I wrote a thing...

[indeliblesasha]

Okay, here's the thing: when your uncle died from covid and you missed your niece's birthday because of covid and you can't visit your parents because of covid and you have to face what should have been your dead kid's first orchestra concert because it's also your surviving kid's first orchestra concert (so you absolutely will be as excited as he wants you to be because he is so excited he is vibrating) the day before what would have been the dead kid's 13th birthday and then your cat (who was mostly the dead kid's cat) dies that same night after months of trying to keep him alive and then, you know, the dead kid's birthday comes and goes - and then your computer breaks, of all the insignificant but vastly inconvenient things to even mention,

...and then a musical you've had tickets for for two years (and you and your spouse and your 11 year old are finally (finally!) all vaccinated and boostered and the theater requires vaccines and negative tests and masks for all patrons so you feel like this one thing, just this one single joyful thing is worth the risk despite the increasing covid infections from the newest variant) is cancelled because so many of the cast and crew have covid they cannot by any measure of reason do the show (and you appreciate their responsible decision, it's the best, safest choice for the community, but goddamn it you're tired of being reasonable and mature and thoughtful about these things when so many people are just not at all) it's a disappointment but that's fine, it's okay, you'll live (and not get covid),

...but then there's a(nother) mass shooting (the 13th of the year if you're going to be precise) in your state and then you find out the next day that one of the people shot (alive, thank God, but his wife was killed and your heart breaks for him) is someone you know, and you're not close but it's no less shocking and devastating and personal in a way it never has been before, (and really how god-awful is it that mass shootings are so common you can barely process the horror anymore much less keep track of them?)

...and then a couple days later you watch, terrified, as two towns next door to you burn to the ground in an unprecedented firestorm that's barreling towards your city, driven by 100 mile per hour winds and you and nearly everyone you know are packing bags preparing to literally flee for your lives if the winds shift the slightest bit sideways, because that fire has nothing between it and you but some dry, brittle fields,

...well, it turns out that's pretty traumatizing, especially when you can see clearly, exactly, what might have been your neighborhood (smoking holes in the ground, to quote the sheriff, verbatim),

...and then a couple days after that you forget to extra-insulate your sprinkler backflow (that hasn't been winterized because of the man-made climate-change caused dry hot weather) and it freezes and breaks in the single-digit temps and starts spewing water into your basement window well, into your basement, for hours before you realize --because the water flow sounds just like snowmelt running off the roof (and you tuned it out like always)-- so when you do finally discover three rooms of your house are flooded...

...you end up making two trips and four phone calls to the Home Depot another town over because that's the nearest rental department and the inept employee (and his boss) that you have to deal with can't be bothered to do their job and screws up your (hundreds of dollars) rental for the professional grade equipment that you need to try and save your carpet and keep mold from overtaking the basement, and after all of that you admit defeat and accept that you're going to have to rip out and replace your flooring...

...so you start making phone calls to the sprinkler guy (who can't come fix the system yet because the first snow finally fell --a day too late to save a thousand buildings-- and your yard is still covered too deep to get to the sprinklers but whatever, it's fine, the water is off now, it can't get much worse) and then the storage pods people (very helpful, very easy) and the roll off dumpster folks (who delay delivery for a day because the winds are back and they're not as bad but you can't drop a twenty yard trailer safely - and also the sound is awful and you 100% have trauma now, so that's awesome)

...and the total cost for recovering your basement is bouncing higher and higher (and you're so numb at this point that you barely care) and you haven't even paid for the sprinkler repair or called the flooring guys yet so you say fuck it, the contents of the basement will be sitting in storage for months we might as well get good containers to protect everything (because at this point the storage pod is 100% going to leak, let's be real, this is your life)

...so you spend a few hundred dollars at the Container Store knowing it's probably not enough and you'll be back on Friday for more, which is fine because you enjoy buying containers, you weirdo, and it's the tiniest bit of pleasure you've had since who can even remember at this point,

...but you get home and discover the newsletter you've put off for a week while gathering information to share with your membership about how they can help with the fire(storm) recovery and support those whose homes are, we cannot stress this enough, literally ash-filled smoking holes in the ground (three! miles! from! your! neighborhood!)

