The year of staying in

Stop sign

2020: Do you have any plans this year? Yes? Too bad. Cancel them now.

I’ve left the house twice since March 6: once for the dentist, once for the doctor (both in June). I’ve walked to the mailbox, but I don’t think that counts.

I no longer have lunches out, which was one of my real pleasures: an escape from the work-at-home monotony and a chance to see people other than my parents. I don’t even get take-out, sadly. It feels too risky.

I had to cancel my annual writing retreat — pretty much the only week of the year that I have time with friends and get to write. I have to wonder if it will even be safe to go next year.

It feels like the last four months have been much, much longer. And there’s no end in sight.

We knew 2020 was going to be hard, but this? This is next-level. And it’s probably going to get worse.

Scorched earth

It feels like 2017 is trying to take all it can from me.

Some of the losses are small, and some — like losing my aunt to cancer — are too big and fresh and complex to process. But it wears at me, feeling like life keeps taking things from me: not just things that are or have been important to me, but also little things that provide some continuity and stability during a deeply troubling and stressful year. I feel like life and circumstances keep pushing and testing and taxing me, and each time I feel like I’m at my limit, life hands up a new challenge, threat, or loss. I’m exhausted, worn thin.

We buried my aunt two weeks ago. It went as well as could be expected, but it was still difficult, stressful, draining. We endured nearly two months of being told she was getting worse, that it would be soon. We had two weeks of hearing that it could be any day. We had more than two days of hearing that it could be any hour. We jumped every time the phone rang.

The person in the casket was a stranger, unrecognizable.

We were largely spared drama from ill or estranged family members, and for that we were grateful.

We were mostly spared the bad weather from Hurricane Harvey on our drive down to Mississippi. We were not spared from the fact that it was my father’s birthday, and we were driving for hours to bury his sister.

My father was not spared from eulogizing his sister. I watched my father, who rarely ever shows sadness or grief, falter as he spoke, the emotion clear in his voice, and I wondered if he would be able to finish. I gripped my mother’s arm the whole time, willing him to hold together. (He did.)

We were not spared the images of flooded Houston, the bad memories it sparked of Katrina, the knowledge that my aunt died on the anniversary of Katrina, twelve years after she took us into her home for weeks.

We were not spared the worry of Hurricane Irma, knowing that our family members in Miami did not evacuate. (Thankfully, they’re fine.)

I was not spared returning home to a looming work deadline — an immovable, government-imposed deadline — for multiple projects, including two that I’ve dreaded all year.

I got handed another loss tonight. I won’t try to explain it, because it probably wouldn’t make sense, and it seems small compared to everything I’ve mentioned. I suppose I feel it more deeply because of everything that came before.

Earlier today, I read some Facebook posts from a friend, written last night. She’s deeply, deeply depressed and feeling hopeless and worthless. I tried to reassure her as best I could, because I’ll cast a rope for a drowning soul even when I’m submerged myself. Another person told her to get a good night’s sleep, that things would look better in the morning. She responded that they wouldn’t, and I can relate; when you’ve been pushed past your limits, one night doesn’t even begin to undo the damage.

I just hope there will be enough nights to heal all of us.

Still here, still trying

So… I haven’t blogged in a while. A very long while, as it turns out. I blame depression, anxiety, health issues (both mine and family members), the world being on fire, and other problems/issues that have been sucking up my energy and generally making life very, very difficult.

Most of this I just can’t talk about. At least, not right now. The work stuff and one of the personal situations I doubt I’ll ever talk about online — work because it’s not appropriate, and personal because that situation isn’t something I want to talk about publicly. (Friends can DM me on Twitter or FB if they want more details.)

The one thing I will say is that one of my aunts is dying of cancer and will probably be gone by the end of the month. Her condition has deteriorated rapidly since they did a procedure to put radiation directly into her liver. And we found out last week that the cancer didn’t originate in the liver but in the pancreas. (That’s basically a death sentence.) So the procedure only weakened her and made her condition worse. I should add that this is the aunt who took us in for weeks after Hurricane Katrina — so there are lots of complicated memories and emotions tied up with thoughts of her. It still feels kind of unreal, probably since we haven’t seen her since Christmas. Dad went to see her a few weeks ago, but only he and his youngest sister went; my cousin felt like her mom wasn’t up to seeing many people, and she could only manage a very short visit (less than an hour). I’ve accepted that I won’t see her again, and I think I’m okay with that. I don’t know that I want to see her in her current condition, and I know we wouldn’t be able to have any conversation that would mean anything. I wish our last visit had gone better — I was too depressed to interact with her in any meaningful way — but she was a saint, so hopefully she understands.

I thought 2017 would be better than 2016. Clearly, I thought wrong.

 

 

Hacking my social media into submission

I’ve been more than a little frustrated with my social media sites lately. I’m active on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, and I pop in on Pinterest once in a while, though not as much as I once did. Four sites may not sound like that many in today’s world, but it’s been enough to frustrate and overwhelm me — so much so that I was seriously considering a break from social media. But I was reluctant to do it because I work from home; my Twitter and Facebook friends are my equivalent of the co-workers you chat with on breaks during the day, and that little bit of interaction really does make a difference for me. Luckily, I discovered a couple of tricks that have really helped, so I’m not feeling like my social media interactions are out of my control anymore.

The first solution took two minutes, but it completely transformed my Twitter timeline, getting it back to a manageable level. There were a few people I followed who retweeted a lot of article links — and because I valued their opinions, I would inevitably end up either reading those articles or bookmarking them to read later. The solution? Turning off their retweets! (You can find this option by going to their page and clicking the gear icon to get the task menu.) I turned off retweets for four people and immediately my Twitter feed became quieter; the difference was so dramatic it honestly shocked me. I even feel like I could follow some new people now, though I haven’t yet — no point in rushing right back to the same state of overwhelm I had before.

I haven’t been able to find an equivalent hack for Facebook yet, but I did find a pretty nice tool called Social Fixer that I’ve started using. It’s a browser plug-in that allows you to customize some of what you see on Facebook. It allowed me to hide a lot of the clutter surrounding my feed — the menus for events, pages, and developers; all those little sections of “people you may know”, “places nearby” and “recommended pages”; and that annoying list of features that I never use (gifts, games, pokes and the rest of it). My page is so much less cluttered now! And if I do need one of those menus, it’s easy to turn off the plugin temporarily.

I didn’t realize just how much my social media experience was frustrating me until I cleaned it up. I feel like I can enjoy my sites again; using them gives me the break that I want instead of more pressure to See All The Things. If your accounts are driving you crazy, take a few minutes and do something about it before your entire experience gets ruined. Believe me, your overstimulated brain cells will thank you.