I wrote out the guest list – which, of course, was long and included far too many people to ever fit in our house – but Pete and I finally got a house again, and I wanted people to see it. I wanted so many people near and far to come see where the home we finally built together after years of living apart for work and then living in apartments until we finally accomplished this goal. If you don’t know, just owning real estate in Asheville is quite a feat, and for me, it’s a goal that went back to 2005 if not earlier. Pete and I owned a house in Charlotte – 2 individually and then one together, but we sold our last home in 2017 when home ownership got to be too much while living in two cities. Our sales price was $236K and the new owners just sold it again for $335K, which is the result of a crazy real estate market + a coat of indoor paint. The yard is a disaster.
Our Arden (south of Asheville) home was a build-to-suit, so we spent months monitoring its progress, from dirt lot to foundation to sticks to drywall to beautiful house, planning how we’d transition from apartment to house. We gave our 60-day notice to vacate and found someone to take over our apartment lease. I got “NEW HOME” address label stickers and dreamed of returning to covered garage parking and having my own home office space since our shared apartment office space had become somewhat dominated by Mr. WFH Podcaster (understandable). We closed on July 6th (closing date #4) and then, just days after closing, Pete got a job offer in another city – a city we both come from and almost didn’t hesitate to return to.
Almost.
We’ve put down a lot of roots in Asheville. WWNC was Pete’s 2nd talk show host gig, and it was so much better to him than the first one. It lasted longer, and he got sponsors. And when that job ended and another radio opportunity didn’t pan out, Pete started a podcast. That Pete was good at the podcast was no surprise, but the amount of support he got was overwhelming and touching. When you’re facing unemployment and then self-employment, you don’t forget the people who help you keep your home and keep you fed. We didn’t and don’t want to let any of those folks down. We didn’t and don’t want to leave friends we have here. Oh, and I have a job, too, with some clients I help a great deal and regret I won’t see them through to the end.
But Pete’s opportunity in Charlotte is inarguably good. I never listened to Rush Limbaugh unless he was wrapping up before Pete came on the air, but I understand what an honor it is to fill that time slot. I know that people are watching who goes into that time slot. I know that a door closed before that kept Pete available to have this time slot, and he’s going to knock it out of the park, as he always does, as he already is. I listened to him fill in 12-3 and heard WBT announce that he was the first live host at that time in 30 years. He was worth the wait – and the job is worth the move.
And, yes, we have to move. Pete cannot do his job remotely. It’s a valid question having come through COVID and Pete having been filling in remotely, but that isn’t the job he was offered, and it would lack authenticity, just as if he tried to be an Asheville host from elsewhere. The job is in Charlotte and the job is in person. He could go back and forth – but we did that for about 7 years, and we aren’t doing it again.
We’ll be back to see those of you we’ll be missing in Asheville. We look forward to finally being able to travel to see friends and family in other states, which was a real challenge for my self-employed spouse who obsessively monitored downloads every day he took off. I know some of you are “gaining” us, some of you are “losing” us, and some of you will notice no real difference at all. Having been between Asheville and Charlotte to some extent since 2000, I say that if you miss us, ask to see us. Listen to Pete. Write to me. I am a rock star at keeping in touch and managing the social calendar. Just don’t question our decision – because it is our decision, and it’s hard enough without hearing disapproval from those we love.
If this blog feels weak, that’s because I’m a little weak. I’m between jobs, between homes, between cities (again). There remain a lot of unknowns, there remains a lot of change, and I’m still living around boxes and about to start packing boxes again.
Stay tuned for the unpacked-in-the-next-house-celebrating-our-one-year-in-Charlotte-anniversary blog. I’m holding out for that one.
My plans for the holiday weekend were to move into our new home. The first closing date we were given was June 29th. Then the 30th. Then July 2nd. Now, Tuesday. We communicated everything we knew to the builder’s agents, the closing attorney’s agent, the lender’s agents, and the realtor’s team, including that we had set up utilities and homeowner’s insurance starting with closing date #1, changed it all to closing date #2, hired movers for yesterday and had family coming to help move yesterday, had appliances to be delivered yesterday, TV and internet being transferred yesterday, all of our mail forwarded to a locked mailbox we cannot access until we get keys for the home we’re trying to buy . . . (I’m happy to report that since Hallmark refuses to update my last name since I remarried double-digit years ago, that mail resisted being forwarded and I got it here at the apartment).
You know who cares about all of the work we did to move in this weekend as scheduled? Pete and me. That’s it. Well, also our family who was coming up and our friends who are pretty excited about having the most awesome neighbors ever. None of our planning and inconveniences make a damn bit of difference to a lot of things we’ve learned about buying new construction, some of which I will share here because I have little else to do this weekend and also, I’d like to inform people about things we’ve learned that I wish we’d been told as we went through this process so we’d have known that basically, the lender sets the closing date, at least in this purchase. No wonder people are so excited about cash offers. I thought they were just excited to meet folks with a lot of money and not have to work about prequalification and credit reports and such.
The paperwork we got with the June 29th closing date was from a builder’s rep who has been fantastic, and the paperwork says, “This document serves as notice to the Home Buyer(s) that closing for the home you are purchasing is planned for June 29, 2021. The closing administrator from our attorney’s office will contact you to confirm the exact time . . . This closing notification is subject to unforeseen circumstances that may delay this date.” This was May 14th, and yes, I noticed that ” unforeseen circumstances may delay this date,” but (1) we’ve bought and sold a few homes since 2005 and the ONLY time a closing date ever got delayed for us was in 2008, when everything in real estate went to shit.
We emailed all those folks I mentioned above to let them know we had a closing date. At some point, we responsibly set up utilities and homeowner’s insurance, as we always do when purchasing a home, so we can take a hot shower when we move in, among other things. I understand now that buying a new-construction home is different, because nobody is moving out of that house on the day we move in and making sure to disconnect utilities simultaneously. So I probably didn’t need to bother setting up utilities that we’re now paying for and not using. But I’d rather have them ready than move in and find out we don’t have water. And I try to keep that in mind when, for example, we were out there last night, and every single light was on, inside and out, in the home we don’t own and cannot enter anymore where we pay the electric bill since 06/30g. The fans are even running on the front and back porches. Go on over and cool off . . . on us. I’m not calling to reschedule the utilities again for a closing that I’m not sure will ever happen.
I know it sounds petty to complain about these little costs when we’re talking about (so far) a delay of only a week. I feel very much like Steve Martin’s character in Father of the Bride, ripping open packages of hot dog buns because the stress and costs just got to be too much as they piled up. But the people who initially said, “Oh, just don’t reschedule the utilities again from Wednesday to Friday,” – and now closing is NEXT WEEK, I remind you – are not the people who have to pay the mortgage and the closing costs and the movers and buy boxes (even though we stockpiled every box we found for almost a year) and packing supplies and who bought snacks and paper products for the movers and family to come this past Friday/Saturday who did not come because there was no move. I am always about to cry and/or yell lately. I’m a good time.