...well, anyway, that newsletter has link problems so you have to get that resolved (it was easy, it was fine, but it's just one more thing)

...and at this point you've cancelled on your client and cancelled your support group for the thirteen and fourteen year old trans kids (who you love enormously even after only a handful of meetings) and you're so sorry but you're just so tired and overwhelmed and you need a DAY,

...then your kid's school sends an ignorant, unhelpful, tone deaf email that makes you incandescently furious but it's not like you can DO anything about it but bitch, you're just so tired of everything your patience is gone, finally (finally!) a box that's a week overdue (because firestorm) is out for delivery, and it's delivered!

...and it's not on your porch because they gave it to the neighbor, and you're done, you're tapped out, it's over, you have nothing left in you,

...and this --ALL of this-- happens in the most recent 38 days of the longest, hardest, scariest, most stressful, brutal 29 months of your life (because your stress and exhaustion and isolation didn't start in March of 2020 like everyone else, no, it was August of the previous year when your husband broke the fuck out of his knee and had two surgeries and three months of recovery, including six weeks in a wheelchair, and then you got the flu and then you survived the worst depressive episode of your life and then right when everything was almost normal for you again...then the world closed for business)

...more than eight HUNDRED THOUSAND people (including your uncle) have died of covid in your country alone and the government is just absolutely giving up on getting a whole half of the population to even CARE, much less try to stop it, and you're tired, so tired, and losing faith in humanity a little bit every day,

...and IT TURNS OUT that maybe, just possibly, that five years after you held your seven year old child while he died of an incurable disease (after 16 months of what you thought was going to be the longest, hardest, scariest, most stressful, brutal time of your life - even harder than that day nine years ago when they told you that kid had brain cancer - but no, no it can in fact get worse)

...it turns out that you might in fact have reached the absolute limit of what you are capable of handling.

So you go to bed at 6:30 pm and turn on your heated mattress pad and ask your husband to go buy you meatloaf because it's never as good as yours but it's your favorite comfort food and you don't have the energy to lift your arms much less cook for an hour, so store bought will have to do.

And while you're laying there you start to wonder if it's all really that bad, maybe you just slept poorly last night so you're more tired than usual and it just seems like too much, honestly you're probably just blowing it all out of proportion... but when you talked to your therapist (who dealt with a flooded basement last year and was also packed and ready to flee the fire(storm) a few days ago, so she really honestly meant it) earlier in the day (when) she said,

Sasha, it's too much. It's all just too much. I'm so glad you called me.

Possibly this feeling like you haven't just hit a wall but are rather dashed upon the rocks by a relentless sea of trauma and pain and grief and fear --and you are not a mermaid and cannot simply swim away-- well, possibly...

...you might not be over reacting to anything at all.

So you do what you always do when it starts to be too much: you start writing.

And by the end you can feel in your bones that yes, you have in fact been pushed beyond the limits of human endurance over and over again and it's absolutely okay that you gave up for the first time in your life, declared you were done, you weren't doing it any more and noped out of the whole fucking world and went to bed at 6:30 pm, beaten, broken, and hopeless.

Because it's too much. It's all too much for one single person to endure and remain whole.

But I'll tell you a secret that isn't really a secret if you've known me for any length of time at all...

I don't know how to quit.

I know how to pause. I know how to rest. I know when to walk away from a futile situation.

But I have never, no matter what I said a few hours ago, given up in my life.

And I'm sure as hell not going to start now.

So tomorrow I'm going to get up and I'm going to start packing my basement away and research flooring companies and send the mother fucking newsletter a week late...

...and you, you, are going to get vaccinated if you haven't yet, you're going to get your booster shot, you're going to wear your mask and keep your distance and talk every single person you know into doing the same and you're going to fight your companies as long and as hard as it takes to get them to enforce actual real covid safety protocols,

...because I swear to god I may actually not make it back to my feet if I hit the rocks again the way I did today because someday there will be an actual end to what I can endure and I cannot, absolutely cannot do this alone and everyone asks me all the time what they can do to support me and this, this is what you can do.

...

And make sure you tell each and every person you love just how much you love them, as often as you can.

Because loving one another might be the only thing that gets us through.

Lord knows it's what gets me on my feet every day.

===

Postscript: It has been noted that I did not mention log4j anywhere in there, and that was a SIGNIFICANT oversight on my part, because wow, man, fucking log4j. Please add that in there just before the mass shooting, thank you.

I also realized this morning that I left out the mice who moved into my kitchen when the temps dropped, and as I have a serious case of musophobia and am very genuinely terrified of the little germ carriers this has been an ongoing stressor for me running under every other damn thing.

I am tired, my friends. very, very tired.