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| Thank you, Marissa, for this sticker! |
I'm a planner.
I have a ton of washi tape and planner supplies and notebooks for bullet journaling. And even before I started doing all that, I used to make meticulous spreadsheets of training plans for races a year or two in advance. I LOVE making plans. I LOVE creating a path for myself, and even if I didn't stick to it, at least I had something to start with. I like having some idea of what's coming next.
Which is what makes this current situation/time so hard. I'm sitting with an awful lot of uncertainty.
First and foremost, this baby. Yeah, conventional wisdom tells me to expect him to arrive right around the due date, but past experience tells me that this baby could happen anytime between now and just past my due date. (Let's be real though, I don't expect him to even go the full 40, let alone be late.) I've been in the hospital twice in as many weeks getting monitored in a Labor and Delivery triage room, so yeah, I'm legit worried that he might not even stay in as long as Jolie did (and she arrived just after 33 weeks).
And then, there's this whole pandemic situation and everything involved in it. Everything is different. Like, even though I have experience teaching online, this is not normal, everyday circumstances where I can do normal, everyday online teaching. And I have no idea how/when things will go back to normal. My gym situation has totally changed, and now all of a sudden I have nowhere to train (when I'm ready for it again), so that means even my future in powerlifting is uncertain, because I'm hampered by a lot of circumstances that I can't ignore. I want to get back into running but I don't even know what shoes to buy because it's been years since I bought new running shoes, and they don't make that model anymore, and also, I was living in a different STATE then and had my normal places to run. (I don't even know how well this getting-back-into-running scheme is going to go, considering how I have an injury to work around.)
And yes, I get that these are first world problems. I GET THAT. I'm grateful that I have a job, and that I'm able to do it from home, instead of endangering my health and my baby's. I'm grateful that I can even spare thoughts for my hobbies, rather than focusing all my energy on survival. I'm grateful that I'm uncertain about what are, overall, happy things, rather than CERTAIN that bad things are happening. I definitely know that I have privilege here.
But it doesn't make it any easier, to not know what's coming and what to do with myself. I've been incredibly depressed and restless lately. I'm glued to my computer, for work and for leisure, and that doesn't help. I'm not able to go out to my usual places for me-time and self-care. I'm trying the absolute best that I can, but some days I just sit and cry, or stare off listlessly into the distance. My executive dysfunction is on overdrive.
This is supposed to be normal for a trauma response, as we're all going through traumatic times right now, but I don't like it. I can understand logically that it's okay to feel this way, but it doesn't mean I can really, truly internalize that concept and sit with it. I have an immensely difficult time just sitting and waiting, especially if it means relying on other people, and right now, I feel like EVERYTHING is completely out of my hands.
I don't have a solution. I don't know what to do with that, beyond just enduring it. But it's hard. It sucks.
*shrug*