Weeks after May 14th, we became informed about a lot of stuff the lender cannot accomplish until certain things are accomplished by the builder. Apparently, the appraisal the lender needs cannot happen until there is a Certificate of Occupancy, and electricity has to be turned on for that to happen, I think. Our impression was that everyone was rushing to make these things happen for what had become a Friday, July 2nd, closing. That would still work for us with everything we had arranged.
There was some mention of a re-appraisal, and I kept asking how much money to bring to closing (because that kind of money is a big deal for us), and then, on Thursday, I got a Closing Disclosure document. It resembles a settlement statement and it told me how much money to bring to closing and I thought, this must be it! We’re on our way now! And then we were told that this document must arrive 3 days before closing, so . . . now we could not close for THREE MORE DAYS. Although I have asked, nobody has told me why we were repeatedly given closing dates that could not possibly happen since we did not have this document. I think everyone involved – except Pete and me – should have known about this law that we’re told cannot be waived. I think they did know, but nobody thought to tell us, and nobody wants to raise their hand and say, “Oh, yeah, I knew that,” when we are livid and disappointed because once again, everything is getting moved and now it’s the worst of the delays because it goes to the following week and we have to move the movers and the family and the appliances and the TV/internet installation and . . .
So, here we are, a three-day weekend that was to be spent with family and friends in our new home, and instead it’s just looking at boxes in our new apartment. I’d go to the gym for lack of anything else to do and to blow off some steam, but my workout clothes and shoes are missing (in a box somewhere). Pete is working hard, as usual, since he agreed to fill in two days next week on the radio not knowing he’d also have a closing next week, and appliance delivery, and be preparing for a move, all while still doing his regular podcast job. My boss is out, which is lucky for me since I’ll work only part of some days next week IF we actually get to buy the house. It’s also lucky for Boss since I have been completely inconsolable and insufferable as our dream has become so difficult to achieve. I’ve had trouble sleeping, and my finger has begun peeling and cracking again.
I don’t know that we could have asked better questions, because we did not know the things we did not know. We have never bought a house that wasn’t an existing home. It would have been very good of the people who knew better to tell us, “Understand that until you get the Closing Disclosure, you will not under any circumstances close until three days past that date.” When I kept asking how much to bring to closing, that would have been a good time for the lender to say, “I’d love to tell you, but the builder doesn’t have electricity or a C.O. yet, and until we have those things, I can’t get an appraisal, and without an appraisal, we don’t move forward, and beyond that, let me tell you about the limits of the Closing Disclosure, which is where you’ll find out how much money to bring to closing . . .”
I pride myself on communicating. This blog is in part a representation of that and in part it’s my therapy and in part it’s me reaching out when I need to share (which I guess is also therapeutic) as opposed to the private therapeutic writing I do in my journal. (My soon-to-be-neighbor friend gave me a new journal because I’ve had so much to write about that I’m almost out of pages and I packed away my blank journals.)
Now, being proud of communicating doesn’t mean it’s done well, but I try. This process has given me further insight and empathy into my relationship with clients who sometimes have court delays they don’t understand, which we cannot predict or prevent; it’s led me to look into things clients don’t know and whether I am clear enough with making sure they know them. One that keeps coming to mind is that in North Carolina, you must be physically separated for 1 year + 1 day before you file for divorce, and you must file for divorce. One party has to actually take action to get divorced. I’ve had clients come to us years after separation, sometimes with a new wedding date scheduled to someone else, who just found out when they went to get a marriage license, for example, that they never divorced the prior spouse. So I always try to explain that very clearly and mark our calendar for the 1-year date of separation anniversary to contact the client again and ask, “Do you want to get divorced?” I hope this experience will lead the folks involved with our purchase to recognize ways they can communicate better . . . but given the questions I’m still not getting answers to, I’m not incredibly optimistic.
On the other hand, if you ever have to reschedule a delivery with Lowe’s, just go to the store. I have spent 2+ hours of my life (yes, I counted the minutes – then hours – on hold) and even when I finally reached a great human in Lenoir, NC, on one call, I got automated texts, emails, and calls indicating he never rescheduled the delivery. Ah, Lowe’s. Dad and I are very disappointed in you.
We went to our new neighborhood last night (hence, the photo) for a cookout at our friends’ house, which was almost as fun as if we’d gotten to just walk down the street to attend, and we got invited to beautiful Madison County tonight for another. People have been very kind to us this weekend in light of everything that did not happen as planned. We had invitations from Oakboro, ATL, and Rock Hill. We appreciate all of you and look forward to traveling again when we have more than the same week’s worth of clothes available to keep rewashing.
I hope to write next from our new home. If not, I might write to you from jail, because come Saturday, we’re moving to that neighborhood one way or another. Do any locksmiths read this blog?
Happy Independence Day, also. It’s a beautiful day today, I saw some beautiful fireworks last night, I hope all of your animals are safe and not terrified by what sounds like a rocket attack to them, and I hope we all have a happy and safe weekend.
This will be a rather unimpressive woe-is-me blog, but despite feeling kind of lousy all day and thinking I might fall asleep before sundown, I found myself lying in bed with my mind too active and thought I would do some share-writing versus journaling. I should take some melatonin.
I sneezed all day; it isn’t the vaccine (yet) making me feel lousy, it’s just the weather. And my noisy head could be any number of things.
Mom’s 8th death anniversary is Monday. EIGHT YEARS. I still drive her car, and her #1 Hockey Fan/God Bless America pins that she taped together and hung from the rearview mirror with a wooden Christian fish symbol (I think I had one of those Christian fish, too) fell down this week. I kept them, but won’t hang them back up in the car. Those were Mom’s and I will let them go and I will move forward, a little. Better for them to release on their own than for me to take them down when that car dies and I have to trade it. What a torrential downpour of tears that will be.
Although Jenny had to remind me that we are in the period of April when Mom was dying, I think I always know it subconsciously when this time of year rolls around. April 15th is the last day (in 2013) when I saw her alive and “well.” It also would have been Ditto’s birthday, but we euthanized him just weeks prior this year, and wow, do we miss him. We expect to see him constantly and everywhere in this apartment. I just left Pete in bed and closed the door and looked for Ditto to push or pull it back open. That was a “fun” game we played when I stayed up late.
I’m struggling at work. I’m constantly displeased and frustrated. I see so much room for improvement and so little desire to change. I feel that I am quite good at what I have been doing for over 20 years, and yet I am not given the tools or support to do it as well as I could. I could go on, but everyone’s tired of hearing it and sometimes, I’m tired of saying it. Pete says, “They hear you; they just don’t agree with you.” Well, I’ve been there before.
