Stop the bus, I need a pickle

(and other relatable honesties)

I write this blog with several goals in mind, the chief among them being to provide entertainment and some levity in a dark chapter. Now that we’ve reached the quadrillionth week of isolation, I’m finding it hard to feel funny. Or think funny. Or think at all, even. I’ve got all kinds of cute shards of ideas in my head. They flash through from time to time, like that neon streak of light you see for a nanosecond after you’ve turned off a bright lamp. Memes! Kids! Foods! Blurgs!

Most of the time, though, I feel weary. Everyone seems either to be manic or depressed, and I guess I’m among the latter. Better luck next week! I’m still happy to be in one of the clubs, ya know? This realization has come as an odd kind of comfort. Besides, it isn’t entirely unfamiliar: I’ve been depressed a couple of times in my life, albeit for brief and situational periods. And this feels something like that did, only more like normal life. Less dramatic. I can get out of bed just fine (although I like to get back in as soon as possible). I don’t feel particularly sorry for myself and I only cry in the shower and when I watch the Schitt’s Creek finale for the third time. Everything feels impossible and pointless, but then sometimes I eat a pickle and it’s better. This seems less debilitating than what I’ve known, but also more profoundly real. Higher functioning, but harder to shake. It goes down to the soles of my feet and it isn’t noisy and it didn’t announce itself, but it is pronounced. It feels like something new and subtle and insidious and a part of me.

Then again, as enticing and convenient as it may be to wrap myself in a big, fleecy mantle of Depression, now I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t simply that I have transitioned into having a plain old, bad personality. That can happen, right? Life experiences change people. I’m grouchy. I’m irritable. I’m short-tempered and impatient. I find it hard to express myself in full sentences due to constant, outrageous levels of frustration, resulting in interactions with my husband that sound like this:

And with my kids:

Child: Mom, can I use the iPad/have a snack/ride my bike/borrow that steak knife/video-call twenty friends in a row from your phone/eat Easter candy for breakfast?
Me: UUUUGH WHAT?!
Child: So can I?
Me: STOP! WITH THE WORDS! OH MY GOD, THE WORDS. FOR THE LOVE OF PETE STOP THE WORDS SHHHHHHHHHHNNNGGGG.
Child (unphased): Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please?
Me: No!
Child: Why?
Me: Because!
Child: Whyyyyyyyy?
Me: OH MY GOODNESS, FINE! FINE. FINE! BLAAAAARAAAAACHHHHHHH—

And then I open my mouth up real wide and my face eats itself and I disappear into a void where nothing is real except the Target app on my phone. But it doesn’t matter because by then my kids are halfway across the house doing whatever thing it is I sort of just gave them permission to do.

This crisis has been rough on everyone, for all kinds of reasons significantly worse than my own. Personally, as a stay at home mom, my days in quarantine have been more of the same. So, so much more. It’s like every quotidian drudgery of my life was amplified by a thousand million infinity percent (numbers aren’t a thing anymore). In theory, this might make it easier for me: I’m not a teacher, but I am a “professional” home-/child-carer. The responsibilities haven’t changed. I don’t have to switch focus between video conference calls and spreadsheets and the needs of my kids.

All. The. Needs.

Instead, it feels infinitely more difficult. In all honesty, some of my burnout predates the moment our “me-time” got ripped away. My days stretch before me like an endless road to nowhere. And I find myself both wishing for what once was and struggling to remember what meaning my pre-quarantine life held. If I can’t endure this concentrated version of my chosen vocation, did I ever enjoy it? Did I even like it? And what am I hoping for on the other end? I’m not sure I can handle the idea of “going back” to more…this. What is my purpose anymore? Is it vacuuming? It feels a lot like vacuuming.

Taking a “NY Pause” (barf) has forced us to examine the ways in which we live—and I can’t say I’m all the way for it. There are some positives, of course. We’re slowing down! We’re out of the hustle and bustle. We’re getting back to the values we hold dearest and we finally have the time to reevaluate our priorities. But what if you live the kind of life that doesn’t hold up to such scrutiny, because part of what makes it work is the ceaselessness of it? And what if, in these most extraordinary of circumstances, some of us are finding ourselves simultaneously at a total standstill and moving at a relentless clip? It’s like being in one of those lazy river loops that’s sort of good and kind of relaxing, but also a little bit nauseating and you want to get off but you know if you do you’ll regret giving up your inner tube to that little shit who keeps kicking people into walls from the side.

Am I the only one who gets stressed out by lazy rivers? It’s not a ride! Why is it better than a pool? It’s like the aquatic embodiment of a subway commute.

Yeah, yeah fine. It totally sounds like a lot of fun right now.

New analogy: I’m on the bus from the movie Speed, and I need to move fast in no particular direction or Dennis Hopper is going to blow me up. And by Dennis Hopper, I mean my brain. And also my kids. And by blow me up, I mean bum me the fuck out but I still have to cook meatballs.

Pop quiz, hotshot: what is your child hungry for? Hint: Something else.

Some weeks, I suppose, it’s just going to be hard to find the humor. But my second goal is always to be as real as possible, in the hopes of normalizing how others might also be feeling. Because in all this incessantly noisy solitude, the worst thought is that you are truly all alone. I, for one, am not super okay. Currently, I am sub-okay. I think that I will be better, eventually, although for the first time I have no idea when that might be (fingers crossed for a manic upswing on the horizon). I miss my family. I miss babysitters. I miss running errands. I miss putting groceries away without spending two hours wiping everything down. I miss buying and returning throw pillows and other assorted decorative accents from HomeGoods.

I don’t miss real pants! There’s that silver lining. I knew it was in there somewhere.

So here’s to existing another week. Without pants. And to all those decorative accents, wherever you are. Wait for me, my darlings. I swear that next time, if the universe gives us another chance, I won’t leave without a geode.