A lot has happened in my little world over the last three months. I won’t bore you with the details as most of those have been documented in previous posts if you want to go back and read through them. Imposed quarantine and my immense fear of the Coronavirus aside, the calendar year of 2020 has felt like a battering ram and I am the feeble wooden gate, splintering with every blow.
I have always been the person who was very quick to hatch a Plan-B. I don’t dwell on the details of what just happened. My brains kicks into overdrive and I immediately search for a plan of action to move forward. But something in the way my neurons have always fired in the past has recently changed. For the first time in my life, I feel completely overwhelmed and uncertain about where I go from here and that, for me, is the true sign of how affected I am by what is happening in the world right now.
I try my best to process all of the information presented online but when those reports become too staggering to deal with, I purge my accumulated emotion and I cry. I make no excuse and I don’t fault myself for my behaviour, I just cry. Once I have released the intensity of those feelings, my focus shifts and I want nothing more than to be in my kitchen. I have recently renamed my kitchen my “solace room” because it is the only place where I can feel a true sense of peace.
Today is no exception to that rule. My dueling crockpots and my Dutch oven will be filled with a myriad number of items that will produce the combined aromas of onion, garlic, bacon and a collection of other ingredients that will eventually become an assortment of soups and stews I will share with others. One person, in particular, will have his freezer filled with these items as a dear friend has just been diagnosed with advanced brain cancer and is awaiting the plan for his course of treatment.
So, this morning, I am shutting out the socials, and the rest of the planet, to bring my focus into a world I can control, into a world where I can be helpful even if it is on a very small scale. And as the onions caramelize and the bacon is rendered, I know I will cry more tears today because it is what I need to do. I can only hope when this pandemic is over and we are able to live our lives again, I can say I was able to recognize the best parts of myself and know that I gave everything I could to make things a bit better for the people I love when they needed it the most.
polysyllabic profundities 
It is in the solace room that we cook up the soup for the soul to nourish through this Covid catastrophe. (A bit of a Hallmark-y sentiment, but I’ve been cooking almost every meal , every day for a month. Last night I snapped and went to a KFC drive-through just so I could feel human again. And also, it was the lure that got my kid through a rough day with that incentive!
We all do what we have to to survive!
You are right, we do what we have to do to get through this. I hope you and your family are staying well.
We are trying…actually, rather it’s all very trying. Getting through Sunday is the hardest. No Help on Sundays. Pity me. We go for car rides and risk our lives on questionable drive-through fare. But, so far, we survive.
I’m looking forward to looking back on this, somehow, fondly as the time I was ultra productive and artsy. If only I could stop eating the bags of chips that are contribution to the return of my acne!
Be well where ever you find yourself!
This would be the perfect time to get my second book written but I haven’t been able to write a thing. I’m certainly not beating myself up, just shaking my head and getting through each day. Stay safe!
You are not alone, Susan, and you are figuring out your own path forward – which is what we all hope to do at some point. You’re simply ahead of the game. Stay sane, my friend
Thank you, Sheila. I hope you and Pretty are staying well. xx
This is a crazy time to say the least and there is truly no right or wrong way to deal with any of it or how to feel, as one of my dearest friends reminded me recently. It doesn’t help that you suffered a significant loss coming into this (which, I’m so sorry to hear of your loss!) Between work and staying home all other times, I hardly recognize life. It’s all so surreal and while I can still feel certain things (sadness, anger with people’s willful ignorance, frustration at being so cooped up, etc.), all those emotions are muted because I reached a point of saturation so to speak. I do think it’s good to unplug from all the social media now and again or it would just bog you down (to be fair, unplugging now and again even without a pandemic is a good idea if you ask me). Anyway, my point, however you are coping, whether it is crying and then cooking, or never getting out pajamas, it’s okay. Just take care of you both physically and mentally. Coping comes in many forms so really, to me, the blogging, the crying, the cooking, etc., it’s all coping mechanisms and all are equally relevant. Now, just to get me to blog again…ha!
Thank you for that, and I do hope you get back to your blogging. I enjoyed reading them.