The weekend we lost Ditto, I also lost a friend – because the friend sent me an unsolicited picture of his genitals. I’ve debated writing publicly about this and been advised against it and thought I wouldn’t, but there isn’t much I don’t share from my own experiences. I want people to know IT IS NOT OK TO DO THAT, but the people who need to hear that, I suspect, won’t actually learn from hearing those words, not from me or anyone else. Because the response I got when I said it was unacceptable and should never happen again was, “Oh, I’m just kidding; oh, it’s just me; oh, I don’t give a damn.” There may have been a “sorry” thrown in for good measure once it was clear things had gone awry. I made it 45 years before I was assaulted in this way, and now I realize how disgusting it is to have someone force their genitals visually on someone else – especially someone who trusts them. I keep wondering why it happened to me, and I think the answer is that I was just a girl on the other end of a text message conversation with a guy who decided to send a dick pic. I’ve researched why it happens, and it seems to be (1) to get a similar photo back and/or (2) to lead to sexual activity. Well, neither of those things happened. What happened is that I told my husband, I blocked contact, and we lost a friend – because, to make matters worse in some ways, my husband and I both knew the a**hole who thought he could fool around with me and betray my husband.
I seem to be losing a lot of friends, and/or have lost a lot of friends, and/or my friendships are changing in the recent past/immediate present. I know this happens, but for me, who is part The Loyalist (Type Six — The Enneagram Institute), ending relationships (including quitting jobs) IS HARD. I’m trying to heed the signs when a relationship needs a breather or is done (am I doing all the contacting? do I actually not enjoy the person?), but it feels like such a loss – until I spend time with people who remind me how much better and easier relationships can be. People move in and out of each other’s lives. It just happens. Sometimes we stay, sometimes we come and go, and sometimes we just go. I think I will adopt the Marie Kondo philosophy when it comes to relationships: do they bring me joy?
So, a lot has happened since I last posted. I’ve done a lot of journaling. I’ve done a lot of crying. I’ve done a lot more studying my enneagram and talking to friends and family, and I hope to be able to see my therapist in the near future, because I need even more insight and support – which, naturally, is why I am writing here as opposed to my “Why am I so freaking freaked out right now?” journal. That book is a great listener, but it doesn’t respond so much.
Holy cow, I’m burning up. This might be the vaccine. Pete is going to be so happy when I turn the ceiling fan on. Good night, all. Thanks for listening.
I got my first dose yesterday of the Moderna COVID vaccine. I wanted the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, because I was nervous about getting vaccinated at all, but the first place to offer me a spot in line offered me the two-dose Moderna vaccine, and I accepted. I considered not getting vaccinated at all. We are a year or more into the pandemic and I have either successfully avoided it while going to work in person, going to the courthouse, going to the post office, going to the grocery store, dining out, getting takeout, and seeing people – or I’ve had COVID and never known it. While doing all of the things I mentioned, I’ve also stayed home more, worn masks, washed my hands (even enjoyed a nice salt scrub something-or-other at a bathroom in Florida), and made more of an effort to keep a safe distance from folks in public. But I am not the person who has done all of the right things for the last year. I am just a person.
I have no strong opinion on the vaccine(s). I watched as my social media feeds became more about who was getting the vaccine than who had gotten COVID, and that seemed like a positive trend. At the time I got my first shot yesterday, 4 people in my office of 8 people had been vaccinated at least with their first dose (I make 5). What that said to me is, “I don’t need to get a vaccine. Everyone around me will soon have gotten it. Vaccinated people = safe people.” That isn’t the attitude I have about any of the other vaccines in my record, but this is a new virus and we’re still figuring it out, including whether vaccinated people spread COVID (which seems absurd to me, because I thought the whole point of a vaccine was to prevent the vaccinated from getting the virus, but I ain’t a doctor or a scientist). But people who have gotten the vaccine and not died or had bad reactions to it (which I think is damn near everyone) are very positive about the vaccine, and at least one person in my office who received it has asked me several times when I’m getting my shot. She actually connected me with the pharmacy that got me an appointment. Given my personal experience with either avoiding COVID or being asymptomatic, I didn’t feel a strong urge to get vaccinated. I am not high risk by way of comorbidities except that I’m a bit fatter than I’d like to be. I’m only in my 40s. I’d rather everyone else who wants it and needs it more than me get it first. I have at least one friend itching to get it who can’t because her job hasn’t been deemed essential, and mine is just close enough to the court system to qualify. I think she’ll get her chance soon, because it seems like the phases are opening up rapidly.
I also wasn’t anxious to get the vaccine because I was anxious about getting the vaccine. It’s new. It’s unknown. A small number of people have died from it (I found one article from January that said 55 people in the US had died from COVID vaccines and then another article in March saying one more, plus I heard of a girl recently, so, let’s say 57 and understand that this number is going to be a bit off because VAERS is too complicated for me to search), but it’s scary to voluntarily inject something into my body that could kill me to prevent catching the virus that so far hasn’t killed me or even made me sick. (In case you’re wondering, I know COVID is a bigger problem than just how it affects me. I wrote about that some time ago: Please hug me – Christy Said It.Com.)
But I fully supported every friend and family member who got vaccinated. I was genuinely happy and hopeful for them. I expected nothing bad to happen to them (and nothing has). I had to carry that positivity through for myself. Also, I participated in a drug trial for a migraine medicine that I think I now use. It’s great! And after several years, it finally led to a generic that costs me hundreds of dollars less for a mere 8 pills. I’ve been a guinea pig before. This is how we learn – but yes, it’s risky, and it’s uncertain. Everyone who has lived this pandemic is participating in scientific trials one way or another. Herd immunity, vaccines, COVID survival immunity, death, mental trauma, on and on the list goes.
I write this blog because this pandemic has revealed such varying responses amongst all of us who are experiencing it. A mask is either a life-saver or a political tool. If you don’t wear it, you must care for no one. It couldn’t be that you are medically excused or have been vaccinated. (And for what it’s worth, although I think my vaccine should = setting my masks on fire and hugging strangers, the scientists haven’t caught up to me yet, and I guess I’ll hold onto them just like I keep wearing high heels and uncomfortable underwear – which is a different blog for a different time.)
A vaccine can’t just be hope and scientific exploration as we try to end a pandemic I think it’s safe to say nobody wants (but some will disagree with me even on that) – I have had conversations with people who explained the evilest of intentions for the vaccine while not pausing to consider that I had loved ones who had received it. I got my shot, in part, to put an end to that nonsense – not that it will. I have encountered a sad lot of conspiracy theories recently and my only conclusion is that reality is too much for some folks to accept.
