Not a Wasted Word

I’ve been informed a couple of times that my recent posts or comments are “Trumpian” or “Trump-aligned.” These critiques are in reference to my comments about our nation’s inability to maintain the current level of shelter in place without destroying our economy beyond repair. And that I’m not personally afraid of contracting the novel Coronavirus.

I clarified, though I feel my original post was pretty clear, that when I say we can’t maintain this level of shelter-in-place for a year without destroying our economy, that I am not promoting some plan where we open up earlier than public health experts recommend. When I say that I am stating a fact. Our economy will be destroyed, for the great majority of Americans, if the level of unemployment keeps rising and then remains at these unprecedentedly high rates for a full year. That is an indisputable fact. And we don’t have the social services in place to help the people who will be the most adversely affected.

When I wrote that, it was part of a larger thought. Actually, it was part of a question. What is the end game here? All the plans I’ve seen for ways we might tentatively open up the economy and start living again rely on a level of testing we won’t be able to implement any time in the near future (if at all), access to PPE that isn’t currently available, the production of anti-viral medications (that would help younger people with bad outcomes manage the virus at home without needing hospital care) that don’t currently exist, and a vaccine that we don’t even know if we can develop, let alone manufacture and distribute at meaningful rates. So basically, none of the plans are viable, at least not in the United States. So how does all this end? I guess the answer is that we absolutely don’t know, but no one in power is willing to say it.

I feel like I can say that and not be pushing for the reopening of the economy on some Trumpian soapbox. But maybe I can’t.

As for me not being afraid to get COVID-19, that is my own personal feeling about my own personal situation. It is not meant to comment on anyone else’s feelings about the virus or how much they fear getting it. We all have different health histories and underlying conditions and the threats COVID-19 poses are different for everyone. And yes, I know that anyone can get very sick with the coronavirus, and be left relying on a respirator, or dead. While I am a relatively healthy individual, I’ve fallen into the small percentages of people that experience adverse outcomes in otherwise benign situations. My first pregnancy was an ectopic, and only 1% of pregnancies are ectopic. I also ended up with sepsis, from a case of mastitis I didn’t even know I had until I left home fine and arrived at a well-visit with a 104* fever. I could easily have died in either of those instances without modern medical care. So it’s not like I’ve never experienced being on the wrong side of reassuring medical statistics. I know anything can happen.

Maybe I am ignorant not to be afraid of getting the coronavirus. Or stupid. I’m basing my feelings on what I’ve read (in reputable new sources like TPM and the NYT) and what my friends and relatives who are doctors and nurses have told me. And my feelings only relate to me. I only mention it to explain that anxiety about getting this virus is not what is hard for me right now. It’s certainly is not meant to comment on anyone else’s fear or anxiety, and it’s especially not meant to comment on public health advisories or orders. Nor is it meant to suggest that we should be reopening the economy right now.

Besides questioning the closing of open spaces, I have never criticized the steps public health officials are taking to protect us. I follow the shelter-in-place orders as well as most people. I have never stepped foot in an open space that has been closed but is still accessible. I wear a mask and gloves the few times a month I leave the house to grocery shop. I have social distance walked with my parents twice, and visited their backyard once, but I stayed six feet away from them, and wore a mask when we were interacting. That is the only time I’ve “met up” with anyone during the shelter in place order.

I know people who still have nannies caring for their children, or are still using home childcare facilities, or are still having their parents watch their kids. My cousin, who is an oncologist, eats at his sister’s house, with her husband and kids, regularly. I’m not flaunting a refusal to follow public health guidelines, because I am not refusing to follow them. I don’t complain about quarantine cramping my style, or the hardships I’m personally experiencing (which are few and superficial) but I do write about mental health issues that our current situation have manifested for me. Maybe I lack resilience or grit, but I’m not bitching about the sacrifices we need to make as a society.

