*terrible version of Stairway to Heaven he learned in college*…yeah man, I really wanna play more…HAHAHAHA is Joe a potato?….JOE….how are you a POTATO…recipes?…“

Yes, I’m Tik Tok-ing. I desperately WANT to be a good Tik Tok-er. I aspire to translate my whackadoodle brain into bite sized video form. My obssession has reached the point I’m staying up til the small hours of the morning sending links to my fellow freak magnet niece who GETS ME in a way few do. Give me your tired, your poor, your cat farting, family dancing, cooking and hair tutorial videos all day. I’ll take ’em all. Let’s call that a work in progress.

Yeah, I’ve gained a little weight. And yeah, apologies to the neighbors for sometimes yelling a bit TOO LOUD and each and every living creature under my roof. And, holy shit the number of photos of my cat on my phone might be considered obscene, and my dog barks, A LOT. We watch the Barstool Sports pizza guy reviews and unboxing as a family. Two words…Andrew (fucking) Cuomo. But we’re fat and mostly happy and while I’m not composing a groundbreaking concerto or launching the next BIG THING side hustle turned Amazon level success story, I’m pretty damn proud of our little commune, this particular extrovert in particular. We’re doing the best we can, and that’s gotta be enough.

What a ludicrous time to be alive.

I consider my time at home already a rousing success, as I’ve started putting the finishing touches on my Carole Baskin Halloween costume. Hashtag, flower crown.

Hello all you cool cats and kittens!

My house officially lowered the bar of expectations from “Let’s make the most of our time quaranTYNED and learn an instrument! Or a language! Or clean out the goddamned basement, DEAR” to “If I don’t snap someone’s neck in two before the end of the day, imma call it a win”. Lowering standards in the face of a mandatory global pandemic requiring folks who otherwise wouldn’t see each other much TO SEE EACH OTHER EVERYDAY AND SHARE AND OFFICE AND HEAR THEM CLEARING THEIR THROAT A ZILLION TIMES A DAY AND PARTICIPATE IN THEIR CONFERENCE CALLS IN AN UNOFFICIAL CAPACITY SURE DAN, I’LL SPEARHEAD THAT PROJECT AFTER ALL WE’RE IN THE SILOS HERE could seriously save lives.

What a long, strange two weeks it’s been.

I’ve transitioned from discovering new hobbies to, shit…maybe I should find a Covid Side Hustle. I read somewhere on Twitter that when the world transforms into a feces bombed dumpster fire, we should offer our gifts to the world. Give the thing that we do well to the universe. If I could send y’all a giant lasagna everyday, I WOULD BECAUSE IT CURES ALL THAT AILS JUST ASK MY FAMILY. I cannot, unfortunately, so instead, I’m considering sharing some of my writing in the form of Kindle downloads. I’m still navigating the whole process, but it may pull double duty as a stupid fun project that distracts me from the prospect of never leaving the house again Bubble Boy style, and something to entertain the masses in the same boat. It’s no N95 mask or PPE, but we do what we can.

When we purchased our home, Fiance’ had one (ok, there were many, but we’re focusing on just one for the sake of brevity) request…

He wanted signs.

Yes, we are that annoying household of Karens with a smattering of inspirational and entertaining signs sprinkled throughout the house. On one wall in the living room, there sits a cluster of said signage, including one emblazoned with, “YOU GOT THIS.”

The Sharpie-esque script on white canvas, with a random but intentional arrangement of gold dots for good measure, sits at eye level each time I walk to through the adjacent door to let our dog out to do his business. “You got this…” It’s usually easy to tune out because really, who gives a shit about the quality of watching my dog take a leak in the yard? Really, it’s fine.

“You got this…” as I flop into the couch to watch Tiger King on Netflix, wishing I had a fraction of Joe Exotic’s confidence and chutzpah.

“You got this…” when I serve up a shitty dinner of hamburgers to my cooped up family of 6, no side dishes, with half buns and half bread.

“You got this…” chasing down the dog, taking himself on a walk up the road to see his pals at the other end of the neighborhood.

Today, the getting started to crack. I began questioning my ability to get this, whatever the fuck this is.

The cadence of “You got this…” fades as I fail miserably to concentrate on work, as another panic attack brews and boils over, as my chest twists and tightens with every ring of the Outlook ding indicating another email arrived, as my thoughts wander down the path of the weeks of quarantine turning into months, as the economy crashes, as supplies dwindle, as my confidence in whether my constant anxious presence in my own home is a boon or bane.

I took a nap. I ate. I got some sun, drank coffee, and by sheer force and some goddamned anger that bubbled up from my feet somewhere, I buckled down, got to work and finished up the day as best I could.

But fuck, y’all.

I need to hear from some other anxious souls because I was grossly, immensely unprepared for just how much I don’t have this. My world changed very little amidst the closings and relocations and such, and I’m grateful for my privileged position of little worry in the roof-over-my-head department. That is not lost on me. My job affords me flexibility to work from home, my family’s health remains good, and I have a few dollars in the bank. And yet, despite the safety of my home base, my feet still feel as if they hang off the edge of the cliff to the point of emotional vertigo. Does that even make sense? It’s maddening and the spiral so strong, I’m helpless to stop it.

My goal over the coming weeks is simple, but immense. Be strong enough to look my family in the eyes, and myself in the mirror, say “We got this”, and believe it.