I’ll be in touch again after dose #2 – unless, of course, I die. But, should that happen, my Will is done and I will have contributed to science one way or another. Some days, death would be better than reading COVID memes and other posts about who’s smarter than whom in a pandemic where even the people with science and medical degrees are still figuring it out. (In other words: we’re all still figuring it out. When you think you’re the smartest person in the room . . . keep thinking.)
I used to have a postcard that said, “I have AIDS. Please hug me. I can’t make you sick.” This is what it looked like: https://www.zazzle.com/i_have_aids_please_hug_me_hiv_aids_posters-228770239096166330 It struck me how lonely it must be for someone suffering from an illness that caused people to avoid them, to not want to touch them, to not want to show them physical affection for fear of catching what they had. I’ve been thinking about that epidemic again recently because of the novel coronavirus, which comes with its own fear, ignorance, and hope. You’ll find no answers here about what works, but a few gripes about what doesn’t, so I apologize in advance, as I know it’s best not to offer criticism without a solution. It’s a largely invisible virus. I could write that I’ve never had it, but that might not be true. I might just not know I’ve had it. Isn’t that fun? It’s made us afraid of literally everyone. It’s made us fear ourselves. My husband and I didn’t go see his parents over the summer because they are over 70 and therefore high-risk . . . and also, they live in New York, which presents its own visiting challenges. But now we’re at a point where they are having trouble coming to us and we have trouble getting to them and we wonder – we really contemplate – if we’ll see this important family of ours again before they die. That is not to be underestimated, and I know we aren’t alone. I have a friend whose father was in a facility for dementia. Isolation (because COVID spreads like wildfire in nursing homes and the like and visitors are kept out) + confusion caused him to deteriorate rapidly. He asked his family what he did wrong because they didn’t visit him anymore. I almost cry every time I remember that question. I know this is not an isolated incident. I’ve heard of people visiting through windows, through Zoom/Skype/what-have-you, and not at all. The facility kept my friend’s father safe from COVID and he died of loneliness. The introverts seem to be thriving from the lack of social interaction. The extroverts (one of them is writing this post) are deteriorating. The negative social impact of COVID gets so little attention because me longing for hugs is so much less important than whether my touch might lead to someone literally dying. I get it. Probably every person who’s died by suicide since COVID got it, too. They saw the reality of no end in sight to a virus we can’t control. I don’t know why they decided to die – loneliness, job loss, addiction, fear, death of someone close to them, all of those things and more? People will keep trying, arguing, blaming, and maybe this vaccine will work better than the flu vaccine. Someone told me he knows someone who already got a vaccine shot. Maybe we’re close. Maybe I’ll get used to seeing half of most people’s faces and not touching anyone except the one person I live with (some people don’t even have that) and being called a selfish killer if I want to indulge in the life I used to know once in a while. The difference between COVID and the postcard I referenced at the beginning of this blog is that you don’t catch HIV or AIDS from hugging someone and you might catch COVID from being within 6’ of someone, much less hugging them. Another difference is that when HIV and AIDS happened, society as we knew it wasn’t threatened. Businesses weren’t closed or asked to reduce their capacity to keep others away from people who might have this unknown virus and not even know it yet while exposure and transmission were figured out. Alcohol sales weren’t stopped because people might get drunk and forget to have safe sex. I think dealing with a global pandemic is difficult enough without also adjusting to the destruction of normalcy and worrying about whether we will lose our jobs and be able to find cleaning supplies and toilet paper on top of it. I think there are so many branches of worry from COVID that we can barely comprehend, process, and tolerate them all. Or, maybe that’s just me. I gave a friend a birthday card this month that said something like, “Doctors say if we stop drinking and smoking and eat right, we’ll live longer. In fact, it might feel like forever.” Get it? Time flies when you’re having fun. The moments crawl by when you’re not. We make our choices. We assess our risks. The problem with COVID, again, is that I assess that in November of the year in which we discovered COVID, I have either dodged it for months or am asymptomatic. Lucky me! But it isn’t fair for me to decide I can expose others because I’m unaffected, since some of those people could die or live with post-effects of COVID. Also not fair is eliminating key portions of the life I have built and loved, and eliminating some people’s livelihoods, in an attempt to prevent the spread of a virus that I’m fairly certain cannot be contained. So, what’s the solution? To voluntarily isolate everyone who doesn’t want to be exposed? How do they generate income? Do we have enough people who are willing to be exposed to continue to work and deliver supplies? I haven’t missed a day of work due to coronavirus. I go to the grocery store because if I don’t, someone has to bring me groceries. Some stores make me bag my own groceries (because I still use my own bags – a pandemic is no time to forget about the environment, people!) and some have one-way aisles, and some don’t. I’ll discuss inconsistency later. I go to restaurants because I very much want those businesses to survive (and I (used to) enjoy dining out). I wear masks and judge people who wear them incorrectly even while questioning if they are the great solution they’re promoted to be. I wash my hands. I use hand sanitizer. I get my temperature taken and answer COVID Qs. I try to avoid strangers and I shop online more than I used to because that seems like a better idea for everyone except the person who has to bring me things. Inconsistent policies don’t work – people see double standards and nonsense and quit listening, especially if they are looking for an excuse not to comply – and a lot of people are. Yesterday’s Executive Order in NC said that people must wear Face Coverings while exercising if they are outdoors and within 6′ of someone who does not reside in the exercising person’s household or indoors and not within their own home, but professional or collegiate athletes are exempt from this requirement until they are not strenuously exercising or when they are recovering from recent exercise. I’m not in great shape. Working out is challenging enough for me these days without trying to breathe hard through a mask. Wearing a mask just to run errands seems to make me extra dehydrated. Why can’t I have the strenuous exercise exemption? Is it because my exercise doesn’t lead to any financial gain? Also in NC, ABC (liquor) stores were labeled “essential” from day one, but bars – not breweries, not wineries, not restaurants – just “bars” – have really fought to reopen, and now businesses cannot serve alcohol after something like 11pm. I also saw that Pennsylvania is banning alcohol sales tomorrow as some kind of Thanksgiving deterrent. Across the world, international and domestic travel has been uninterrupted to my knowledge (save for some select US cities/states that I believe prevented access for a bit). How do you demonstrate to people that a global pandemic is severe and serious and must be contained by them staying home while allowing them to get on a plane and go . . . anywhere? Back to the birthday card I gave my friend: there is no joy for me in living to be 100 and spending the next decades socially distant from everyone I love, unable to form any new, meaningful relationships, watching businesses close, nowhere to go but home and work (where I now also must wear a mask if I exit my private office, since the vast amount of hours I spend here still doesn’t count as living with these folks). The masks are the least of it, to me, because so many people have been wearing them since the beginning nearly incessantly at their jobs. Heroes don’t wear capes anymore: they wear masks. Perhaps my frustration comes from the solutions being offered creating a world I don’t want to live in. I am not suicidal, so don’t get the wrong idea by this post. I’m lonely, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I’m looking for a great solution where apparently none can be found. And when I look for solutions . . . when I look for peace . . . when I look for change . . . when I have few options . . . I write . . .