We recognize the threats that we see, that are right in front of us. I don’t know anyone, personally, who has had the coronavirus (at least who knows they’ve had it – and the fact that we’re now hearing that millions of us probably had it and never even knew is not helping me cautiously assess my personal risk right now). I know OF four people who have had it (a friend’s adult stepdaughter, a colleague’s ex-husband, etc). None of them were hospitalized. The lack of personal experience with the actual virus also probably makes me naive in my risk-assessment.

On the other hand I hear about the economic devastation every day. Our district will be laying off a lot of people to manage an unforeseen $4 million dollar budget deficit (this might seem like a small number, but we are a small district and it’s a very big number for us). My husband spends all day helping small business owners shut their doors forever, after losing everything to just six weeks of economic shut down. (I’ve read we can expect 75% of small business in the country to close, which means we’ll be even more dependent that ever on the giants like Amazon, who already have little incentive to treat their employees fairly). I’ve watched my friends be furloughed, before they most likely (in their understanding) lose their jobs. I listen to my good friend, who is a single mom, worry about defaulting on her mortgage now that her hours have been cut to almost nothing. The economic devastation is not something we can ignore if we care about the overall health of this country. I don’t understand why it’s so inappropriate to say that out loud. Especially when our country provides no safety nets to the families that are losing everything.

And what this is doing to the kids who are homeless, or facing food scarcity, or stuck at home with an abusive adult, or unable to access the services they need through schools… these are all very real concerns. There are some students I haven’t heard from in six weeks and I’m devastated to think of what they are living through. I doubt many of them will ever make it back to school again. This pandemic has wrought so many tragedies, it’s just easier to ignore them because they are effectively invisible. They aren’t counted in the newspapers every day.

Again, none of that is a call to do something. Or a critique of what is being done. It’s just the reality. I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m very relieved that it’s not my job to decide what kind of answer can be cobbled together with the reality of our country’s situation. I’m just bringing all this up because THIS is what causes MY anxiety. These are the realities that keep me up at night. I am very lucky to have relative job security, and to not have to worry excessively over the health of my immediate family. I am not worried about me personally. But there is still plenty to worry about. And the secondary effects of flattening the curve are what keep me up at night. They are what make it hard for me to concentrate, and what deepen my depression.

We are not a country that is built to help the people who will live but will be devastated. And we will not be able to make meaningful changes in time to mitigate the damage.

I do not believe we are doing enough to acknowledge the very real ways in which we are failing the people who are physically healthy, but have no hope for the future.

If feeling that way makes me Trumpian, then I guess I’m more Trump-aligned than I realized.

Post script: This ended up sounding more… defensive… than I intended. I will admit I felt offended by being called Trumpian. And I feel defensive about putting this out there. I am not, fundamentally, worried about how I feel about all of this. I don’t think I’m a bad person who cares about the wrong things. I do worry that because Trump harps incessantly on the importance of an economic rebound – for his own personal gain, not out of concern for the well being of Americans – that suggesting the economic devastation is important, or a cause for concern and anxiety, will be seen as callous and shallow. I do believe I have an attitude that is respectful to the severity of the public health crisis, while also being concerned about the severity of the economic crisis. I believe you can respect the severity of both crises at once. I believe you can recognize the horrors of the coronavirus, and not be horrified about getting it yourself. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Maybe I am fundamentally wrong about this. Or I can’t express it in a way that comes off quite “right.” If I’m being called Trumpian, I must not be making myself clear, because being Trump-aligned is the last thing I would ever consider myself. I know other people who feel the same way, people who work in public service and aren’t worried for themselves, but despair for their communities. I don’t believe these people are Trump-aligned. Maybe I’m just not articulate enough to express myself effectively.

Or maybe I am Trumpian, and I just don’t realize it.

If you have information or resources that would help me better understand the reality of our situation, please send them my way. I am always looking for ways to broaden, or deepen, my understanding of what is happening right now.

This is one opinion piece that I feel better articulates my thoughts than I do.

I didn’t mention in either of my last two (super downer) posts: one of the things that significantly affects my mood (negatively) right now, is related to my kids.

