I still work out every morning and hit the heavy bag for a while. It's the one thing I'm holding onto. For me though, other students to train with is the most important thing, and it's the instructors that are optional. Not that they don't add anything, of course good teachers are great - but I could still get into an open gym situation where everyone just trains together. I can't get into this:
"While waiting for us to reopen"
It feels so much more complicated than that. I don't know if or when they'll be able to reopen. I've been repeating myself a lot here, but I don't know that I've expressed this coherently yet. On the one hand, it sure seems like there's hope that within a few months, maybe everything will be back to normal. People on Twitter seem to think the worst is already behind us. Maybe I'll feel silly for being this stressed out over taking a few months to avert millions of deaths.
It sure seems that way, but I can't see how it's even possible. If I'm right about how long this will go on, it snowballs into all sorts of other problems. We're going to be in a state of collapse, unable to deal with climate change, inequality at its worst ever, and our government a clusterfuck of psychopaths and morons. This is some seriously dark dystopian shit. To be clear, the government isn't going to be sending out a meager stimulus checks, while we sit at home complaining. They'll be killing us for trying to survive.
On the one hand, everything might be fine. On the other, it might be the end of the world. I find this internal conflict very disconcerting.
I keep hearing that I worry too much, I'm dwelling, I shouldn't wind myself up over things that are out of my control. When one person says this, I can respect it. To each their own. When I'm getting the same rationale from all different directions, I start to wonder. It doesn't actually make any damn sense - to me. Why am I looking at this differently than everyone else?
I want to think about and discuss this incredibly consequential event as it's happening, but I should refrain because it can cause negative emotions? Makes sense taking care of six year olds, but I don't understand this view regarding adults. Negative emotions are the least of my worries here. I'm angry and bored out of my mind because my life is gone, my hope of meeting people gone, my hope of getting out of this hell, gone. I just have to go back to sitting here enduring it. The least I can do is try to make sense of it all and commiserate with myself about it.
It has been pretty challenging to make sense of. I've learned a lot trying. I keep wondering about other people because if I'm this confused, what the fuck are you all thinking. I'm also more obsessed with the human response to this than the virus itself. Another thing people don't get. I'm not even worried about the virus. I'm worried about the people. The ways people are reacting has also been complicated.
We feel powerless. Why expend energy on something we can't do anything about? We don't know virology or epidemiology. Let the experts take care of us. Maybe we'll get lucky, and science will have some kind of breakthrough tomorrow - and it would still have to go through a year of testing. That's best case scenario. It will probably take much longer to really get this under control.
Maybe we open things really carefully, with all sorts of precautions, and we can keep spread down to a minimum in the meantime. Another best case scenario. Also improbable, because we're instead going to reopen things early, with laughable precautions that allow the virus to become even more deeply entrenched.
Beating COVID19 is pretty much out of the question now. It will kill millions of people and that's scary, sure.. but I don't know what the hell people are going to do. It appears we're going to reopen things. That is going to cause a new wave of infections. That much seems reliable.. but, will we shut down again?
Politicians looking at this from the top down might see that we have no choice but to try to function in spite of the "risks," and they'll try to work with that. People though are going to see it differently. They're not going to understand or accept it. Some will be angry about how much worse our leaders have made the problem. Others won't understand any of that, but they'll be just as angry. Unprecedented numbers of people won't be able to afford food or rent, while billionaires are frantically making everything worse. A massive storm is coming and I think we should try to be prepared for it.
It will be amazing if I'm wrong about all of this and everything turns out fine in a few months. People harp on the fact that I don't know. We can't see the future, but we never fucking know anything. We can't even see the present. We make the best educated guesses we can, and try like hell to survive.
I wonder about other people, who seem to be handling this better than I have been. Especially people who are in roughly similar situations - minimal social connections, so now almost entirely isolated. I don't know anyone in a situation like mine, but many living alone, who had jobs, now sitting around doing nothing all day every day.
