Taking care of ourselves to take care of each other
How I’m parenting myself through what I'm calling the “Covid Exhaustion-Wave Background” of 2020
When I was a younger adult I used to babysit my baby cousin. I found him absolutely fascinating in so many ways. I’m an only child so I had limited experience with babies and young kids and he was the first baby I got to see grow up. Most of my other younger cousins were either too close to my age for me to make sense of them growing up or I didn’t see them regularly enough to actually see them. With this cousin, I had a relationship with his mom before he was born, went to his mom’s wedding, knew when his mom had him, saw the baby pictures, met him before his first birthday and so when I was watching him as 3/4 year old I felt much more connected to him as a being.
Anyway, like I said, I used to watch him, and change his diaper (the first and only diaper I have ever changed) and make him dinner, and play with him, and listen to his silly jokes and console him when he missed his mama and put him to bed and try to hide how annoyed I got when he misbehaved — he used to tryyyyyy me….. Suffice it to say two year olds are evilllll. But anyway lol, I was really fascinated by how his mind worked and how much it revealed to me about who humans really are.
I remember how weird it was to me how he would cry when he was tired. 22 year old me would be so confused. I would be like “Hello tiny human, I have made you your favourite snack and given you a bath, and put you in your bed and made you cozy, why don’t you go to sleep, instead of crying?” And he would be like “WAHHHHHH!” Lol. I always needed to check my frustration and remember he’s just a tiny human. Everything is major to him so I have to come down to his level and support him through these great, big, problems. Luckily, all that really meant was be there and comfort him until he tired himself out.
Life in 2020 has been rocking me back to these lessons I learned way way back in the day (four years ago lol) and it’s uncanny, because all of a sudden I can relate you know? I get it. Being tired is uncomfortable and frustrating. You want to feel better. It’s overwhelming. You can’t just go to sleep, you gotta deal with your feelings. If I could go back I’d tell him, “I feel you tiny human. I too am tired… all the time.” It’s a little different though because he really was just tired, but beneath my fatigue, my emotions are all over the place and although I can feel them, I haven’t really been dealing with them and that’s impacting my ability to rest and recuperate, and wreaking silent havoc on my relationships.
Every week on my radio show when I’m interviewing someone I ask them how they’re doing and they ask me back and my answer is always “Girl…. let me tell you. Sweet baby girl Kristeena is going through it.” Because I am. I want to be a strong girl (Bong-Soon) and a powerful woman but jeeeeez. This shit is hard.
Really hard. 2020 has tested me in so many ways. I’ve struggled financially, emotionally, physically etc. My only living grandpa died. My cat got sick. I’m still, months later dealing with the lingering effects of dengue. There’s been family drama. I’ve felt alone and isolated, and guilty for not being as productive as I usually am, while also feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and drained. And under all of that I’m struggling with the emotional background noise spilling out of the people all around me and the general air of suffering permeating the entire world.
This Covid19 thing is awful in so many ways, and with every increase in cases in Jamaica (we had almost 250 yesterday) I get more and more existential dread. Every surface around me is teeming with the virus. Did I wash my hands? Did I touch my face? What if I’m sick and don’t even know it? I wore my mask but I took a public bus — what if someone coughed and particles got into my eyes? What if my parents forgot to wash their hands? On and on and on — it is relentless. I am exhausted.
My default reaction to this is to rest - I’m tired so obviously I should sleep more, do more self-care, retreat, add more joy in to hopefully balance out all the stress. But the exhaustion is so overwhelming that I find myself going to bed tired and waking up tired, going through the day tired, repeat process. But I’m not just tired, like I ran a marathon or had a busy day — I’m tired like I’ve been trying to solve a difficult math problem all day, been forced to network for hours or I’ve been in a long, emotionally draining argument. Those kinds of tired are different and require different approaches. I’m learning that I can’t just sleep that off. The best I’ve been able to do is to acknowledge my feelings and to take a step back when I feel on the brink of lashing out (so many close calls). I’ve had to learn how to recognize adult tantrums - being obstinate, passive aggressive, aggressive aggressive and to check myself because we’re all going through it, there’s no need to unleash my inner turmoil on my peers who are also just as stressed out as I am. Listening to them and doing research has actually helped me to develop coping mechanisms for some of my more complex feelings.
One of the key strategies I’m learning is to parent myself. Remember how much I used to do for my baby cousin to help him cope? How I anticipated his needs, protected him, explained complicated things to him? I gotta have that kind of patience with myself. What I’ve been doing is to essentially shout at myself to just go to bed as if that would solve everything. What I’m trying to do right now is to give myself more outlets for dealing with my anxiety and stress (movement, journaling, talking it through with friends), giving myself treats and sending myself to bed at a reasonable time so I get my rest lol.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that in case you’re going through it too. Saying how I feel, being vulnerable and honest sometimes is also helping me to combat my perfectionist impulses. The same impulses that make me tell myself to rub dirt on my problems instead of doing healing and heart work. The ones that say a fat, black girl has to be strong instead of her complicated soft and emotional INFP Pisces self. It may sound counter-intuitive but it also helps me to set and defend my boundaries — because a boundary to me is an admission that I have vulnerabilities that require active defense. It’s a way to prioritize my needs.
Be kind to yourself, and to others because we’re all just big little humans who need love. If it’s one lesson Covid 19 should have taught us by now is that taking care of ourselves is essential to taking care of each other.