The enneagram (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions) is a fascinating insight into yourself. My top 3 enneagram types are helper, loyalist, and peacemaker. I think all three of them factor into why it bothers me so much that for the last approximately four years, I have watched friends call other friends racists and accuse them of violence against LGBTQ folk, among other things, because they voted for Trump for President of the United States. I am done arguing the merits of these positions. I am done arguing about a president I did not vote for. I have never encouraged anyone to like him, or to vote for him, or to hate him with the blind rage that has led so many people to forget various good qualities in the people they know who voted for him. There are a myriad of reasons why people make the choices they do in the voting booth, and the tough pill to swallow is that it is the right of each person to vote for whomever they chose for whatever reason they deem worthy, just as much as it is the right of each person not to vote at all. We may disagree with the choice not to vote or the selection on the ballot, but it’s not our business. That’s how it works.
People have shown that they are willing to terminate relationships that were once deep and enduring – relationships that have lasted decades and beyond – for someone who won’t even be in office as long as those relationships they just killed. Whatever DJT actually does will fade with time or be undone by the next president. If he had actually built the wall (Have you noticed? He didn’t.), the next president could just tear it down. Not to mention the modest understanding I have of government being that we have three branches run by lots more people than just the one president, which is a fantastic way to ensure that even if he is the reincarnation of Hitler, he isn’t likely to get away with much without the cooperation of a lot of other people – those people being everyone else in government who has to agree to whatever he wants to do. I haven’t noticed a lot of agreement in government on . . . anything. Ever. In my life. No matter who was President.
I don’t understand how we’re at a point where I am not going to tell people who I vote for anymore. Not because I think I might vote for Trump and endure every bit of venom I’ve seen directed at so many people I love since 2016-ish. Not because a friend left the table when we disagreed about my vote for governor. But because those examples and others have shown me that there is rarely understanding anymore, and that other people mistakenly think it is their prerogative to tell other people that they voted wrong. It’s too much of a risk to figure out whether I’m talking to someone who says, “Hey, free country, we have four political parties and half of them might win – your vote is as worthy is as mine,” or whether I’m talking to someone who might say, “Your vote tells me what a hater you are. Don’t even bother explaining. Just unfriend me.”
How did we get here? How have we elected a Black President and legalized gay marriage and learned to understand and become considerate of pronouns and fluid genders only to be shut-upped and ostracized because we voted for someone else? I understand that electing Barack Obama didn’t end racism, and gay marriage is still not as secure as it needs to be, and there is a whole lot of work to be done on the gender stuff. But there is also a whole lot of work to be done on tolerance, and seeking to understand, and remembering who people are and not exiling them from our lives over A TEMPORARY ELECTION. AN ELECTION THAT HAPPENS EVERY FOUR YEARS. I understand the power of the presidency. And the vice presidency. And the senate. And the governor. And on and on and on. But the power that concerns me most these days is the destructive judgment in personal relationships, leading friends and family to personally attack each other for making a different choice. That is a divisive, cruel, door-slamming power. It is irreparably harming relationships.
Earlier this year, cops marched with BLM protesters (https://people.com/crime/police-join-protesters-marches-across-country/). That is finding a common goal amidst a huge chasm. It was beautiful, powerful, and healing. Calling your friends and family violent, ignorant bigots over a guy who will be out of office no later than 01/01/2025 is not. And it very well might push those friends and family farther to the right when dialogue and a sincere attempt to understand could have brought them closer to the middle ground.
The president will never be as powerful as the love and hate we feel for each other down here in the real world. The president is an office. He will do his time and move on. What will be left for us?
Going back to the days of Ross Perot, I don’t remember being very excited about a candidate I voted for, other than the local elections once I became an adult and personally knew some of the candidates. It generally seems to me that somewhere in the course of a politician’s career, the higher you go, eventually you will find disappointment and dishonesty, even if his or her intentions are initially very good. (Was I the only one not surprised when, “Read my lips: no news taxes?” turned out to be a false promise? Oh, did a politician have an extramarital affair again? Oh, is an important bill being used as a political pawn, or did they insert some language into it that is completely irrelevant to the bill?) Local elections and small government are not exempt from disappointment and dishonesty, but I can’t think of a District Court judge I’ve voted for that I considered a “politician” in the same way that I do as people move higher up in the political world. Some of them did a good job and some of them didn’t, and that’s one beauty of the power of our democracy: if I had to wait years to get an Order back from a judge; if a judge made a ruling that contained findings that were not in evidence; if a judge showed up to court late and left early and sometimes dozed off on the bench during a hearing, then blamed us for not finishing on time . . . I am not going to vote for that judge to come back.
But I digress.
Never have I considered a candidate flawless, or heroic, or demonic, and never have I seen relationships challenged and harmed the way they have been since 2016.
I have written this blog in my head so many times, and sometimes even started writing it here, and always deleted it because I know where it will end. I’ve seen it play out all over social media and sometimes even in person. The only right answer is to abhor Donald Trump, and everyone who does not also abhor him. People are attacking people they have known their entire lives because of hatred for a virtual stranger who became President of the United States for a maximum of eight years. I am not going to argue opinions or facts about Donald Trump here because I have concluded over the last four-ish years that they truly don’t matter. I did not vote for him, but that isn’t enough, and if presented with something I can actually prove based on a video or transcript to be factually inaccurate, the response I usually get is only a new argument, not an admission that the first accusation was incorrect. This is dangerous. It isn’t objective. It is not the intelligence I have known in my real-life friends for years and decades.
And then there are the personal attacks. All it takes is a retweet of a news article or a sharing of an opinion and hurtful personal attacks are made. Have people in my life always felt this way about me and were just waiting for an opportunity to let me know? What is it about Donald Trump that has driven so many people to new expressions of anger and hatred?
I don’t belong to any political party and I don’t expect that I ever will. Every election season, I can muster up something resembling hope through the primary, and then I see who’s left as candidates and I’m back to picking out the best of generally undesirable-to-me options. I guess it would be a wonderful feeling to be truly excited about a candidate, and in that regard, I can understand the disappointment when Hillary lost.
