Sick and Tired

I haven't posted in almost three weeks.  I'm mired in depression.  Too many losses all at once.

The latest stats for Covid in Minnesota show a daily infection rate higher than it's ever been before. We are now worse off than when we started the lockdown in March. I am furious at our national "leader" who has minimized this crisis, and at those who have followed his lead--young people who are selfish and believe themselves invincible, "mature" people who prefer to believe in their own prejudices rather than scientific facts.  I've never felt so strong an urge to simple leave--go anywhere where covid is not, where people and governments are behaving sanely and humanely.  I feel literally betrayed by our government and the prevailing culture of selfishness, greed, and racism.  

My PTSD is kicking up.  The same sense of betrayal I felt at the hands of my mother, who failed in her primal duty to protect and nurture me, and instead used me to meet her own emotional needs.  This is the ultimate abandonment--what psychologist Peter Walker calls the "abandonment depression," that white fog now swirling at the center of myself.  I sometimes think of it as the"failure to thrive."  I think of those un-nurtured Romanian babies, and those baby monkeys, motherless, who cling desperately to a metal form draped with a towel. Without a mother's attention, her physical touch, the babies grow listless, stop eating, and die. 

I've lost a beloved brother-in-law.  I've lost most of my own mothering role, having finally released Max to the direction of his own inner spirit.  I feel listless, directionless. Without the work of managing his life to anchor me, what is the point of me now?

I can tell myself that my role as a mother is to stand back and cheer him on, to point out his strengths and good choices and successes.  But it feels like so limited a role.  Some great chunk of myself has fallen away, and I'm left naked, weightless, ungrounded. 

I want to foster kittens, but can't, as Skippyjon just wouldn't tolerate having them in the house, and we really have nowhere to keep them separate from him.  I want to help little kids with reading, but how, when schools will be trying to keep kids and staff apart?  

This is hard. This is so hard.  And I'm sick of articles and spiritual gurus telling me what I should be "learning" from this disaster, how I should be "supporting my mental health."  I'm sick of our can-do culture, which offers no support for legitimate grief and fury.  I'm sick of doing it all myself, with a partner struggling with a new job, and little time to empathize with what I'm feeling.  I'm sick and tired, and for once, I'm going to let myself be where I am, for as long as it takes. 

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