Muddy Brain

Some days, many days, I feel like I have nothing profound to write, nothing meaningful to add to either this blog or my latest project. Even with the sun shining and everything on the upswing, my brain feels muddy and tired, moving from one task to another without really thinking about what I’m doing and whether it’s really what I want to be doing. In some ways, this feels enormously adaptive. Right now, it doesn’t matter if I want to be shepherding children through e-learning, or doing the dishes again, or even writing. It’s got to be done. But the piper will need to be paid and that muddy, fuzzy pandemic brain will make its needs known.

It’s funny how that happens. Yesterday was a stressful day around here, between normal life events combined with lots of one-off tasks, not least of which was a video call about our kids returning part time to school. I got off the call, finished chores and parenting and sat down to zone out, when I looked down and realized that, almost without thinking, I’d mainlined a half dozen cookies in less than 10 minutes. That’s not my style. First of all, I’m more of a candy eater, and second, when I eat sweets, I indulge. I am aware of every single delicious bite.

I’ve been in this lockdown long enough to realize that in the face of an incomprehensible monstrosity like a pandemic, sometimes the stress comes out sideways. You see, I’m handling the kids’ school. I’m handling this new manuscript. I’m handling the general sadness of myself and my family. I’m handling all of my big feelings about all the things I cannot control.

But something about watching my kid’s teachers cry about how their class will be split up when we move to hybrid learning tipped me over into cookie monster territory. That muddy brain of mine isn’t letting me draw a straight line right now. Just the pure sorrow of a year of loss and perseverance, and regret that once again, my kids’ world is going to change and we have none of the control and all of the responsibility.

I wonder if even just saying it out loud might help that muddy brain. Over the last year, and longer for many of us, we have had very little control over what life threw at us. And all the of the responsibility for living with it. And my fuzzy, muddy pandemic brain wants me to remember that that’s hard and that sometimes that piper needs to be paid. Whether that’s in cookies, or in crying, or even in a teeny-weeny little mental breakdown. (The Victorians had a term for a temporary depressive spell. They called it having “a case of the morbs” and I think it is exactly perfect.) To me, those all seem like normal reactions to an extremely stressful and grief-inducing situation.

So here I am, an hour after feeling like I have nothing meaningful to write, with a still-muddy brain and a still-tired soul. But honoring the toll of this year takes off some of that weight - the weight I have laid on myself to be better than I am. Maybe we could each help each other take off that weight, as we reemerge, apologetic for the books we didn’t write and the hobbies we didn’t pursue. Because the last thing our muddy pandemic minds need is another thing to worry about.