One of my children is struggling with anger issues. Lately, there are frequent (very intense) outbursts that cause acute stress in all of us. Multiple times a day I’m sent into a fight or flight response. I feel my shoulders tense, and my neck kink, and my heart pound. The rest of the day I’m waiting, expectantly, for the next outburst. There is almost no respite from this cycle.

I do not believe our current situation is causing these angry outbursts – there were plenty of anger issues before – but it’s surely not helping. Presenting distance learning expectations, maintaining screen time boundaries, the frustration of not answering every questions correctly on learning games, all cause these outbursts. They are happening all the time. And they are making it very hard to make it through each day.

It’s exhausting. And it makes being stuck at home with my kids all day very difficult. We’re trying to find effective ways to help our kid manage their anger, but we’re feeling pretty helpless. Obviously now is not the time to seek outside support. I’m reading books and enacting strategies but so far nothing has helped. I know that right now compassion and empathy are the most important responses, but they are also the most exhausting.

Some days it feels like I’m being held hostage by my kid’s outrage. I’m trying to complete my stress cycles but the frequency of the outbursts makes that all but impossible. Mostly I just try to get through each day, and hope the next one will be better. Until this changes, I doubt I’ll be able to pull myself out of my ever deepening depression.

I thought a lot yesterday about why I’m struggling so much with this situation, when so many other people seem more able to grin and bear it.

As an extrovert who relies on interactions with other people to energize me, limiting my interactions to my immediately family is exhausting. I haven’t found screen interactions to provide the connection I need to feel better. In fact, usually I feel worse after attempting connection via a screen.

I think I rely on the positive, nourishing experiences of my other roles (daughter, teacher, friend, martial arts student) to help me manage the more complicated and depleting roles of mother and wife. Being a mother and wife are all about giving. I get very little in return. Or at least I’m getting very little in return right now, when we’re all stressed out and sick of each other.

My husband and I manage stress very differently and we generally fall into dysfunctional patterns when circumstances challenge us separately or together. We grow very distant and disconnected and it becomes harder and harder to find our way back to our relationship in a positive way. I think this has to do with our different ways of seeking and needing connection. Each of us struggles to show up for the other in the ways that are most meaningful for them, so when we’re depleted by the stress of external circumstance, we lack the reserves to show up for each other in ways that are meaningful. Instead we drift farther and farther apart until we are so disconnected it feels daunting to attempt finding each other. We’ve talked about it several times and we aren’t even trying to be proactive anymore. At this point we’re just giving each other space and staying out of each other’s way. It’s so much more lonely when you’re lonely around people you love.

Slipping into depression would be so easy right now. I know that path so well. I could slip into the ruts and stumble through the next few months on autopilot. Hopelessness and despair are tracks that would guide my thinking like the metal rail on those amusement park car rides. I could stay the course without even looking. With so much uncertainty, that path is seductive.

And even if I do everything I can to stay out of those ruts. I might end up back in them anyway. Right now nothing that should feel good does. I don’t want to talk to friends on a screen so I don’t organize meet ups. I’m not declining them yet, but I don’t organizing them myself so they don’t actually happen. I’m still going to virtual martial arts classes though I’m starting to loath them. I’m making myself go outside even though it feels more like a burden than a release. I’m meditating even though I don’t recognize that it’s helping me. I ask for time away from the family and read a book in the quiet, but I spend the whole time agonizing over the prospect of going back up. I’m trying to take care of myself, but it doesn’t feel like it’s helping. And maybe the allure of depression feels so strong because subconsciously I recognize I can’t actually escape it, even if I tried.

Taking it one day is the only coping strategy I can manage right now, and hopefully that will be enough. I don’t think about the future because I assume it will be more of the same and facing that eventuality sends me into a panic. So I don’t think about it at all. When I’m forced to figure out the date of a future weekday for school I can’t believe we’re looking at May already. I’m living so in the immediate day that it’s jarring when amy outside context is thrust into my consciousness.

