Dark Underbelly

Days under stay-at-home orders continue to drag on. It’s been a frenzy of professional activity trying to get organic chemistry courses online for the first time. I have learned an incredible amount about using my available technology in a short time. Still, I have to laugh over my occasional confusion about the device I’m using at a given moment because I frequently switch between my phone, work laptop, and home touchscreen laptop to produce videos, presentations, upload and download files, and annotate students’ electronic work. I haven’t worked this hard in a long time!

While I do take a great deal of pride in the effort I’ve put forth, I need this remote instruction period to be over… The intensity is taking its toll on me and my children, who are at the opposite end of the spectrum having minimal occupation with their schoolwork; they do not get enough of my attention.

Everybody is in a tough situation now. I read an article making the point that while it is the same storm we are all experiencing, we are certainly not in the same boat; people do not feel the effects of this pandemic equally. I feel guilty saying that I am struggling when others have it much harder. My family is healthy and I am employed, that should be enough to fill my heart with gratitude. It does, to some extent, but still the prolonged isolation is corroding the hard shell of “being OK” that I had been carefully layering on over the last fifteen months. There is yet a soft, dark underbelly of grief and it is strikingly exposed right now. 

I have indeed been struggling. As I stumble through these long, lonely days, it feels like a laborious slog over rough terrain. The longer it goes on, the more weighed down and hunched over I am. Then, that sensitive, thin-skinned underbelly is jarred, scratched, and slashed open by normally surmountable rocks and brush covering my path.

Normal, healthy chit-chat of peers and even news commentaries doesn’t sit well with me. It shouldn’t grate at me, but it does. So listen, I’m glad if your family is suddenly freed from being over-scheduled and now you are enjoying dinner together every night, but the empty seat at our table is more prominent now than ever. It’s great for you if game nights are leading to tons of laughs for your crew, but our fourth player is permanently missing. The symmetry is gone. And honestly, I can *maybe* see how being cooped up with your spouse while both trying to work from home gets annoying, but I would give anything for my partner right now.  

It gets worse, and the external pokes and my reactions probably won’t make sense to most people. They certainly won’t be flattering. My wrath toward the walkers exemplifies that. My normally quiet street has a lot more people out all day now trying not to go crazy. I’m deeply envious of the couples walking babies. They are at the start of all things wonderful, while I… Well, I don’t even know. It’s all over for me, it seems. Then there are the intact families taking strolls to break up the monotony - I silently seethe that they have what I don’t. Don’t get me started on the older couples enjoying the fresh air together, I look away to stay composed.

I know it’s all very ungenerous of me, isn’t it? Maybe you’re uncomfortable right now because you thought I liked you? Here’s the thing – if you read this, I most certainly do like you and am immeasurably grateful for your kindness, your friendship. I just can’t stomach the normalcy and happiness that anyone has, even in this difficult time when I know that nobody is perfectly content. I don’t understand why I don’t get to be with my person and you do. I simply don’t know why you get to be happy in that way while I don’t. I search for what I did wrong to land in this situation and try to understand what you did right to avoid it.

Look, it’s not you. It’s definitely me… I am sure of it, because no being escapes my ire. A pair of cardinals had the audacity to flit past me today, and I was jealous that they were tending to a nest together. It makes no sense and drips of self-pity, doesn’t it? Who the hell is envious of birds for being together?

Let me tell you one thing that I have learned. Grief has a dark, myopic side to it. Most grieving people hit patches where they have a lot of unflattering, difficult thoughts and emotions to work through; none of what I wrote is remotely unique. Rather, it makes sense - it is exceedingly hard to be kind, thoughtful, and unselfish while nursing a great, gaping wound. When your flesh has been ripped open and your entrails are protruding, dragging in the dirt, making a disgusting paste from blood, leaves, and twigs, you can’t think about anything else besides that pain and that horror. It takes tremendous will to not give in to the urge to lie down and just bleed out.

A terrible thing happened to a very good person, someone I loved deeply, who is now dead. A wonderful father was snuffed out while his kids still need him. What happened is rare. There is no known cause. It just happened. There is no why to be found. That is exceptionally hard to come to terms with…

His loss feels all-encompassing because his love for me was that way, too.

Sometimes on the bleakest of nights, my mind wanders to a hiking place. I once fell on a hill there, flat on my face. It was nothing serious, but I remember it well for the way the ground held me while I rested a few seconds. Here’s the dark secret – sometimes I wish I could go to that hill and just purposefully lie down to stop constantly doing things, let the cold rain beat down on me, allow the blood to run out of the grief wound, and relinquish my pain to the ground.

I won’t, though.

Indeed, I will always gather up the mangled tissue that has been ripped out of my unprotected underbelly and drag it along as I take one painstaking step forward at a time. Eventually I will clean it off, stuff it back in, sew it up, and hope the wound doesn’t open so badly the next time.

After I heal up a bit, I’ll be able to see once again that most people are walking around with their own invisible injuries and incredible burdens. People do not let on much of what they grapple with, do they? Another time I will be able to be thoughtful and generous again, and sit with others in their pain.

Today I can’t, but maybe tomorrow I will.