It occurs to me that I don't understand how they can live that way in the first place. In some dead end low wage job, doing nothing to make their lives better. Not that I feel superior, just that it seems incredibly depressing. Why even keep doing the job? Why not fall into a pit of hopeless despair, like I did?
For me, that sense that I'm trying to get somewhere is important. That it's somewhere realistic and worth getting to, not just a distraction. I've talked a lot about this growth mindset, wherein who we are is not an anchor, but a vector. Who we are is what we're striving for, how we're striving for it, what we're doing. Not some mirage of ego.
Now I'm doing nothing again. My entire life strategy blown to hell. Not sure if I should rethink it or just give the fuck up. I don't understand people who are content to be going nowhere, just surviving, distracted by their jobs, then placated by their fictional media of choice, television, books, movies, video games. I've lost interest in all of that, and often wondered why.
It's directionless, a distraction from being directionless. Like a dead end job we're not getting anything out of aside from the paycheck. Other people are handling this better than I am, for the same reason they were handling life before better than I do. Keeping busy with chores and watching TV or whatever.
I don't know that I'd call this part depression. Low expectations may yield greater peace of mind, but I'm not sure I understand peace of mind for it's own sake. Stillness is clarity, but it's also stagnation. Over time, stagnation becomes increasingly harmful, although so is a lack of rest, or lack of stillness. Finding a balance was ideal.
Having some direction in life can help with depression, but I think that's because it's just generally good for mental health, to keep moving, progressing in our lives in some way. Much the way physical health benefits from regular movement. It's not easy though. Movement comes from motivation. This situation is crippling me on multiple fronts. Taking away everything I was doing, my reasons for doing them, and the means by which I was even capable. I was barely keeping it together as it was.
Guess I should have gotten my life together five or ten years ago. Seems I've missed my window of opportunity before the world ending.
I'm periodically reminded of just how little most people understand about mental health. It's easy to forget, because to me, it's fundamental. To them, it's abstract. At times, it's easy for me to forget too, just how not abstract it is. Like dropping something and wondering why it falls to the ground, after writing all these posts about gravity.
It's frustrating, because I know we make these judgments about whether a person is positive or negative, strong or weak, handling their shit or falling apart. We make these judgments with so little understanding of what's going on.
It's also frustrating, because I don't see other people taking the dangers they're in seriously. I'm not just worried about myself here, but lately I'm questioning my own sanity more than usual too. I know that I've fallen back into serious clinical depression, and it can be skewing my judgment.
Trying to make sense of things has a lot to do with perspective and context. "Long and short define each other," as now is relevant to then, here is relevant to there. Nothing means nothing without no context.
Aside from making communication difficult, this also seems to mean I don't think as much of the present moment. Even in terms of what I enjoy, I'm far less inclined to do anything that's just going to be gone in a moment or two. I understand there may be value in sitting with the moment, being mindful of it, but it's also a delusion.
When we think about the past or future, somewhere else that we imagine, this is all conceptual. We're making it up. This is easy to understand. It's a little more mindblowing to realize that we're also making up the present. Time itself is conceptual framing for a process we don't understand, vastly greater than're equipped to fathom. Everything that has ever happened everywhere exists, just not where we happen to be at the moment.
So, where are we? In our own minds, swimming in nonsense.
Here and now.
Last May, I was blogging about circumstances, and how they define us. How surreal it can be when they change, when they change us. Crazy year its been. No wonder I have no fucking clue who I am anymore.
I don't know if I'm feeling so hopeless because the situation I'm in is depressing such that it induces a hopeless chemistry or if said hopelessness is entirely rational. This situation sucks, and I can't see it working out any time soon. Even if we're talking years, I should be ok. I could conceivably be ok.. but it's not feeling that way. I'm feeling so utterly broken, the future stretching off into a very dark and ominous haze.