I’m guessing that lack of anticipatory joy is also exacerbating the stress and sadness of the day to day. I didn’t realize how much I relied on looking forward to something in the future, to manage the banality of the present. But I guess I do. and I guess instead of anticipatory joy I should be finding joy in the moment. But that feels more impossible than ever right now. Right now I’m just trying to maintain the routines I’ve been told should help me, so I can look back at the end of this and at least know that I tried.

Today marks six weeks since the shelter-in-place order took effect here in San Francisco. The first one was set to end on April 6th. It was almost immediately extended to May 4th. The schools announced not long after that that we weren’t actually going back on May 4th. That we were not going back at all this year. I guess that is when we shifted to an amorphous end date. The governor’s shelter-in-place order has never included an end date. He knew early to play the long game.

There are seven more weeks of my school year. Five of my kids’. On the one hand it’s important because distance learning makes things more stressful, so knowing we can set it aside eventually is a relief. On the other hand. I know that once distance learning ends we lose the structure that keeps our kids vaguely sane, and that setting limits will be harder once their days are open and they think they should be able to do whatever they want.

Camp Mather is cancelled. The summer camp registration never even happened. I never bought tickets to St. Louis. Right now summer looks like eight weeks of the same. Except I won’t be working so it will be assumed that I’ll spend all my time with my kids while my husband gets his work done. I am very tired of spending all my time with my kids. I love them dearly, but I don’t particularly like them right now. I’m sure they feel the same way. We all need some time and space from each other but there is no time or space to be had.

I’ve been out twice this week and it felt like there were way more people on the sidewalks and way more cars on the road. It feels like we’re shifting from, “okay we can shut it all down and stay in our houses for a while,” to “if this isn’t going to end we need to find a more sustainable normal.”

I don’t really understand what the end game is. We can’t possibly keep this up until a vaccine is found – that is at least a year away if they even find own, and our economy would be destroyed beyond repair by then. The death and suffering wrought of joblessness and food scarcity would far exceed that of the virus if we kept the current restrictions in place for over a year. A flattened curve means our hospitals can manage the case loads but it also pushes herd immunity out by not just months but years. So how does this end? How do we determine our new normal when every choice is the wrong one?

My depression and anxiety are so prevalent these days. The wheels of my thought processes have fallen back into the deep ruts of hopeless and despair that mental illness laid down in my brain for so many years. For over a decade a combination of medication and exercise has kept my thought process away from this ruts. Now our circumstances have pushed me back into them and my medication and exercise can’t push my thoughts out of those deep ruts. I don’t think anything can.

The hopelessness of depression is so familiar. It’s easy to succumb to the numb of not caring. The gray tint blurring the edges of my days is the obvious filter. Depression fits like a well worn glove that is still soft from all those years of flexing my fingers inside it. Despite a decade of being folded away, it feels familiar, and familiarIty, even a familiarity that scares me, is a comfort. A part of me just wants to put it on completely and wear it like an armor, and let it take me wherever it may. It would be so easy. But another part of me knows that if I follow the deep grooves of that thinking too far I’ll maybe never being able to get my wheels out of them again. The inertia needed will be to great. And inertia will be in short supply for a long while.

The problem is I may not have a choice.

I’m learning that now, in the upside down, I hate Thursdays. Thursday seems to be the day I crash and burn and everything feels like too much and I wonder how I can possibly make it to mid-June. And then I remember this doesn’t actually end in mid-June and I start to cry.

I cry a lot on Thursdays.

I’m crying way more than normal every day, but Thursdays? Thursdays I sob.

I’m not quite sure what it is. On Wednesdays I usually get some time – I take my noon exercise class and I work in the yard after the class, before I shower. I usually have my Thursday push ready early in the day so I’m not stressed about getting that done. And Thursday should be a low key day because I don’t have to push out work again until Monday morning.

I think what it is, is that by Thursdays I am exhausted. I work from the minute I wake-up until right before bed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I work while I’m with my children. I work while I eat. I work constantly. And by Thursday I’m just done.