I vote for people – not just the candidates, but those of us down here who need to believe they might do something for us. I vote for ideas. I vote for what has been done and what is promised to be done. My research for the upcoming election is 84 pages. I take every candidate seriously, even the unopposed ones. Just because you’re unopposed and are going to win doesn’t mean I will vote for you. And in 11 days when early voting begins, there remain some candidates I am not excited about, some candidates I am uncertain about. But my perspective in this election has been changed by a lot of bullying. A lot of attacks. Insistence that the current president has “forfeited his right to lead” and telling me therefore how I should vote, which was somewhat interesting because leaving the ballot blank was an option encouraged by this person, when I have been told by others that not voting against Donald Trump wasn’t good enough.
One of my favorite quotes has always been, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is likely why I tend not to unfollow people on Facebook and I also don’t hate people who post things that make me cringe. I like to know where people stand. I like to know how people think. I remember it.
So, how to end this blog? There are no minds that will change. There is division and, for me, sadness. Stress. Loss. The helper/loyalist/peacemaker (that’s me) cannot heal the rifts in so many relationships. Cannot bring clarity to either side that lacks it. I just watch, and learn, and wait. In 11 days, early voting begins, and this year, I will likely remember why the ballot booth is private.
I generally try to play devil’s advocate. But when two white men in Georgia in a pickup truck pursue a black man on foot (and a third man follows in another vehicle, whom I haven’t seen, but I assume he is also white), and the two white men have shotguns and approach the black man aggressively because they think he looks like a burglar and they feel authorized to make a citizens’ arrest, even though one of them was former law enforcement and should have known a myriad of better ways to handle the situation, there is no defense for this. It reeks of every bit of redneck racism I have spent my whole life as a white southerner trying not to represent. And it has bothered me since the moment I heard about it – nearly three months after it happened. Nearly three months after Ahmaud Arbery was killed and should have been planning his 26th birthday and how to celebrate his mother on Mother’s Day.
I am generally of the impression that white people are regarded skeptically, at best, when we opine about race relations. Yet I also see posts saying that we need to be talking about this, and I think the need to talk about this is more important than worrying how I will be lambasted for my ignorance in this writing. White people being quiet about things like the death of Ahmaud Arbery, which SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED, is not helpful in the fight against racism, prejudice, bigotry, and white supremacy. Have I left out some names by which it is called? So many forms, so many names.
I have lived my entire life in North Carolina, which is part of the American south, the part that is associated with slavery and the rebel flag. I, too, thought of the rebel flag only as a symbol of my southern history until someone compared the Confederate flag to the Nazi flag as in, both represent organizations that no longer exist. To be clear, I never had a Confederate flag, but that comparison struck a chord with me and I can’t look at the Confederate flag the same way anymore. Do you want to tell me about the good things it represents? Stop it. Move forward. The war is over. Do you also want to tell me about the citizens’ arrest “defense” in the pursuit of Ahmaud Arbery?
When I thought that citizens’ arrest was legally permitted in Georgia, I argued that the law should be changed if not repealed altogether, and I asked people who argued that the McMichaelses had the right to pursue Ahmaud, “Is this the standard you want for yourself and your loved ones? If someone thinks you MIGHT have committed a crime, you wish for armed strangers to pursue you and take you against your will?” What a terrifying world that would be. Even the law doesn’t get it right all the time. Now we let ordinary citizens give it a go without any training?
There is an article (https://thedispatch.com/p/a-vigilante-killing-in-georgia) that attacks the arguments that have followed since Ahmaud Arbery’s death that his pursuers were legally entitled to citizens’ arrest him. I am grateful for people who have done a better job than most of us at playing Georgia lawyer.
That article further attacks claims people have made about a string of burglaries that Ahmaud Arbery may have committed, which defenders also say are videotaped. Let it be known:
If you google “Ahmaud Arbery video” and even add words related to burglary or burglar, you will not find a video other than the one that shows him being pursued and killed by men who should not have pursued him. You will now also find several references to the lack of burglaries that have been alleged by supporters of his killers.
I assume that Ahmaud Arbery did not commit the one burglary that happened before he died, or we would have heard it about it by now from someone other than people attempting to defend his killers. The Georgia DA’s office should make a statement clearing his name about that. If they have, I missed it.
I don’t care if Ahmaud Arbery committed any crime, ever. Even when I was under the impression that citizens’ arrest was legal in GA, I 100% disagree with what happened. If you think you see a criminal, call the police and let them handle it. If you have issues with the police, that will have to be another discussion, but you don’t grab weapons and pursue someone on your own.
Unless, maybe, you hope you can be justified in killing that person. Because you think you are superior to him in some way.
There is video of what happened. There are phone calls from the killers explaining why there were doing it. It is 2020 and I thought we were so far beyond these kind of things, and then this happens and jars me awake and reminds me that even if racism and white supremacy don’t exist in my life, in my relationships, in my heart, they are very alive and real, and they must be fought – although they may never be ended – because they could hurt someone I love, and they could hurt someone else who just went for a run one day. Just left the safety of his home and went outside and was seen by someone who literally thought he looked a certain way.
I have a good friend who used to patiently listen to me at dinner when I would ask her why race relations still seemed so tense. I thought things were so much better, right? We’re having dinner and we’re friends (one black, one white) and both of us seem to have pretty great lives, and I thought the world had advanced so much. She and I were both paralegals, worked at the same place, we both have moms named Betty . . . our country elected a black President . . . from my perspective, I could go on and on about how things seemed so good now – the sky’s the limit! – so why are things still apparently so bad?
My friend never answered me, just listened. I remember many nights going home and wondering why she never answered me, never said anything. I wasn’t being rhetorical. I was genuinely asking. And all this time later, I wonder if my friend was thinking, “Um, sure. Things are better. Better than when we were slaves, and then freed to an uncertain future where we weren’t allowed to vote or attend the same schools as white people, and it was illegal for black and white people to be married, and black people couldn’t use white people’s water fountains or bathrooms or entrances to buildings, and even some deeds said the property couldn’t be owned by a black person, and we couldn’t sit at the lunch counter and had to give up our seat on buses, and the list goes on, but yeah, I suppose it’s better than those things other than the things going on still today that are making you ask this question.”
My friend and I simply don’t have, and never will have, the same experiences. And no matter how much love I have for her, or she for me, the beautiful bubble of our friendship is not large and protective enough to erase the prejudice and hate that remains in some other people’s minds and hearts. What I see when I look at my friend is not what everyone else sees when they look at her. And I don’t know how to change that. I don’t know that I can change it. A person on social media, when I asked that question about if citizens’ arrest was a standard he wanted for himself and his loved ones? He said yes.
But just because change isn’t easy doesn’t mean we don’t try. I wasn’t raised in a magical world where I was never taught to discriminate against other people. I rejected that instruction. No one is worth more or less because of their skin color, their income, their religion, their gender – the list goes on. But sometimes, I still need other people – as we all do – to show us yet another perspective. It’s often difficult to understand experiences we haven’t had and to see perspectives we haven’t known. For a modern-day example, tune in to Keeping Up With the Kardashians sometime. I haven’t seen it in a while, but what looks to us like absurdity to most of us is just the life they have. They don’t know any different. We could try to bring them down to reality like they did with Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton in The Simple Life, but Nicole and Paris always knew they were going to get to leave those lower- and middle-class American lives and go back to luxury, so how seriously did they really have to take it?
