November Thoughts

 

November has been intense.

Zach and I had the first week of November off to celebrate our anniversary (eight years!). We were going to try our first electric car trip, to Nashville to visit my brother and his family. We made it to Illinois when we learned that they were sick, and it was probably Covid. Thus began the Week of Waiting.

We were waiting on news about all sorts of things: a) whether or not my brother's German girlfriend Melody would be able to get into the country after being away for a year, b) what the election results would be, c) what the vet would say about the health of my first and only pet, my mom's cockatiel Fiddler, and d) who in my family, including us, had Covid.

As the week stretched on, the answers spilled in one by one: a) Melody made it into the U.S., b) the election results were called, c) Fiddler had to be put to sleep, and d) the majority of my family had Covid but Zach and I didn't. With each new revelation, we gained a bit of closure: some good, some bad, some heartbreaking. I felt myself in a constant state of killing time, trying to exist in any way possible until we learned the next thing. When we finally learned The Last Thing we'd been waiting on— which happened to be our negative Covid test results— I felt all the pent-up emotions, good and bad, crash down on me. I sobbed, and felt depressed for days.

Although I was glad to spend the week with Zach, going back to the rhythm of work was sort of comforting. I put my head down and edited papers. I made myself too busy and too distracted to really process things. I cheered myself with the news that Melody and my brother were reunited, and thanked God as I talked to my family members who were getting through Covid without any serious side effects. I cried with my mom about the death of her beloved pet. I was relieved about the presidential results, but discouraged by how far short politics still fall. Life felt, and still feels, overwhelming.

I feel burnt out. I feel weary. I feel like I should have had enough time to adjust to all the things I was waiting on by now, and yet getting started on anything feels too hard. The urgency of my life's goals weighs on me— the climate crisis is now!— and yet I've spent much of November desperately self-soothing with things that don't actually give me life, such as binge-eating and endlessly scrolling social media. 

Today I stepped outside into the cloudy, ridiculously warm weather, and took a walk. It had been a while since I had taken a walk by myself, and I headed down the Katy Trail and through the woods by the Missouri River. A turkey vulture soared over the bare cottonwoods, giving me some company. I listened to the roar of the highway against the rustling of the feathery plumes of dried-out sweet wormwood seed-heads. White-throated sparrows, immigrants from Canada, picked their way through the leaf litter, nibbling on seeds. The river was gray.

And there, in the space, in the aloneness— away from the buzz of social media, the comfort of carb-heavy snacks, the anxiety of editing papers— I felt more human. I felt like my brain had room to breathe, like the flow of my thoughts and energy which had been choked by dead leaves were cleared by the fresh air, allowing the stream to flow freely again.

The feeling didn't last. As I walked back through the woods, I got hung up on the things that clutter my brain: the made-up arguments with people who disagree with me, the endless to-do lists, the numbed-out replaying of scenes from TV shows. But the space had been enough for me to look at the big picture for a moment, to see my place in it all, and to find a way to get started on Life After the Week of Waiting.

Here's hoping that today, or tomorrow, or sometime this week, gives you a chance to make space for yourself, and breathe.

~~~