Thursday is also my Zoom meeting day, and I hate Zoom meetings.

So yeah, now I hate Thursdays. And that is weird because Thursdays used to be a good day for me. Just another thing that is different in the upside down.

I’ve been struggling to show up here again. It’s hard to look at this screen to write posts, when I have to look at this screen ALL DAY to do work. I spend so much time in front of this computer screen that when I’m not working I want to do something else.

So there might not be as many posts as this continues, because I’m getting tired. And it’s hard to show up here when I’m showing up every minute of every day. At least it feels that way.

Sorry for the bummer post. Turns out I hate Thursdays.

I’ve been sleeping downstairs for about a week now. I like it. I certainly don’t miss making up the couch bed every night and putting it away every morning. And somehow, my son stopped waking up in the night right when I went down there. Interesting…

We moved the dresser downstairs a week ago to. This past weekend we moved our clothes out of the armoire and into the downstairs closet (my first real closet since I left my parents’ house at 22! Why do I always end up sleeping in what is supposed to be the living room? SF living I guess…)

{We’re taking it slow because the threat of bedbugs is one you don’t let go of easily. Someone has been sleeping down there for over a month with no sign of them and I still worry they will suddenly come back with a vengeance. Evidently after 6-8 weeks we can feel very certain they are gone. Right now, at 4 weeks, we can feel fairly certain.}

We’ve made a couple of big purchases related to the move downstairs. We got the Couchbed that I slept on for three weeks, and that will remain upstairs for when we rent out one of our spaces, or have guests stay (obviously neither will happen for a long time). We bought an electric standing desk for the downstairs. I had been using a standing table at work for years and loved it, so I started looking at them when we had to shelter-in-place. We’re both working from home for the foreseeable future and we needed a desk anyway, so we went big with a 30×60 standing desk. My husband thought it was kind of ridiculous but now he loves it, which is good because he ends up using it more anyway.

I also got a new Dyson cordless because our old one was VERY old and since those don’t have bags, we risked bringing bed bugs upstairs if we used the same vacuum in both units. So now, after a Costco sale last month, the old one lives downstairs and the new one lives upstairs. Our old one was probably first generation and the new one is an X and it’s SO MUCH NICER than the old one. I heart it very much.

So there have already been some big purchases around here. But with a whole new space to move into I have more stuff on my list. I’ve spent weeks looking at different possibilities and have compiled a sheet with the links and prices. We have plenty of time to furnish the downstairs and transform the upstairs, so there is no hurry. Well, there is no hurry, except my own desire to buy stuff.

Luckily I’ve spent enough years learning about my spending habits to recognize what is going right now. First and foremost, “window shopping” online is a fun way to pass the time. It gives me something to look forward to when all the other happy things I was anticipated have been cancelled. Second, I recognize that I want these things because I want to love my house more, but the main reason I don’t love my house already is because it’s messy and stressing me out. Getting something new is not going to solve the issue of clutter overtaking our house. If anything, it will make things worse because there will be less space to put our stuff.

So I’ve made an agreement with myself – un trato if you will (It’s funny how there are some words I just prefer in Spanish, usually because they have a slightly different meaning and the Spanish meaning fits my idea better than its English counterpart). I can’t get anything new until I’ve dealt with my current pain points in the house. I haven’t decided exactly what needs to happen before I can buy certain things, but I have some preliminary ideas. We have a GIANT cupboard in the downstairs bathroom, and since the upstairs bathroom has NO storage (except a paltry space under the sink) collecting all the toiletries from around the house (there is even a box in the garage that was taken out to the shed when the house was heated for the first bed bug treatment), purging the old and organizing what we’ll keep in bathroom cupboard would be worthwhile task. The garage also needs a massive purge and would make me feel better about things in general.

I am reticent to start purging though, because I am finding it harder to get rid of things these days, and not just because there isn’t anywhere that’s accepting items (that I know of – maybe I’m wrong about this?), but also because having been thrust into this, I’ve definitely found that I’m using things I might have gotten rid of otherwise. I definitely hoard resources (books, games, etc) more than most things and it’s harder to throw things out now that I know life might be turned upside down. Having said that, I recognize that if I’m not planning on using some of those resources right now, I probably will never use them. So I guess it helps and it hurts.

