The Invisible Weight
The other day a good friend wrote to me,”I am so frustrated, I didn’t get anything done this week, I am so unfocused” This friend is someone who is usually able to balance being a published author with three books in process, a corporate lawyer, and the mom of two teenagers. She thrives when balancing and juggling all of the things. When I asked her what she thought was going on for her she said, “I don’t know, one minute I feel like I am rocking it and I could do this forever and the next I feel like I have the attention span of a flea.” This “new normal” is taking some serious getting used to in ways that we did not expect.
Many people have been directly impacted by the global pandemic. They have lost jobs and loved ones, they are trapped with abusive partners or parents, and they are left without essential services. For these folks the impact is real and visible. They know everyday what is weighing them down. Many more of us are privileged to have avoided these direct impacts to our lives. We count our blessing beside the challenges that we face, and are grateful to have avoided the worst of the storm so far. However, what we are carrying is an invisible weight and because of its invisibly we forget the toll it is taking.
A whole new layer of worry is glazing over everything we do. We don’t take walks with friends we take “social distance” walks. We don’t talk about the recent past, we say “Before COVID”. We try to talk about the future, but we always have to add the caveat, “If there is a vaccine by then.” This extra mental layer is like jogging with a weighted vest. At first it feel very heavy, but over time you stop noticing it, but still wonder why you are so tired all of the time. The collective psychic pain is palpable. You don’t loose almost 100,000 people in your country without the collective pain resonating through all of us. For some we feel sadness at unexpected times, like when I was enjoying a particularly lovely moment with my kids on Friday night, and was caught off guard by the thought of how many were suffering while I was enjoying my family. For others we feel a constant hum of anxiety vibrating in our bodies like a small earthquakes that has stirred far away and is resonating under our feet. Lastly, the profound lack of leadership has left us working very hard to do our own research, make up our own rules and shape our decisions with the best information we have in that moment. Public Health officials have been silenced by narcissistic politicians who want to use this crisis as a spring board for their relevance. Instead of clear and constant messages from true experts who can give us sign posts to follow, we scroll social media and news paper articles to gather the information we need. Without their guidance we are left to do the leg work around decisions as simple as if we wear a mask when we hike, and as complex as if we open our business and allow our devastated economy to begin to return.
When I was about 4 months pregnant with my daughter I found myself more tired than I expected. I was not yet in the third trimester when I was carrying a visibly heavy load and I was beyond the first trimester and the nausea, so I just couldn’t understand why I didn’t have the energy I had before pregnancy . I said to a friend, “I don’t know what is wrong with me, I am just exhausted at the end of every day.” She said, “Sarah you are growing a baby. Your body is working as hard as it would if you were climbing a mountain every day, you just don’t notice that you are doing the work.” I think that is what the COVID experience is like. A layer of exhausting work is getting done by our minds and bodies every day without us perceiving the toll it is taking.