I think that might be a good comparison to white privilege. We can care and talk and write and fight, but at the end of the day, being black is a not a reality we know. We need to listen more than we talk – but we still need to talk. We need to not laugh politely at bigoted jokes. We need to speak up when someone uses the N-word, even if they’re “just repeating it”. And we need to quit being defensive in the wake of things like the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. You didn’t do it. You wouldn’t do it. But did you know there were people who would? That’s a real problem. Let’s think about how it feels – how very real it is – for black people who might just be jogging one day when someone decides they look like a criminal and try to “talk to them.” That should not be today’s world. It really should not ever have been the world, but we can only deal with today forward.
Sometimes we hear, or maybe even say, things like, “Wow, I didn’t know this was [insert some other year from another decade here] anymore.” And in conversations with my husband, we discussed that some of the progress that’s been made has only been within our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of people just a couple of generation back. In other words, you can talk to grandparents who lived through civil rights riots, had fire hoses and police dogs turned on them, and were refused seating. There’s a movie called Green Book set in 1962 that depicts, among other things, black lodging versus white lodging, black people not being allowed out after sunset, and a black performer (Don Shirley) not being allowed to eat in the main dining room of an establishment where he was expected to perform later for the other (white) diners, and being given a dressing room in a broom closet for that concert. That’s only 58 years ago. And we can now just go back a few months to cite another senseless, hate-motivated killing of a black man. Wow, I didn’t know it was 2020 anymore. Chances are, someone else has died and we just don’t know about it. Without a doubt, the McMichaelses only got arrested this month because of the national attention Ahmaud Arbery’s death finally received.
I’m angry. I’m angry that people of my own color represented white people in a way that I detest, that I disapprove of, in a way that I disavow. I’m sad for Ahmaud Arbery and his loved ones. I’m sad for people who see themselves in him and in their loved ones and now feel more worry and sadness. Every time something like this happens, it sets us back. Sometimes I feel we’ve had so many setbacks, we have not moved forward at all.
7 years ago today, my mom died of pneumonia that she came down with while on chemo for esophageal cancer. She was diagnosed in December with this 4th round of cancer. Every time before, she had mouth cancer, and she beat it, so I wasn’t even incredibly worried. It was unfathomable to me that she would die.
It was the first time she’d been prescribed chemo. I took her some Ensure on April 15th (easier for me to get from Presby downtown since I worked nearby) and I snapped a photo of her and Dad because they looked really cute and happy as I left their house. It was the last time I saw Mom alive and well. It was the last time I saw Dad really happy.
Mom’s death was the first significant loss of my life, and it spawned other significant events, most importantly that when Dad was diagnosed with glioblastoma almost exactly a year later, he decided after one round of treatment that he was ready to move on and join Mom (which to me also sounded like, leave Jenny and me behind). Dad was diagnosed in April 2014 and died in January 2015.
Even before Dad died, he had decided to sell the house where he and Mom are pictured, which they had bought in 1977, where Jenny and I grew up. His cancer surgery and treatments had caused some impairments, and so he sold his truck that he was no longer allowed to drive and moved in with Jenny. The sale was finalized in February after his death. Losing both parents and our childhood home was a lot. I still can’t go back to my old house, to that neighborhood, without a lot of pain. I knew those losses would come . . . even as Jenny and I discussed keeping the house to rent it, we knew were just trying to hold on to the past, to our memories, to our treasures. What made that place magical was the people who inhabited it and the memories we created there. It was time to let it go and hope someone else would find the same magic in it we had known. Knowledge that it was purchased to be a rental property and a few drive-bys to see how poorly the landscaping has been kept tell me that dream hasn’t come true (yet), but – it does still say “LYNN” on the mailbox, and that makes Jenny and me and the neighbors who also miss the days before we sold it smile.
Mom’s death also opened our eyes to how we deal with stressors and loss. Jenny’s anxiety/panic returned with a vengeance; Dad was diagnosed with depression and started taking medicine for it (which I realized he should have been doing for…ever); and I discovered somewhere between the death of Mom and the death of Dad that I wasn’t coping well with stress and needed to talk to a therapist and consider medicine, also. So far, I’ve managed with writing, talking (to a therapist), and over-the-counter aids, but I see a lot of Mom in me. She had been on anxiety medicine when she died, and we’re both sort of helper/giver/overachiever types who tend to do too much, worry too much, and wear ourselves out.
It was actually during Mom’s last cancer diagnosis that I started writing for public consumption, on a CaringBridge page my sister created to keep everyone updated about Mom’s progress. I found that writing helped me process my own feelings, and people seemed to identify with the things I shared.
Ultimately, I changed jobs, which I think was necessary for my quality of life, but that in itself was a stressor, and a loss, and something I’m still working out. In the month that Mom was diagnosed, I remember working from home on a very difficult case, and my hands had started peeling and cracking. I wrapped some Scotch tape around them and kept on going. My husband had also started working in a different city earlier that year. For years, I wore bandages on whatever fingers were affected and could never figure out if my hand issue was stress, diet, weather, or a combination of things. My hands have been better for several months now, maybe a year or more. No bandages. I do credit some “potions” I put on them, but was it also a change in lifestyle/attitude/workload?
After Mom died, I noticed that I had less tolerance for certain things at work. I think I took off a whole week or more for her death because she was in ICU and I was with her in the hospital, hoping she would recover, but then she didn’t, and then there was the funeral, and then I went back to work on a Friday so I only had to get through one day before I got a weekend to recover some more. (This was wise advice from Mom’s cousin who told me once you go back, you need to be ready to BE BACK FOR GOOD. Employer will expect that.)
With Dad, I remember planning to take off on a certain day to be with him and the hospice nurses when my sister called as I drove to work one day and said he had already started dying. Of course I argued with her because I had not planned on this and I had court . . . but I knew. I know what she was telling me was true. I got to work, my friend who worked with me saw me crying at my desk as I was still trying to figure things out, and he talked to our boss and they got me out of there. Dad was present enough when I arrived to reach for me. And, like Mom, Jenny and I were with him when he passed.
I returned from Dad’s death in time to attend a hearing regarding a problem client. On the way to the courthouse, we passed where dad used to work and I started to cry. In hindsight, of course this hearing could have been done without me. I’m not even an attorney.
When Pete went to work in another city, there were a variety of reasons why I didn’t immediately follow him. With the death of my parents, two big reasons were gone.
And my perspective changed.
