I don't have the answers.
In all honesty the last 2 days have been the hardest for me since our lockdown started 8 days ago. I admit that anxiety has been a close friend for too many years for me to blithely be able to state that I am okay and managing. I manage, because I have spent the last decade learning to cope with my anxiety, not because I no longer have anxiety. I manage because I have some special individuals in my life who remind me of how far I have really come. I manage not because I have no choice, but because I have a choice.
Some days my courage is overt. I walk the driveway to get my daily exercise and sunshine. I make my bed. Have breakfast. Take a shower. Try and focus on my studies and meditate and journal. Other days I curl in a ball on my bed with chocolate and a book and try not to cry all day. For me that is also courage. It is courageous to admit I am not okay. It is courageous to say today is not the day I will write that History assignment or finish that English essay or even get off my bed. It is courageous to forgo what society expects and rather wallow because perhaps wallowing is all I need to get me through today and instead of forcing myself to do what society expects I rather aim to focus on what I need.
I am tired of the memes telling me that these 21 days will never come around again. That I will never again have the chance to step off the hamster wheel and catch my breath. Crap! I am the Mistress of my own destiny and if I decide one day I am going to take 21 days to go find myself then that is exactly what I will do. It will be a damn sight easier to focus on what I truly want when I am not overwhelmed by a pandemic sweeping the world. How do I find myself now when I don't even know what my world will look like in 21 days!
CLEARANCES
In Memoriam M.K.H. 1911-1984
SEAMUS HEANEY (1939-2013)
(Choice of Sarah Waters)
3.
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Glemaing in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dripping knives -
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.