3.22.20 - #corona2020 III

The nights are hardest
Fighting sleep feeds the beasts
While we refuse to eat
Love yourself, the message repeats

First full week of social distancing and things haven’t really changed in here. The house still echoes with raspy, barking coughs. My brother was sent home from work on Friday because of it, even though the doctor thinks its bronchitis. It’s not clear if he’ll be asked to leave again Monday. He doesn’t get worse but doesn’t get better. Meanwhile, my wife’s company completely shut down. She is filing for unemployment tomorrow. There’s a lot of questions about how we’ll manage. We’ll figure it out and we’re lucky that at least my job seems stable. But who knows what will happen in the long run, how long this will take.

It’s not like I went out a lot anyway. I’ve been a homebody and I’m okay with that. But I lost the gym mid-week, and tomorrow I’ll try to start using the yoga mat in the morning. Elastic bands should be coming Tuesday, and maybe that’ll help.

Meanwhile, J has been keeping L from the ledge and it hasn’t been easy. If we can get her through this horrible anniversary on top of everything else happening, maybe she’ll be okay. It won’t ever be easy for her, but if J can come back from what she went through, then anything is possible. I’m not sure if it’s helped or hurt that we’ve all been forced to seemingly pause our lives. Maybe… maybe for them to work on their demons, having time to actually reflect and grieve will be more beneficial. But right now, all they can do is shake and cry when the flashbacks are loud. They need to sleep, but they’re afraid of it. If I’d been through what they’d been through, I’d be afraid of sleep too. I just wish I knew how to help.

3.16.20 - #corona2020 II

I realized, only recently, how poorly I do with internal anxiety
There’s a train, running away, in my head sometimes
If I try, stay busy, maybe the brakes may recover before
I reach the end of the bridge, the end of the world

First full real day of what seems like a real, new normal. Not that we would go out if we could, ‘cause we can’t afford it, but because this illness is a bad rollercoaster ride. We’re not sure if J and D have it, since there weren’t testing kits last week. They’re supposed to call the Georgia Board of Health or something, go through a questionnaire, to even qualify for a test. Right now we’re operating under a 14-day quarantine diagnosed as pneumonia for J, and a 5-day quarantine diagnosed as bronchitis for D. I feel fine, but there’s a tension in the air. We’re faced with the added anxieties of having nothing better to do than reflect on our own past terrors and nightmares. While we wait on referrals for therapists to work through the overloaded for-profit under-prepared American Health Care nightmare, the news outside gets worse and the future darkens a little.

So I went to the gym anyway. I need something besides working my way through the feedback notes on Gravity’s Reach in preparation for a May Writer’s Conference that likely could be cancelled. I’ve been working on the Robin Hood homage, and that’s been more fun. I also have to check grades, put together plans for next week (both planning for online or in-class delivery), and take care of three hurting people.

”We’re broken, but we’re not damaged goods.”

”We do the best we can.”

At least one thing I can pull, a few moments with the dog in the backyard watching her play before she spent hours by my side while I wrote.

That’s the career I want, where I can spend my days giving head scratches while writing the next story.

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3.15.20 - #corona2020

Maybe we’re all going a little mad at the idea
Plucked straight out an eighties sci-fi novel
Empty shelved truths are stranger fictions
When a virus can spread at the worst of times
Bringing people to whimpers of shared terror
When nightmares awaken our lesser demons

Funny, today was my most productive day writing, in a while. Meanwhile, outside our little quarantine zone, seems like the hubcaps are coming off, if not the wheels. The shelves were emptied at the bigger stores. Toilet paper has become a meme in our ironic pessimistic chuckle towards self-destruction. None of us can go to work tomorrow, so we’re all stuck here another week. Two with doctors notes for self-quarantine (even though neither got tested because there were no kits), and two because their schools closed for a week. We’re trying to keep each other sane, co-existing and being bored. For me, it’s easy. For the girls, who are dealing with the traumas of their past head-on while the world seems to be imploding outside, it’s been rough.

I don’t know what I can say sometimes that’ll make them feel better, what’ll help. I’ve learned that if I just sit there and say I’ll listen, sometimes that helps. Maybe it just helps us all, to not be miserable alone, in the dark. Just to know that someone else is sitting there, next to you.

Now I’m gonna go set next to my spouse and let her cry on my shoulder. Love those around you, y’all.