We need a new vertical chest of drawers (maybe two narrow chests) downstairs because our bed has to be in the corner with our wider dresser and we don’t like the bed in the corner. So that is the first things to get. We also need nightstands as we were using the mantel above our bed (remember, we slept in the living room, with our bed pushed up against the fireplace) as our nightstands before. I think if I get the bathroom stuff done, we’ll get the bedroom furniture and then hold out for a while on the other stuff (a convertible sofa and coffee table for downstairs and eventually a California King bed! EEK! MY DREAM!)

I guess the good news is we won’t be spending anything on summer travel or camps so we’ll have the money for this stuff. We also have some stimulus money to spend (though most of it will be donated because we don’t think we should have gotten any if the first place). One step at a time…

Thank you for the kind and encouraging words after my last post. Thursday and Friday were really hard days for me. Thankfully, I’m feeling better after the weekend.

I took some much needed breaks from work this weekend. I worked late on Friday and early on Saturday, but then took Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening off. I worked again Sunday night but it felt more manageable after the break.

At this point, I would absolutely change things up to make them easier on myself but I just don’t know how. I don’t know what to give my students except what I’m giving them, and what I’m giving them takes an incredible amount of time to create, push out, and then review. If someone handed me a magic goose that honked out something else I could use, I’d absolutely post those golden eggs all over my google classrooms, but I haven’t found a goose like that yet. I’m really struggling. I don’t know how to make this easier for myself.

It’s so hard to find the time to get everything done, while also helping my own children do their work. I’m basically working on my own stuff, or helping them with theirs, for 90% of my waking hours. It’s not sustainable. Thank goodness we only have eight or nine weeks left of the school year, and my kids have one or two fewer.

This weekend was very much appreciated. We hit up the Great Highway again (third time for me in six days). This time we did the beach, at my daughter’s request.

It was a beautiful day and we stayed on the sand for over an hour. Then, to my surprised, they rallied to scooter too. We went eight blocks total and the kids had a great time!

We also visited the duck pond that has become a weekly ritual, but this time there was a turtle. We got a video of it jumping back into the water, which thrilled the kids.

On Sunday my kids played MarioKart against my sister and her boyfriend in London. They have been wanting to do that forever and were so stoked to finally get the chance.

Then we went down to my parents’ backyard to try out their newly refurbished hot tub. My husband would have preferred we didn’t go, but he didn’t stop me. It’s hard because we frequently have different of ideas of what is appropriate right now – he will not leave our house for weeks at a time, but that would make me go crazy. So I do most of the shopping, and I take the kids out and he stays home. I know the visit was not essential, but we managed ourselves in a way I believe was safe. We follow the shelter-in-place guidelines pretty rigidly, but we also take advantage of special occasions when we can. (My husband parrots the “is it really essential?” line all the time, except when I’m getting stuff for the backyard, which is a project he cares about, so I remind him that we’re all blurring the lines when we it serves our purposes.)

{I’ve been reading a lot of articles about how this won’t end, really, ever, and instead we need to change our mindset to reflect the fact that we’ll be living with this virus, and varying levels of restriction, for years. I think it’s appropriate to start finding ways to make what will likely be many more months of intense restrictions more sustainable both mentally and physically.}

I also got to go on a quick run while my kids were in the hot tub (my mom watched them from a chair) and I saw this llama getting it’s own afternoon stroll.

On the way home from my parents, we stopped at the nearby junior college and rode bikes in the empty parking lot. The kids thought it was awesome to have the entire parking lot all to themselves, and we stayed for over an hour.

It really was a nice weekend. My period is finally over and between the hormone shift, the time away from work, and the time outside, I’m feeling a lot better. (I’m also just not letting myself think about the next school year, at all.)

How was your weekend?