Work seemed less important. Having a job, yes. But having a job where I cried on my way to a hearing so soon after my dad died? No. Having a job where, when my mom died, one of the attorneys who attended her funeral had to explain to another problem client that my boss and I were not answering his emails because we were all at my mother’s funeral? No. I wanted a job where I felt less abused. I wanted a job where I didn’t feel a need to work so defensively. I wanted a job with less demand, less criticism, more trust. But it took me years to get there because I loved some of the people I worked with and for, clients included, so very much. And I recognized, after so many years, how much responsibility I had, how big my shoes were to fill.
Years passed and Pete and I decided we didn’t need the big house with all of its chores since we lived in two different cities and weren’t having children. Another perspective changed. One more tie cut. I don’t know that I would have made this change if my parents were still around. I don’t think they would have been super happy with the move uptown into the tiny apartment. Pete’s and my house in the suburbs symbolized everything I was always taught to pursue, and it also had space for grandchildren. But Pete and I have come to different visions for our future now, including how we want to spend our leisure time, and it isn’t yard work.
Mom and Dad would be happy that eventually, Pete and I reunited in the same city and don’t go back and forth every weekend. Losing my parents made me question how I spend my time. I remember Mom coming to my office one night before a hockey game we were attending together. I was trying to finish things up and she had fallen on her way in. There was a period where she was not being very careful and she fell a few times (something else I have noticed in myself – being distracted, being overwhelmed, not paying attention). A friend of mine went to assist her because I couldn’t – DIDN’T – stop what I was doing just yet. I find this unbelievable today, but it’s true. And it’s horrible. Nothing should have been more important than my mom arriving, especially if she was injured. And because I put so much expectation on myself, I’ll never know if the job demanded it or if I willingly gave it over.
I’m reading a book now called Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist in which she talks about a job loss: ” . . . all the while grasping back to a job and identity that was no longer mine to grasp.”
In June, it will be a year since I left that job, and I still identify so much as a member of that firm. I have written to people and identified myself as “formerly of ____” because I’m not sure the recipient knows me otherwise – and because I still feel part of a place that I am not. This past year has been about learning to be a new employee, relearning how to be a full-time spouse, and learning how not to get so invested in a job, because the fact is, once you leave a job, you are gone . . . severed . . . out . . . even if some people do keep in touch with you here and there. I need to quit referencing myself in relation to that firm. It would be like getting divorced and printing up address labels that say, “Former Mrs. Pete.”
For the last 7 years, I guess I’ve been struggling with identity in a lot of ways. My husband and I lived apart, then back together. We spent all of the apart time explaining, “Yes, we’re still married. Yes, we like each other.” And my parents died, and my identify felt enormously damaged. We spend so much of our youth fighting for independence and freedom, but then our parents die and we struggle to know who we are if not their children. Of course I know I still am Tom and Betty’s daughter . . . it’s just very different when they aren’t around to tell anyone. And now, for almost a year I am back in a city where I used to live, trying to make new friendships and revitalize old ones. I like my job and I like my boss, but he’s had so much turnover that he often refers to me in writing as “staff” and my email address doesn’t even have my name in it. And I’m trying to not get too invested since that turns me into a person who leaves her mother bleeding on the sidewalk. Maybe we’ll find a happy medium somewhere.
Thank you for sticking with me (so far) as I continue to try to “find myself” and “be my best self.” I’m pretty sure it won’t happen in a video chat, so . . . maybe on the other side of this pandemic.
I’m not alone. I’ve seen other people post about how unusually tired they are since COVID-19 began taking its toll. We’re tired from
worry
the extra effort everything takes now
boredom
separation
loneliness
longing
searching for things that apparently no longer exist at a store
waiting in line to enter stores, then feeling rushed to get out of the store so someone else can enter
bagging my own groceries because my reusable bags are no longer safe
unfairness
unpredictability
the people who know everything but don’t agree about everything they know
the people who know nothing and make it very clear while being near us or in charge of us
being people who know we don’t know everything and worry that we did the wrong thing(s)
being in charge
not being in charge
inconsistency
sickness
death
symptoms that may or may not be COVID-19
no symptoms that still don’t mean someone doesn’t have COVID-19
gimmicks to keep us entertained online
a new surge in chain letters, which goes well with that senior class photo I didn’t post despite popular demand
hoaxes
unemployment
being overworked
lack of structure
lack of routine
wearing masks (but I am so grateful for the people who are making them!)
washing hands
carpal tunnel, insomnia, and crying (contributed by Holly)
worry
I think it all comes down to worry. For me, this is a fight with an invisible bug. How the f*ck am I supposed to attack something I can’t see? I know it shows itself sometimes, as in, when people show symptoms, or in a lab. I know it exists. But I’m wearing masks and washing my hands and trying not to touch people and trying not to touch things and it feels like I’m dodging (rather than chasing) an invisible Pokemon. (Maybe this isn’t a good reference since I never actually played Pokemon.)
I lack control. I lack absolute knowledge. I lack enough people I can touch and spend time with.
I have a job. I’m so lucky – and yes, luck is about all it comes down to right now. It’s not about being essential. Hey, I’m delighted to booze it up almost every day of the week, but alcohol truly should not be essential, and there’s a problem when it is. I was raised in AA and I can’t let go of that mindset. (After posting this, I keep revisiting this thought and find it harsh.) I don’t want the alcohol stores to close, though – I want all the businesses to open! I want my theater friends and hair styling friends and personal fitness friends and all the other “nonessential” workers to get back out there and get paid . . . I want us all to go back to living outside our homes! Haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to do it safely? Skip a seat, skip 2, skip 3, skip 5 in the theater. Skip tables in a restaurant. I don’t remember ever having anyone next to me in the hair salon. We can figure it out, people. WE CAN. I know so many people who don’t have jobs, and I constantly drive past businesses that are barely hanging on (https://mountainx.com/opinion/letter-a-plea-from-the-owners-of-an-asheville-restaurant/), some that have closed completely. There is no fairness to it. “You work. You don’t. You open. You close.” I’m sure there was thought put into it, but thoughts aren’t paying the bills and thoughts won’t fund all of the unemployment claims.
I’m just tapped out this week. I have little interest in anything. There’s no end in sight and things seem somewhat hopeless. I’M NOT SUICIDAL. I have big plans for my funeral. I’m not dying when only 10 or fewer people can come see me off. If I pass during this thing, you folks wait and celebrate me when I can have a proper burial of 3-digit attendees. 1900 Mexican, Strada, and Little Caesar’s will cater. (I haven’t asked them, but who can say no to a dead person?)
Thanks for reading my sad ramblings. I know you all have your own feelings, your own struggles. I know we’re all in this together. I can’t wait until we’re out of it . . . together.
Christy Said It.Com 