Moderate

My attention span is just shot. I can’t read or focus on anything. I start things and don’t finish them. I’m not always this way. Sometimes I’m the opposite. Hyper focused. I start things and never want to stop them. I read obsessively. I obsess. I don’t have an internal moderator. I require a moderator. Or nothing gets done. Or it gets too done.

I can see the steam off my coffee in the cooler than usual air but when I tried to video it for fun it doesn’t show. It just shows a sitting cup of coffee. This steam exists even if you can’t see it. Like lots of things.

This is my first day off. My first official stay at home order day. Actually a scheduled day off. My plants grew and I kept growing so other people can also grow. Some days my home went with me to work. My girls dead headed, watered and weeded while remote learning while I grew. I grew even though I didn’t want to. I didn’t sleep and still grew. I lost my dad and still grew. I’m still growing and changing even though I didn’t want to. I looked back on my growth and I feel it even though I can’t see it.

I panicked at the thought I need to hurry this process up. Hurry up and grieve. So I can hurry up and grow. Through it. Who wants to grieve right? What I think I have learned is I can’t hurry it. I hurry everything. I don’t know how to go at an even pace. I’m a terrible runner because of this. I go fast then slow them fast then slow. I don’t pace. It doesn’t make sense to me. Which is funny because when I run I run long distances. I just don’t do it well. I get bored.

I formulated a quick plan to hurry up and go somewhere too far away with too little time to do a super long hike in the woods. Sound fun? Soothing? Healing? None of the above.

I set an alarm for 2 am. with a plan to drive 4 hours to walk 17 miles on a lightly trafficked trail. Then have to hurry up and be back home for my girls. This is their first weekend back with dad from the stay at home order they did have. At 1:30 am I was still awake. Because awake is all I know right now. I’m too afraid to sleep again. Even on my best days I’m a bad driver so even my not always clear controlled thinking was saying stay at home. That’s an order.

It won’t work. This plan that wasn’t even a plan. It was a panic attack. My version of a panic attack. A quick, not thought out properly réponse to pressure on myself even pressure from the outside world.

Even a lightly trafficked trail on a beautiful sunny day is going to be moderately to heavy traffic. I don’t miss anyone more than my dad right now and don’t crave being around people. Except, I invited people to join me on this stupid plan. They aren’t going. They likely saw the attempt as a desperate attempt to grieve before me.

I do crave company. Just not people in general. I would love to guide people on trips and through the woods but not at a time when I am guildless of myself. Lacking control. Losing control. It’s a terrible time to invite others to join on a journey that is such an unknown territory that I am too afraid to even take it right now.

I am too afraid to take a day of rest. I have and it makes me angsty. I can’t get my attention span on right now. The wires are loose. My focus is on loss and death not life and death. Life is lost so death is not. It’s easy to die. Hard to live. Period.

This is not me saying I want to die. But I am not afraid of dying. It’s living right now I’m afraid of. Not just the basic in and out of breath. But the what to do with a void so big as losing your father. It’s too big for just a quick fast walk in the woods. It’s too big for anything. I’m intentionally making myself feel like it’s too big to handle so I can be ok with it being too big to handle. So I can cry. Alone. On my own. I mean. But don’t mean. I am alone because my dad is gone. Even though there are billions of others not. They don’t matter right now. They aren’t here on my sofa with just me and all the noise I can’t make go away. They aren’t physically here. Physically present.

If my dad were hère he would have said go. Go take a walk. A little walk. Not a 17 mile walk a state away. But without my moderator here anymore I lack someone to tell me what to do and not to do when I don’t know what to do and what not to do.

Maybe I did myself at 1:30 in the morning when I text him and said how silly it was. Then turned my alarm off and we made plans to try a small walk somewhere close. So I can have company. Just another person present so I can feel present. Someone to watch out for me for just a little while since I’m struggling to watch out for me for a little while.

I picture accidentally binge watching things. I have Netflix now. Because I have internet now. I don’t know what to watch other than Gilmore girls and listen to my daughters shows on in the background but woke with the desire to know what happens on greys anatomy after Dr. Mcdreamy died. I quit watching after this happened because my life turned upside down the same time as Meredith Greys. So I have a day I can check in with her. Watch things. Not do things.