Anxiety building....

There is this underlying buzzing fear and anxiety in every day life. This, soft humming in the back of your mind as you try and carry out your new normal. The normal where you barely leave your house, you eat at home more,  you go for walks but cross the street to the other side when someone else is walking by to maintain distance. It's there lingering in the shadows as you work from home and take up the role of teacher for your children because their lives too have had to adapt to a new way of life.

There are minute distractions. Small pieces of bliss plucked from the chaos that is our rapidly changing world. Walks in the fresh air. Working from home and being able to spend more time with your children because of it. A clean house because there is nothing else to do. Less traffic on the roads when you are able to get out. But then there is always the lingering reminders that there has been a great shift in the world. That it is not as safe as your brain is trying to convince you of.

Tape on the floor at the store, signs stating to stand 6 feet apart, glimpses of people wearing gloves and masks over their face, the wide eyed panic of everyone in the vicinity if someone coughs. Small glimpses of a bigger picture. And then you turn on the news, and the reality slams into your chest like a freight train. Your pocket of the world is lucky, your community has not been hit so hard by it...yet. But others, they are suffering. They are on the verge of collapse.

The images that are flashing across the screen of multiple graves being built, a story of a family losing three family members in the course of three days and being unable to have a funeral and mourn as we are used to. Refrigerator trucks lining up outside of hospitals to act as makeshift morgues because everything is getting overrun. Life is changing rapidly, and the realization that you are perhaps weeks away from the same fate is scary. Anxiety inducing panic swirls in your chest, and all you can do is watch in horror.

And then there are moments where you shut off the tv, put down your phone, and walk away from the outside world for a moment. And you try and take in the extra time with family, though you miss your other family members and friends.

Times right now are scary. Very scary. And everyone keeps saying to hold on to the hope that you are still employed, hang on to the extra time you get with family, count your blessings that everyone is healthy. But still, that fear is still very real in the pit of your stomach, in the back of your mind.

It is okay to be scared. It is okay to not always be positive and uplifting. You are okay to not be okay. Everything right now is not sunshine and fucking roses. The world is hurting now, and you have every right to process that, to feel it. But also do not dwell in it long, do not let it drag you down. Feel your emotions, process them, and then have faith that in time this will pass. Yes it may leave us living in a new world, but at least we will be living.