Sunday in the Condo With Fatima

I finished writing a Music Monday post in honour of Stephen Sondheim. As you can also see, I didn’t write every day like I had planned. One of the most popular questions on social media apps like Tik Tok is asking about something without saying the thing. For instance, how do you say you’re depressed without saying ‘I am depressed.’

Well, you forget to follow up on messages to people. Your living space is a mess and has been for a long time. You eat to dull the pain and freak out as your pants get tighter and tighter. The bright spot in all this was my auto insurance covering my accident, and I needed to schedule an appointment to fix the driver-side mirror. It’s not out of pity I write this post. It’s really to tell myself the truth after a week of staying homesick. I worked from home, took a COVID test to rule it out (ack!), and concluded my body said, “that’s it, we are stopping for a rest.”

Great news, the library I work for is slowly opening up. Bad news, I am surrounded by people demanding, well, just about everything. It’s hard to ignore it as one’s own emotional reserves run on empty. Unhitching my blog from my Twitter account means few people see those lines and rush to a conclusion, especially those working for the same place I do. I write to suss out the meaning, and people are along for the ride.

Tell me you’re depressed without telling me you’re depressed?

I have not journaled for over a year, not written a single thing, and now read very little as the pleasure escapes like air from a tire.

My brother, believing he was doing me a favour after seeing my place one day, decreed I would host Christmas this year. He thinks it will motivate me to clean my home, and it did the opposite. It made me anxious, and with rapid changes at work, I come home and can’t look at the place. I watch as much streaming content as I can while I eat. I had to cut out wine because Richard Armitage had the right idea: Do not drink alone. (He said this in one of his interviews. Can’t remember which one.)

They say the second year of grief hits you harder than the first. Dad’s passing goes onto its second year and slamming me against a wall. I remembered pivoting to working at home, still reeling from the shut-down, and taking calls from the nursing home. I got up to work, trying to preserve my job. Now, I wonder if getting furloughed would have worked better for me. However, I proved adept at switching and learned WebEx, MS Teams, Camtasia, Media Site, while listening to instructors come for help and what they really wanted was someone to listen to their struggles switching to online. I listened because it’s what I do. Always the caregiver.

This weekend, I talked to myself as a caregiver. The first order of business was taking my medication, the second was restarting therapy because this ‘break’ is not working. I coax myself into taking a shower, reminding me I feel better after a work out and to keep going, and to pick a spot and make it better than before just by pickup up the stuff off the floor. I tell myself it’s my home and putting up Christimas decorations doesn’t make me feel better and I have enough will to put up the wreath on my front door this week at this point in my life.

Writing. Oh, that’s the hard part. I pick a part my writing as I scribble and worry about this comma or sounding grammatically correct. To whom? Who? Does it matter? How much more time do I have to spend worrying about stuff? There’s not many days left in this year and a new one comes closer. In the meantime, it’s time to clean up my front entrance, another step in the process on a Sunday afternoon.