Wednesday was a great day. I went to work in the morning to grab some stuff I needed. Driving to work always lifts my spirits, maybe because it’s a familiar set of actions that I miss dreadfully. Being in my classroom is always bitter sweet, as I miss that space more than I ever would have anticipated, but all in all, a trip to work feels good. I also got to miss the chaotic morning routine. Any time by myself is greatly appreciated these days.

At noon I had my martial arts class. This is the short, super intense workout that is more like a 30 Day Shred than a regular martial arts class. It gets my heart rate way up and keeps me strong.

High off the endorphins of that class, I went into the backyard and filled 10 bags with the stuff we had cleared on Sunday but couldn’t bag (because we were out of bags and Lowes was closed for Easter). We’re at a place where working in the backyard no longer makes me anxious, but I can only work back there if I can shower immediately afterward because something in that yard makes me break out in a rash. Wednesday was perfect because I had to shower anyway, and it was a beautiful day.

After I showered I took the kids to the Great Highway to ride bikes. The fog had rolled in, but we still had a great time. I’ve been trying to get them on their bikes since the shelter-in-place started and it felt good to finally do that. The Great Highway is the perfect place for them to ride; my goal is to ride there once a week while it’s closed to cars.

If you’re wondering how I did all of that on a work day, well, that is a fair question. I ended up working well past midnight that night to make up for all the time I’d lost during the day. I’m still not sure if the positives of doing all that during the day was worth how late I had to work, and how tired I was the next day. I’m struggling to determine if I feel the trade offs for the positives are worth how hard I get hit afterward.

Wednesday was such a good day, that I didn’t even get that upset when my principal called to give me some bad news. It wasn’t until I went to bed that I started to dwell on it, and things went swiftly downhill after that.

Next year I’ll be at the other middle school again. They missed the March 15 pink slip cut-off so the teacher must have left of her own accord. They aren’t trying to find someone new because we’re in a budget crisis (huge loss of earnings from programs that aren’t renting our facilities now, or over the summer). So next year I’ll be commuting between the campuses again. And honestly, it sounds like that is their plan long term.

The idea that I’ll be teaching at both middle schools again makes me deeply depressed.

I understand that next year will probably look VERY different than a normal school year. There is talk of staggered schedules, where kids only come on certain days, or where half the kids come in the morning and half come in the afternoons. I’m not upset about next year specifically (though it’s not fun to know I’ll be back in a situation I hate again). It’s the realization that this is most likely the situation forever that deeply depresses me. I finally got to a place where I am content at my job, and I didn’t think about leaving anymore. It took me YEARS of hard work to get to that place. And this past year I was pretty happy. And now I’m learning that my position will be at two campuses in perpetuity, and I know I can’t manage that in the long term. Commuting between campuses, sharing a classroom at one school, reconciling the schedules when they change, it totally depletes me. I don’t feel like I belong to either community when I’m traveling between them. It makes me miserable at my job.

I can do it for a year. I can’t do it forever. So Wednesday I was effectively told that I will need to find a new job. And the idea of that makes me so, so sad.

I know there are a lot of unknowns here, but I also see the writing on the wall. And yes, I recognize how incredibly lucky I am that I haven’t lost my job already. One of the reasons I stayed in my job was for the security that I’m now so grateful for. It’s knowing that I have to give that up eventually – or be miserable – that is making me so depressed. But yes, I get that I am incredibly lucky that I’m not out of a job right now.

Thursday was a hard day for me. I felt awful. I cried constantly. It felt like I’d spent all my serotonin the day before and now I was nursing an emotional hangover. In the afternoon I got my period and was so relieved to know that the feeling of dread that had settled was at least partly due to shifting hormones. It’s Saturday and the feeling hasn’t really lifted. I hope it gets better soon.

I’m trying focus on the here and now. There isn’t really anything else to focus on. I can’t distract myself with summer plans (Camp Mather was officially cancelled, which has me coming to terms with the cancellation of everything else this summer). There is just right now. Except that right now I’m always working, I’m always tired, I’m always stressed and frustrated, and sad. Right now is hard. But it’s all I have. So I guess I just got to open up to this pain, instead of running away. I guess that is the goal right now.

