So I think the coping mechanisms are starting to creep in. I'm still having a really hard time managing all this. I know the protests and riots are very good things that need to happen but it just feels like reality is too much to handle right now. I don't want to live through history. I just want to get back to my nice boring life that took me four years to start to rebuild after all the trauma of my divorce. It feels like I was getting everything back on track. I had two partners who love me. My son was starting to get a better handle on his issues. My mental health had drastically improved. We were planning to fix up the house and make it better. I had even just started working again in my field and felt valued and happier.
And then COVID. And then all this isolation and loss. My depression is back more severely than it's ever been. I have soft suicidal thoughts- not the kind with intention but just the wish that I could wake up and this would all be over. And the fear that we won't get through this unscathed.
Reading about the reopenings while cases still increase after our phase one is literally giving me far more physical symptoms of stress. Even going for a walk outside makes my throat tighten up. I used to get chest pain as a panic attack symptom. I think my brain decided it was funnier to pick a symptom that I can panic might be COVID if I screwed up washing the groceries or something.
And then I get to have the internal conflict that I desperately wish things would go back to normal, but I have to recognize that normal was very very bad for a lot of people, hence the protests and riots. I can't believe that I am living in the middle of a pandemic and American cities are burning. And I get it- people probably feel like they have less to lose right now because the pandemic has taken so much and then this tension has been building for so long and maybe there's a chance to do something about it now. But I feel like I am literally marinating in fear and anxiety. And the more COVID spreads because of the rioting, the longer I will be isolated at home, and I feel like I really am cracking a little bit. Or maybe more than a little bit.
My counselor wants me to try and do some exercising to burn off the cortisol, even if it's indoors. I've regained 26lbs of the 70 I had lost in the past year and I feel gross, but I also don't want to stop eating yummy things because food is one of the few things right now that actually gives me pleasure, as fucked up as that is. Much of my private diary right now is literally food pics. So I figure I have to at least do the exercising or I'm going to be enormous again or maybe have a heart attack and catch COVID in the hospital like my friend who died did and I don't want to die. I'm terrified of dying but I think I am equally terrified of Henry dying and being left to live without him. When my mental health is this poor, I don't think I could cope without him.
I'm just so fucking afraid, and this time it's real. There are monsters under the bed. I can't just tell myself that my brain is lying to me and it will be all right, because it's not all right. And I've been in constant fear now for 82 days.
It's messed. I've felt safer in my own home than I ever have, I think. My door is plastered with STOP signs so that people know to stay away because we have health issues- they leave deliveries in the box and go. So I'm no longer really worried about break-ins in the middle of the night. Or hell, a neighbour was giving away an item I really needed and she put it out curbside at 10:30pm and Henry was already asleep and we had been drinking so I was running a pretty good buzz. I actually left the house and went out drunk (I do not recommend this) to walk over and get it in the dark. In normal times I would never ever have gone wandering around the other end of my neighborhood at night, drunk. I wasn't worried about getting robbed or raped in these times
Then I came home and washed my hands obsessively six times after quarantining the item. And then twice more when I went upstairs. That anxiety was still sky high at least.
I get the pandemic fatigue, I do. I'm literally hiding from my grocery deliveries because it's taking too much mental energy to sort through them and clean the perishables and quarantine the rest. But if we don't live through this then mental health doesn't matter either, and I'm not in that danger zone yet. So yeah, mental health etc people need to get out people need to get some normalcy... but please... I just want us to live. It hurts so fucking much when people say oh yeah a few cases are acceptable, a few deaths... but I don't want it to be us.