It's odd the way they talk about reopening things. Even people who oppose it seem to think the consequences will be this thing that happens; people will die, but it will be done. More likely, people will die, then more people will die, then people will keep dying - until they close it all down again. This isn't going to be done, no matter what they do, until the science comes through for us.
Is there something in epidemiology that says this sort of thing just kinda goes away, regardless? What a huge relief if true. Or maybe we can weather the carnage. That seems to be the expectation, but as it accumulates, they tend to realize it's worse than they expected. Some panic and shutdown immediately. Others may try to really push it, because if it works, all that death won't be for nothing. It won't work. It will be for nothing. They'll still end up shutting down, I think.
Maybe it won't be as bad as I think though. Who the hell knows. I'm just here sheltering in place month after month waiting to see how much worse things can get. My brain chemistry does seem to be pretty fucked up lately, I must admit. Circumstances can do that.
This is what I've been dreading, this is what's been keeping me going. Fear of feeling like this again. Another fucking day with nothing worth doing. Same as every other, another day in this vanishing life. Depression. I just had to keep moving, keep going to classes. I stumbled, but this was the alternative that kept me getting back up.
Now just like that, here I am, back in this all too familiar hell, just the fucking same.
I wonder how other people are doing. This is hitting everyone differently, each of us in very different situations. I'm not sure anyone understands how bad my situation is. Assholes think I'm lucky being able to sit at home all day.
I want to cast blame, rant about how they're handling this. Of course it's lacking. People are idiots.. but even if they did everything right, this destroyed my life just the same, and I'm not handling it well. I don't see much point in handling it well. I think about how long this is likely to last, and there's no way I can get through this.
Martial arts isn't just important to me. There isn't anything I can replace it with. Training without the interpersonal physical interaction isn't worth doing at all. It's not some sort of compromise solution. This is why I'm so depressed. This was the most critical part of pulling myself together, and there are no compromises, no alternatives, no solutions.
and it isn't about the fucking martial arts. It's whatever the hell is wrong with me. This is the only thing that works. This has been what props up everything else I've been doing. There are a number of intersecting reasons.It's one of few interests I've had my entire life. It's one of the only things I want to do at all, for who knows what reason. Exercise, motivation, social interaction. It was the only thing in the world that makes me happy, and I was finally doing it.
Would have been interesting if I'd stuck with it since I was seven, but I was tired. I tried again when I was 30. Again in my 40s. It hasn't been easy for me, taking decades just to get started.
It's also like language of sorts that I feel relatively fluent in, almost confident about. I interact with people in these classes, as if I too am supposed to be there. I feel more out of place everywhere else. It's weird too, because I'm older and smaller than everyone, so I kinda am objectively out of place, but I'll spar with any of them, no hesitation. I just hate when they try to talk to me.
In turn this helps me feel more confident elsewhere in life. Sort of. It's a long slow process, and I was just getting started.
Everything else I've been doing was built on that. It was holding me together, while going to CCV endeavored to tear me apart. Between the two of them, my only contact with humanity. Eventually I'll be able to go back to college classes, with all sorts of precautions in place.. I still won't be able to train with anyone. I'm not doing that. I won't be doing anything for a frighteningly long time, having clawed my way out of years of solitary confinement, only to be thrown back in.
I don't know what the MMA schools will do. I run through all these different scenarios in my head. Nothing works out. I can't see how they're going to be there for me, for quite a while. What state will I be in, when they finally are? At this rate, I'm not going to hold it together anywhere near that long.
I don't understand why we're pretending this will all be fine in a few months. It's possible I guess, but it's not how the situation looks to me. This is making me feel crazy. My only hope being that something entirely unpredictable fixes everything. Seems to be what everyone else is counting on, but that's not usually how science goes, right? It may look that way when we're not really paying attention, but these things take years. Sometimes many years.
Meanwhile, everything just keeps getting worse. I'm not sure if we're all fucked, or if it's just me. I was barely hanging on as it was. Now I can't even go visit my dying father.
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