Decisions

After a reassuring call to my sister about the feasibility of her elderly parents (her dad - my mother’s first husband - and her step mother) navigating the boulder gardens, and a call to the caterer in which they assured me they could make it out there, I decided on the boulder gardens as the wedding spot. Deposit has been paid, same date, different place.

I had a moment of joy at the relief of this decision being made, and also in the knowledge that after six months or more of being jerked around and given false promises that our cabin situation is very likely to be resolved soon. But for some reason today the joy dissipated and I’m not doing so great. 

An elderly dance friend died (not covid related) and for some reason I couldn’t put together more than a sentence or two for him, while others are able to formulate beautiful and lengthy tributes. A friend called to ask for support after an unpleasant audition and all I could do was tell him how much I hated being in show business as a kid and how I don’t understand why anyone wants to do that with their life. Sigh. Sorry. The well is just fucking dry right now. I feel like I have nothing to give anyone. Why is this?

I would say “it’s the kids!” but honestly, the kids are barely a blip on my radar at the moment. They’re both fine - mostly - although my worry about them potentially getting sick at school is a river of anxiety that runs deep. Yes, the F has worked late the last three nights which has been unpleasant for me, but that’s not the main thing going on with me. I think it’s just good ol’ covid exhaustion, I really do.

Every time I read an article about the struggles of other people - the kids who lost caretakers, those with long covid still suffering, the parents with kids too little for the vaccine who are repeatedly sent home from daycare due to exposures - I get so full of rage at the unfairness of it all I can barely see. How are we still going through this. Is this ever going to fucking end. How can things be exponentially worse now than they were two years ago. It was supposed to get better. We’ve been lied to. Betrayed.

Everyone feels just like me. I take some small comfort in that, actually. I know I’m not crazy or overreacting. And yet we all just have to sit here and take it. Which also fills me with rage. Somebody just fix this. Somebody make it stop and make it all better. And yet. 

My mother died in unimaginable pain and horror all alone in a Brazilian studio apartment, and that’s how her story ended, and nothing will ever fix that. I can’t tell her I didn’t hate her after all; there will never be resolution there, ever. My friend of 25 years decided she didn’t want to be present at my wedding and I’ll never know why and we’ll never speak again. Life is unfair. In the scheme of things, these scenarios are small - I’m not a child who lost both parents to covid and am now in nightmarish foster care; I’m not an Afghani refugee watching my home country descend into madness from a Canadian hotel room. But these things are currently happening, and they are unfair, and life, for how much we desperately cling to it, really sucks sometimes. 

I have to get up and take the kids to school tomorrow, and once again hope this week’s covid tests come back negative. The teachers are losing it - I can tell from the lack of homework being assigned and plaintive messages begging for patience with technology issues for all the kids stuck at home. I don’t know how anyone in healthcare, service jobs, or teaching don’t just constantly have nervous breakdowns right now. I think if I were in that position I would seriously start doing drugs on my time off because fuck it. 

I would say I have nothing to look forward to, but that’s not true. I have the wedding, for one, and possibly my event later (not that my event, or even my wedding, will be “fun”, but they will definitely be social). I have the fun of decorating and starting to stay in the cabin. I have the very real possibility that this is the last time in our lives that covid will be this bad and disruptive. This really could be one last dramatic send off before life gets better, for real this time. And like any nightmare the day will come when we can’t hardly believe we ever survived this. My grandmother survived the 1918 pandemic, then the depression, then WWII, then an alcoholic husband. And yet I’m convinced the Trump presidency would have done her in, had she lived that long. Are we just soft? I ask myself this often. I guess I’m just having one of those moments where I’m having a hard time focusing on the positive. Maybe I’m just not exercising enough.