Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (165)
July 31, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 122: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is very apt for me right now. I’m navigating a few relationships that are rough right now and it feels like the emotional white water rapids. With one, I’m very unsure if any of it is personal, or if it’s just what the other person needs, or if what the other person needs is NOT me in their life. Which leads to a lot of sadness and wondering what I did wrong. This situation just affirms my lizard brain’s conviction about my inevitable abandonment. When people know me, and I care about them, they leave me.
With another, I’ve shared some deeply personal and upsetting information that dredged up a lot of bad memories about mutuals and they’re digesting it but the loss of that enormous pressurized rock in my chest where I’ve held it in so long has me spinning out of balance. I know they need time to digest but my anxiety is out of control with catastrophic thinking. It goes straight to the worst case scenario and starts planning for that, while also direly wishing bad things would happen to me “and just be done with it”. I mean, I don’t want to leave my kids but this is a pattern I recognize that goes waaay back to when the financial abuse started. It was always too much. That load was immensely heavy.
I didn’t want to give up but I also desperately wanted to escape any way I could, including the worst possible way (back then, I considered it to be a possible relief to end the pain and not a bad thing to be gone. I only didn’t follow through because I couldn’t shirk my responsibilities).
I recognize some parts of my coping pattern but not why. If I had to guess, this is the result of nearly two decades of financial shenanigans where I’d discover one small problem, tug on the end of that string, and end up with my arms full of a multi-thousand dollar problem: the car being towed, Mom refusing to stop driving and destroying six tires in a row (thankfully never injuring anyone but MY GOD she could have), Mom’s early onset dementia, having to parent my brother and the string of disasters that followed HIM everywhere he went, Mom’s other health conditions and mental health decline and huge dental bills, the thousands of lies my Dad told. But this person has always done their best by me, and yet I’m still unable to suppress a probable trauma-related response. I don’t know, I’m just adding another therapy session this week to try and pick it apart before I blow things up.
Year 4, Day 123: We’ve removed the gate from Smol Acrobat’s crib. We crossed our fingers that this will intrigue them enough for them to STAY PUT. JB used to sneak out of their crib to sleep in the guest bed and sneak back in the morning. I’m fine with that too as long as they don’t wake us. This SORT of worked for a few hours. They woke, hysterically calling for Mom hugs, and then a transfer to the big bed. JB was moved to their bigger bed out of the crib close to this age, it might be time for us to make the transition here too. Debating whether we buy them a small futon (which they love) or transfer them to the guest bed.
On a related note of spending, we’re looking down the barrel of a LOT of spending: PiC’s ramped up the search for a minivan ($$$$$). I am setting up JB’s first course of orthodontia ($4000?). We can knock $400 off that bill if we pay that in full. One of the cars might need $1000 worth of work.
We could manage any of these singly, but all together in one year? That’s a huge blow. Maaaaaaybe I shouldn’t have stolen that money from the emergency fund to buy stocks.
I finally did the math on credit card offers to use when we pay for the ortho work. These are my top two contenders:
AmEx Green, $3000 minimum spend. Earn 60K = $600 – $150 annual fee = $450 net value
Citi Premier, $4000 minimum spend. Earn 60K = $600 – $95 annual fee = $505 net value
Year 4, Day 124: Application for the Citi Premier sent and approved! Nice to check that off my list.
JB had a list of assigned chores with the reward of 30 minutes of gaming after each chore. I’ve never seen them get on task so quickly with so few reminders before.
That freed me up to make several phone calls I’d put off for months, including getting their ortho appointment set up.
Also, surprise, PiC’s stop into the dealer to see a van resulted in our buying that van. We had discussed our budget years ago and honestly I’d lost hope that we’d find what we wanted for that price so I’d been siphoning off the “extra” cash into investments. Whoops. I used our emergency cash instead, which was surprisingly not horrifying since I’d always considered the emergency cash to be untouchable. Only break glass in case of true emergency. But we still have a large chunk of money in i-bonds that I intended to keep for five years but are accessible for a small interest penalty, and the rest of our spare cash this year will replenish the emergency fund as well. That’s a big step for me. In the past, even having interim money that could be cashed for any penalty wouldn’t have felt sufficient. Maybe it’s foolish of me not to worry, PiC’s company went through two rounds of layoffs this month, but I’m surprisingly even keeled about it. Let’s see how long that lasts!
Year 4, Day 125: Insurance for the new car doesn’t have to be purchased for 14 days so we can wait and use the Citi Premier for those charges as well as the dental work. That’ll tip us over the $4000 minimum spend in no time. Semi-sarcastic “yay”. Might as well get a bit of something back while we’re spending oodles!
I asked my therapist for an extra therapy session this week because I’m walking some extra rough roads right now. That was progress in and of itself. I wouldn’t normally be willing to ask for the help I needed to get through this. I would normally roll myself up into an angry armadillo ball, shutting everyone else out, marinating in the self loathing and why I obviously deserved to be alone and miserable. I did do some of that, all day on Monday, before I reached a point of realizing that it was probably more traumatized and catastrophic thinking than it was reality. A couple friends helped me hold on until my therapy session where she said something that struck a nerve. “Your kids act out with you because it’s safest to do that with people who will love them even at their worst.”
TWANG.
Oh. Oh. I don’t even believe my normal hyper-striving best possible version of myself is worthy of care and love. No wonder, when I’ve hit a rough patch and am at my worst, I immediately believe that I have to be alone in my misery. If I’m unlovable in my normal state, I’m most certainly unlovable if we’re having conflict and I’m not my best self. I’m sitting with that revelation for today.
Year 4, Day 126: Taking some of my own “declutter your room!” medicine and going through my bookshelf to pull as many Mercedes Lackey / Valdemar books as I feel ok about purging, and doing the same to my tshirts which don’t fit post second pregnancy.
Fully committed to the parenting and working full time gig today. I’ve been juggling a bit the past two days but with less emphasis on work and today was challenging. JB had reasonable freedom to pick and choose the order of their activities between chores, refresher courses in math and language, outdoor activities, and playing video games. It is still summer break for them, after all, I’m trying to be relatively loose. They managed to reach a calm-shattering crescendo of attention-demanding behavior that only stopped after my patience had been whittled to a nub. Chastising happened, they cried, they stopped using histrionics to get my attention. That whole thing was not great but after I said my very grumpy frustrated piece, they went off and came back with improved behavior. I took Sera 🐶 for a walk to get away from the constant clueless badgering for ten minutes and that was also helpful. Here’s me learning to make space for my feelings instead of getting mad at myself for having them.
“Your kids act out with you because it’s safest to do that with people who will love them even at their worst.”
This is so true!
I keep mentally turning this over in my head and wondering how I move forward from here. But I think the idea is to learn that it’s ok to know that I wasn’t safe or loved at my best or my worst by some of the people around me growing up, and that’s why I am so prone to spinning out over things other people wouldn’t.
LOL at that last bit with the nerds. Too funny!
Yay you for advocating for yourself and setting up time with your therapist. That’s a huge great step that you took.
Thank you! It seemed like such a small thing but they were mighty impactful.
OMG the nerds story is gold.
Chiming in on how awesome it is to seek and receive support when you need it from your therapist.
And yes to kids melting down with their safe person. It’s f-ing hard but it is absolutely true.