Pandemic Let Down
In the last year or so, he has been inspired by the obituaries by some who have died by suicide. Their obituaries have been authentic and honest and talked about their struggles with mental illness. The focus of his blog has been on his own journey with mental illness, so he is admires those that are so brave to chronicle their journey in their obituary. It is one way to break down the stigma.
Today, he found more than one obituary in which the death was likely by suicide.
This is one day after one of the the most peaceful marches in the world Justice4BlackLives.
I will be honest. Since the province has started re-opening, we have had dramatic highs and lows, but mostly lows. We are struggling.
While the province was shut-down, we accepted this as our duty as citizens. We actually looked forward to our evenings and weekends. We drank shandies and we watched Netflix. We tended to pick shows that educated us and we would often pause and discuss the ethical dilemmas raised in the shows. I cooked more and experimented with new recipes. It felt wonderful and to know that we were aligning with our provincial federal goals of flattening the curve was an extra bonus. It also felt like a good preview to retirement. I remarked to him that it seemed that we didn't have any conflict during that time. He remembered we had two.
This past week, as Manitoba began phase 2, we have been struggling. I don't know if it is because of the #BLM movement is raising our consciousness. I think it is partly that but also because we are seeing examples of people just not cooperating with social distancing. Maybe because we had to be strong during the shut down, and not that we have choices of what to do with ourselves, it is hitting us.
For some reason, we are both calling our moods "despondent". We are fortunate that we are always there for each other and we also have good supports in our circle of friends. Yet, for some reason, we are not reaching out to some of our friends whom we have really, really missed. Hard to explain. I guess we don't want to bring people down to people who are doing well emotionally. We also have great community supports, although my Nurse Practioner has semi-retired. She won't be seeing regular patients but will still work some days at a walk-in clinic. I am terribly despondent with this news, even, though I know I will get another NP.
Our levels of despondency are completely out of line with what is making us despondent. I was deferred from donating blood and I was in tears for two days. Trump says something stupid and my partner cries real tears. The Free Press sends emails to me almost every day giving me updates. They send these emails to me as a subscriber, but, when I click on one of the stories to read more, they make me log in to provide that I am subscriber. I am so irritated by this and spend an hour being irritated when I could just log in. I am preferring to be irritated for 10 minutes than to take 8 seconds to log in.
I guess the only way to explain it is that we didn't feel these emotions during the shut-down. We felt we were all in this together. Now, that the re-opening is ramping up, our emotions that we suppressed need to catch up.
We will be ok. Our hearts go out to those families with loved ones in today's obituaries.
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