Living with an emotional burden
If you only have time for one new thing today, please skip my blog and instead check out Natal. This podcast is about having a baby while Black in the United States. As a lover of mothers and babies, it captured my attention and shares stories I had not heard. I have a small platform (and can’t control much), but I am looking for ways to share other stories while continuing to share my own.
Raise your hand if you thought we would be done with pandemic life by now?
This week was emotionally taxing for me. I was operating at a higher stress level than is my norm. It would seem that by now we would be settled into our rhythms. New waves of emotion, stress, and anxiety around the pandemic should not be so large and all-encompassing. Yet on a broad scale and personal scale, things continue to change. It becomes ever-more clear that almost everything is out of my control.
After four months of no toddler or baby in my life, this week marked my return to work with one of my families. For logistical (other family needed more help) and safety (pregnant mama then newborn) reasons I took a break. The family decided they wanted me to come back, starting this week. We talked about the risks, and ultimately it had to be their decision. They decided having my help and the care I provide their children was worth the risk.
I have been looking forward to this week for the last month. There was a time when I was pretty confident I would never go back to them, which left me heartbroken. I was curious to see how much the older girl had changed. How many words had she learned? How would she react to me? And I was so excited to meet the baby of whom I had been daydreaming since August of last year.
This week was magical in many ways. The toddler ran right to me and was sitting in my lap within two minutes of my arrival. She instantly recognized me, which I had imagined impossible. And the baby is impossibly tiny and precious. Her face lights up when someone looks at her and talks to her. While her sister ranges from euphoric to miserable, the baby takes everything in stride. I imagine she is thinking “What’s the big deal? Life is awesome!” I love seeing the differences in development and even love the emotional range.
But at the back of my mind the entire time I am there is “What if I unwittingly bring covid-19 into this house?” In Oregon, the top age range with the most positive tests of covid-19 is 20-29, and many of those people are asymptomatic. I could be carrying it around and never know. That is terrifying to me. I am very careful out in the community, but in the homes of families I work with, we proceed as normal. Because their family is practicing the highest level of caution, if the little girls get sick I will have been the carrier. Even though they made the choice to have me come, that is a massive emotional burden.
What it really boils down to is this: I do not have control over what other people are doing. I only have control over my own choices (and I can attempt to have control over how much time I spend stewing).
These days it feels like the only emotional options are the indignant inner child (why won’t “they” let me have any fun?!) or moral superiority (I am so much better at proper social distancing than they are…). Both are exhausting!
I knew I needed to have a tough conversation to try to alleviate some of my emotional burden. First I want to try to explain to you what synthesizing my thoughts looks like, metaphorically. Do you remember that scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone (book or movie) when Harry, Ron, and Hermione come to that room full of flying keys? That is what is happening inside my brain when I think about covid-19. All of the keys are thoughts, ideas, concerns, and I have to try to capture them and place them in the proper order. But it is very hard and time consuming to catch the keys and everything keeps getting muddled. When I eventually get out the words, it does not come out as I want or need and it is very exhausting.
I have always loathed misunderstandings, but so many of my conversations these days feel laden with miscommunication. I think that is what this blog is for me – I am trying to paint a clear picture of my thoughts and experiences. Who is it for? Not really sure, but sometimes it is just for me to recognize that I can turn my thoughts into words.
So that tough conversation; there were ways that people in my orbit were being selfish and not taking the appropriate level of caution regarding social interactions. I know I cannot control what other people do, only what I do, but right now it feels necessary to have those conversations and try to implore people to see another side. So I tried. I wish I had a success story to share, but they did not hear what I was trying to say. My words were not consumed how I meant them; misunderstood, miscommunication, keys out of place. Had I been clearer, would that have changed the response?
Not only can I not change someone else’s behavior, I cannot change how they hear my words.
Instead, I continue to carry the emotional burden of this risk. It makes being present with my job challenging. There are solutions, none of them perfect. There are choices being made, none of them ideal. I ordered a few clear face masks that I will start to wear with the little girls and I will start to wear my other masks at work with the other kids. That is one tiny thing I can control and will reduce the likelihood that I am a vector of infection.
I will also bake a lot of bread this weekend to allow myself a false sense of control.