I’ve been drowning this week and I feel like I barely have time to come up for air. This set of texts I sent my friend late last night sums it up pretty well.

So yeah. That is where I am at right now. Maybe I’ll have time to write more later.

I would say I’m so glad it’s a Friday but I’ll be working straight through the weekend. At least the kids won’t have work to do.

I heard that The Great Highway was closed north of the city line last week, when I learned that Ocean Beach was being closed along with the last of the open spaces in San Francisco. I assumed that closing The Great Highway there was an attempt to really drive home that Ocean Beach was closed; it’s a sprawling beach that can be accessed by crossing The Great Highway for a couple miles. I didn’t think the strategy would be all that effective, as it’s the street parallel to The Great Highway that people park on to go to the beach, but I assumed it was the best they could do to close a massive beach that has infinite points of entry.

Yesterday I was determined to run as I recognize I need some outdoor exercise at least once a week and Mondays is a good day for me to get it. I was trying to think of a spot where I could run, knowing that almost all the trails I usually frequent are closed. Then I remembered there is a path that runs between The Great Highway and the neighborhood to the east of Ocean Beach, and decided it would be impossible for them to close that off. I decided to give it a try, knowing that if somehow they had closed it, I could always run around Lake Merced again, which I knew for sure was open.

Driving over to that area, I saw that the Great Highway really was closed, as my friend had shared with me. Again I tried to determine what they were hoping to accomplish by closing such a long stretch of highway when that wouldn’t effectively keep people away from the beach.

When I got there, I was shocked to see people running and biking on the Great Highway. Was that why they had closed it? To give people more space to be outside? It’s the perfect stretch of road to close as no other roads intersect with it for a long, 2+ mile stretch between the zoo and Golden Gate park. You can close it to traffic without diverting many cars, and there is an easy detour in the street parallel. The idea that they had closed The Great Highway to give people more space to be outside, after closing almost everything else, made me so happy.

I ran right down the middle of The Great Highway yesterday, even though the path was also open. I did it just because I could, and because I probably won’t be able once the shelter-in-place is over. Getting to run down one of the most beautiful highways in the state is a special perk right now.

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I’m going to be bringing my kids there tomorrow to ride their bikes. It’s a flat stretch with two lanes open in either direction, which makes it the perfect place for them to ride. After a week spent entirely on our property, it’s invigorating to know we have a new outside space to explore.

It looks like they are no longer attempting to keep people off Ocean Beach either, so that is another place we can go. The parking lots are closed to keep the crowds down, but I saw people streaming past a parked police car and two rangers, so they clearly are okay with people being on the beach in some capacity. Perhaps they only ride up and down now to enforce social distancing. I wonder if they realized it was better to give people that huge space where they can be outside and safely social distance, or they just couldn’t enforce the closure of such a massive beach with so many access points.

I know there are important reasons to close the outside spaces, and I know most people accept their closure without giving it a second thought. I have definitely been struggling with it more than most people I know, though I have enough friends who also panic at the idea of only walking in a short loop around their house to know that I’m not totally unreasonable in my despair. My friend, who is from Chicago, said she thinks us Californians, who prize our outside spaces and live in high COL areas partly because of the beautiful outside areas and the mild weather that lets us enjoy them year around, find it especially hard to stay inside for weeks at a time. In Chicago people are used to staying inside for the better part of the winter, but here in San Francisco we never have to shelter from the cold like that. It feels very foreign to us to stay inside for weeks, or months, at a time.

At the end of yesterday’s run I felt better than I have in weeks. Moving my body under the sun, and in the fresh air, reinvigorated me after so many days spent hunched over my computer at home. I know we need to do everything we can to stop the spread of this horrible virus, and I very much appreciate that the city has given us a place to stretch our legs safely, away from others. For once, I was so happy to see that “Closed” sign.