![]() Some schools aren’t keeping track of positive cases, the CDC says if you have Covid you only have to isolate if there’s a new moon, and no matter what happens and who gets sick and how much you don’t think you can handle one single extra thing, you still have to work. PCR tests are impossible to get, rapid tests are expensive, and someone on the group chat keeps saying they don’t work anyway. And that’s the burden for those with someone else to share the ever-mounting load single parents are surviving on fumes. Or you’re dealing with another round of closures, staring down an unwinnable battle between care and work, negotiating who gives up what in your partnership, knowing women will once again bear the brunt of it. If schools are still open for in-person learning in your district, you face sending your kids into the unknown, risking not just illness but the isolation and disruption to your entire household that comes with it, and asking teachers to put their lives and families at risk, too. Parents are facing impossible choices, abandoned by our leaders, our employers, and increasingly, our sanity. And whether you’re boosted or not, no one is immune from the mounting anxieties and pressures this latest round of spiking case counts, reemerging lockdowns, and school closures has brought. Omicron has tipped the scales we’ve all so desperately been trying to balance, scales that were already precariously perched before this variant. None of us can believe we’re doing this two years later, facing the same challenges and heartbreaks we’ve faced since 2020. I’m angry, sad, frustrated, obliterated, abandoned, but more than that and worst of all, I feel nothing. Only there’s always a part missing or I’m a man down, so I enter the next lap just slightly less dented than before, perpetually waiting for a new driver to take over.Īnd this latest trip around the track feels extra cursed, the wheels have all come off, the driver’s passed out, and the race threatens to go on forever. A brief interval when someone is napping or everyone’s sleeping and there’s a panicked dash to fix everything that’s broken before I have to reenter the race. As the parent of two small kids in the middle of a pandemic I get, at most, pit breaks. In fact, don’t even whisper the word “restful” at me anymore. It’s a loop I and other parents have been stuck in for almost two years, willing ourselves to keep it together just a little bit longer, thinking this time will be the last time, that is, until the next time.īecause here we all are again and the thought of being rested for the year ahead, of being a little more prepared for it now makes me laugh that special, unhinged kind of laughter reserved only for the Joker and women in Lifetime movies right before they’re committed. All of this while I try to navigate the flurry of emails bidding me a “happy new year” and reminding me of all the work I’ve been putting off for when I was rested and ready to face 2022 as a refreshed version of myself (lol). He’s also taken off the clothing I dressed him in this morning in favor of his preferred outfit these days: a Spider-Man mask and the haunting reflection of my own mortality. ![]() My 4-year-old tearfully begs to eat a candy cane for breakfast and I relent because the will to fight the crushing tide of an impending tantrum left my body long ago. ![]() It’s 9 in the morning, my 18-month-old is screaming the words “Coco” (short for Cocomelon, of course) so compulsively I wonder for a minute if toddlers this young have ever been exorcised. I know a lot of people who post those kind of memes.Here I am again. Separately, you can also say that you're "dead inside" which means that you're numb from all the hurt you're in but on the outside you look fine/normal. There's a famous GIF/video of Michael Scott from The Office saying "I am dead inside" after he meets the boyfriend of a girl he likes a lot (he has to pretend everything is ok but he's hurting on the inside): I know a lot of people who post those kind of memes. If your video is showing unsatisfying images (like people cutting a cake unevenly, etc) then you might "die a little on the inside" cuz it hurts to watch it haha It's been used so much that they don't realize you can't actually see someone die on the inside.on the outside haha It can mean "cringe," though the connotation is that they're cringing on the inside, not on the outside.
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