thoughts about ish
I am angry. I am frustrated. I am confused. I am feeling all kinds of emotions that I almost don't know how to express them all and I think it's making me tired. I mean, I did run today which included some hills and I've been cleaning my room and doing laundry for two days, so maybe that's also why I'm tired.... But I would like to think it's because I'm emotionally and mentally tired because of the situation we are all living in together. In today's issue of The Corona Chronicles I will talk about how John Carroll took away my reunion weekend and really that's where my emotional distress began to be noticeable. I wrote to my kids about it because too many of them were saying that this situation wasn't really affecting them at all. I wish I was 12 or 13 again and didn't have any understanding of the world around me or realize just how big the problems of the world are. (For complete transparency, I don't actually wish I was 13 again because the 7th grade was terrible and I don't need to relive finding out how my mom died -- sarcasm isn't really easily conveyed in text.) But it is amazing to see their minds unable to complete wrap around the situation. Some of them might not even understand what they're feeling because, like me, they have too many feelings passing through them at a time. So read on my dear readers because I am adding some interesting stuff to my SFK (safe for kids, if you haven't caught on yet) journal entry. Monday, March 23, 2020:
When I was 10 years old, my best friend’s mom worked for a radio station and got me front row tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Concert. The concert was on my actual birthday and I was looking forward to it for months. The morning of the concert I woke up with an ear infection and a cold. I didn’t care about being sick, I cared about missing this concert that I had looked forward to for so long. Besides, how many kids get to sit in the front row of a concert? When I was that age, no one did. This was supposed to be an amazing experience and I had to miss it so we didn't risk damaging my poor little baby ears. I still haven't see TSO at Christmastime in Cleveland and I'm still distraught about it. While I was thinking about what I would write in my journal (is anyone even reading this anymore, or am I doing it all for myself?) I thought about the stay-at-home order issued on Sunday, but decided to check my emails to see if any other news seemed interesting or idea sparking. That's when I saw I got an email from John Carroll. As some of you may know, I graduated from John Carroll with my undergraduate degree five years ago this May (and my graduate degree one year ago this May). Every year the university holds a reunion weekend. It’s a five year tradition for alumni. So this would be my first one coming up in June. Except John Carroll has canceled all events - including all alumni engagement events - through July 1, 2020. This means the founders’ day event, graduation, Alumni Awards Dinner, and reunion weekend which was scheduled June 5-7. I started feeling a lot of different things - mostly angry, but also sadness - and new exactly what I would be writing about. I noticed many of you have written “this hasn’t affected my life at all” or “there hasn’t been a lot of change to my normal life because of this” and honestly I felt the same way. I felt like the only difference was that I was doing work in my bedroom and not my classroom. I was still reading and making dinner and talking to my dad every day (we wouldn't not talk... we live together). I was still grading. I was still talking to students. But then the biggest event of my year got canceled. One day, I hope you all get to feel the excitement that I held in my heart for this event (but not have it taken away) because this is like the adult version of prom (at least for John Carroll alumni) where you get to hang out with old friends and have a big party outside. I was excited to see some of the people I hadn’t seen in a while and spend an entire weekend with favorite friends. So this has affected me. This has changed my plans for the summer in a number of ways. This has changed any plans I might have had for Spring Break this week. This summer was supposed to be a summer of exciting new things. One of those things was going to reunion weekend with the one person I still talk to from my graduating class and catching up with the ones who have drifted off or moved back to their homes. It was something I had looked forward to for an entire year since I graduated again and received my "save the date" magnet. I had JUST put that magnet on the fridge. I am giving up an entire weekend to sit in my best friend's front yard day drinking just to walk to campus and sit on the quad and continue to day drink and judge all the people around me. I was also supposed to go to Europe, but I guess I'm just not meant to see the world. Or my friends. This virus has interrupted my life. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how this was truly affecting me and i think "interrupted" is the appropriate term. It's making us put things on hold or just making everything around us so damn difficult to do. I can barely go running without someone getting in my way. These people didn't want to walk the Metro Parks paths before they were trapped in their homes so they shouldn't be doing it now -- MY RUNNING TRAIL HAS BEEN INVADED BY NON-PARK PEOPLE. Many times we think that the changes and the effects something is supposed to cause are meant to be huge and noticeable immediately, but sometimes it’s something so small that you don’t notice it until a million little things roll together and finally become a big thing. Reunion weekend being canceled was the last "little thing" that I could handle mentally and it has worn me out. There's been a lot of change happening very quickly and there's a lot of uncertainty tied to those changes and I think we are all waiting on the edge of the cliff to see what's going to happen next and what's going to push us over. I am ignoring all signs of stress that I know my body is presenting because I refuse to accept that I am stressed. I refuse to accept that right now I might not be okay. Is that healthy? No, of course not... Is helping me cope with what's going on? Yes, right now it is... I'm going running. I'm taking my meds. Everything will be fine. But check on me in a week. I hope this ends soon. I hope we can flatten the curve enough to make it so we can enjoy being around people again soon. But that’s all I have right now: Hope. Hope that it gets better. Hope that we will make it to the other side of this without too many more disruptions in our normal lives. As always, stay safe and keep washing your hands, xo, j P.S. In the event that you don't know what I'm not telling my kids it's the day drinking and the slight panicky paragraph of ignoring stress signs.
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AuthorJust a 20something trying to get by in life. Archives
April 2020
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