I’m in a weird headspace today.
Yesterday I had some unavoidable scheduling conflicts in the lives of my loved ones and it resulted in this chaotic chunk of my day that just frazzled me for the duration of the day. Like…I could not shake off the panic attack even after I got everyone where they needed to be with no major incidents. I still felt like my blood pressure was sky-rocketing and my pulse was racing and my head was exploding, even hours later. I grabbed tools from my arsenal but just could not shake it.
On the surface, having no work outside the home sounds/looks easy, but from the hours of 7am until 12noon yesterday it was very obvious my life is anything but. Because of all of the lives I’m responsible for we ended up with the confluence of swim team, hair cuts, dialysis, babysitting, dog-walking, code-red Zoom meetings (that’s the code that means everyone in the house must be invisible and silent), all over-lapping in un-easy ways…with the cherry on top of my Mom being nauseated. It was waves of frenzy all morning and it just left me scattered.
Then we had a strange evening. There was a person missing and they found his car at the trailhead behind our house. He had been missing for so long though it was not like an optimistic/hopeful situation, it was just a “spectrum of tragedy” situation. Donnie had some ideas (he’s been out there a lot recently and had memories of a particular section being different in important ways) and so we went out and did a 3-mile loop kinda of around the area he wanted to investigate. Unfortunately, it turned out his memory was right, we were just about a mile off in terms of the location and I’m very glad, in retrospect. Just the knowledge of this man’s tragedy (no foul play or anything) did not really calm me at all, so the sleeplessness is not doing anything for my off-kilter headspace.
Of course, with the cultural and political unrest in this country and the threat of COVID19 still around every corner, it doesn’t take too much to screw with my zen. Yesterday’s series of events would have screwed me up in a calm context, of course it dumped me off a cliff in the chaos of life right now. Add onto this some shakeup in our professional lives and we have had a perfect recipe for…for…I have no idea. Chaos Soup? Anxiety Casserole? Where am I going with this metaphor here?
Keep this young man’s family in your thoughts today. There’s so much unacknowledged pain in this world and I’m overwhelmed sometimes at how helpless I feel amidst it all. Spread love where you can today, if you have any to spare.
