Covid19000% Done

Today’s the day. I’m calling it guys. This is hard.

Me and my family have been so fortunate during the entire headline of COVID19. We’ve all avoided it and have remained healthy. I realize that we are incredibly lucky and protected but I’m not going treat myself anymore to toxic positivity. If I continue that, I am not holding space for my bigger emotions right now.

If I’m being honest, I’m struggling. I’m struggling with ground hog day. I’m struggling to get excited about things. I’m struggling to ride the waves of motherhood that in the past I would have taken within my stride. Im struggling to keep up with the house because we are in it all of the time. I’m struggling without my usual village: grandparents who I could drop kids to if need be, or who would visit us and play with the kids so I could empty the dishwasher without being demanded by a crying baby or a toddler asking (whining) for a snack.

I feel like I know and admit I need help, but there is nothing anyone in my village can really do right now. I need more than a video call. I need more than a ‘once this is over, we will be right there’. I need more than wines over zoom. I’m at the point I need more than a quick visit even. I need a reprieve to breathe. I need a family festival spread across a few days. Motherhood is hard under normal circumstances, but motherhood during lockdown just feels like is a superhuman ask. The remission doesn’t seem as if it’s coming anytime soon. And that is hard to swallow right now.

So many have it tougher. Of course they do. I feel a genuine heavy heart for all that have lost lives, businesses, jobs. It just monumentally sucks. I guess for me I’m just mourning time. I did not plan to spend my maternity leave with my baby girl in this space. Yes, it’s been great to lounge around with her and snuggle as much as we like. But its not what I had in mind for every day. I had cafes in mind. I had gardens in mind. I had family visits in mind. I had in mind that when she was going through fussy phases we’d just pop out to see someone. Go for a stroll 11km away. Pop down to the beach if we were really desperate. Maybe take a cheeky weekend away as a family in between working weeks. I didn’t really expect to feel this trapped. When she sees her grandparents, aunties and uncles, and great grandparents again in real time she will be months older. This makes me just shudder. I’m mourning normality, like everyone globally right now.

I feel like I’m experiencing all seasons in each day which is tiring. I’m feeling summer when Henry is being cute or crazy or funny, or when we are on a family walk. I’m feeling spring when Thea smiles at me or when I tick something off of my do to list. I’m feeling autumn when we are slowing down for the end of the day with the bed time routines x 2 are looming. I’m feeling winter when Thea is in a crying spree or when I’m rushing through daily tasks like brushing my teeth or peeing or vacuuming because someone needs something from me, immediately. I can’t keep up with the highs and the lows. One minute I have everything under control and the next I’m brimming with tears of frustration and overwhelm. There is no medium for me right now. There is no cruising. I’m either really happy we’ve got nowhere to be, or I’m so exhausted by it. Things could be worse. But things could always be worse. An amputee could have no limbs, but that doesn’t mean their feelings toward their missing limb isn’t valid. I feel like my missing limb right now is freedom and I’m sad about it not being available to me right now, at a time when I feel like I most need it. When my sanity most needs it.

There is no point to this blog but to work out my thoughts and whinge to be completely honest. And perhaps to encourage anyone reading this to have a whinge too. All I know is I’m not my best self right now. Im strung higher than ever before. I’m trying to be a mum to 2 with less resources than before. I’m trying my hardest everyday to show up. Show up as mum, wife, student, wearing all the hats like everything is fine. And we are okay. We are safe. We are happy together. But I’m not happy we are here right now. I’m overwhelmed and the novelty of Covid is well and truly gone.

I want to assure you, no matter who you are: an overworked essential worker, a single person feeling socially deprived, a parent who is ready to frisbee the iPad and SeeSaw out of the window because remote learning is not a vibe, an elderly man or woman who has recently lost a partner and now has to arrange a Covid safe funeral, a business owner who is hanging on by a thread, an expectant mother who is about to give birth in a hospital that is restricting your support people, a bride and groom who have had to postpone your wedding again, the list goes on – I’m with you. It’s not fair. We’re all battling different things in amongst this big storm. I see you and I feel you and I’m sorry you’re going through this.

We got this, of course we do, but you best believe I’m going to whinge my way through it because life isn’t meant to be this way. Things could be worse, but they could also be a whole lot better.