Treading water in an overfilled aquarium

 It's the end of 2021 and the cold rain continues outside. I'm glad it's in the 40s or else we would have more snow than we could manage. I notice every creak in my body as if it's held together with glue and string and one wrong move throws off the entire delicate balance. I'm hoping to make some grand sweeping resolution to grow stronger in the new year, but honestly, I am barely able to make the resolution to get these thoughts rambling in my head out into words. I wake up and grab onto the day but it feels like I'm holding sand as it flows downward and leaves me holding nothing at the end of the day.

I'm on maternity leave. I love staying home and getting baby snuggles all day every day. Baby has a stuffy nose today and my anxiety ridden brain has self-diagnosed COVID as of course it's the worst possible scenario and not just a snotty nose from winter time. It's impossible to sit down without thinking of what is going to go wrong. 

Elderly multigravida is what my discharge paperwork said. I feel so old and wise, but really my body is falling apart and it took me so long to realize the warm fuzzy feelings from having family... which I equate entirely to hormone imbalances that evolutionarily discourage us from leaving our young in the woods due to lack of sleep and completely irrational demands of motherhood. My brain feels like it's glitching and I can't connect the dots or I'm staring at something but I can't find the word for it. 

There is one thing for certain - at this moment I am sober and so happy to at least have that. 

It feels different, less highs and lows. More stable. Less chasing my tail, feeling like crap, mental fog, wishing I was at a different state of mind. I'm doing that thing that everyone who takes a step back from the rat race does - evaluating whether I want to go back. My pay isn't the greatest and some days is really stressful, but some days I put the stress in there where it doesn't really belong. I try too hard or push more than the clients are ready to go. The courts push hard in one direction and the client is running in the opposite direction. My confidence is low but I kinda muddle through some of the toughest conversations of my life thinking -how the fuck do most therapists continue to know what to say- or -am I doing this right?

I am holding so many things in my head like an overstuffed aquarium that needs cleaned out. I need to write. I need to talk. Need to process. And within all of these fears is this sense of dread that baby is growing and getting bigger and I will forget. I don't want to forget. I want to hold on to everything. And my 4 year old is demanding as ever and I try to be everything for him too, but I'm on 1 hours sleep at a time and physically falling apart. 

So no grand sweeping gestures. No resolutions to run a marathon. I do want to slowly build my strength back up, take care of myself, let out these thoughts, sort them, catalog them with these pictures, these snuggles, these wild hormones that make me feel like all the world is so full of love but so full of destruction and disease at the same time. I think I need to make a list. More for myself than anything. I don't want to hold myself to weird, impossible standards, but I do need to figure out what I'm trying to do and how I can get there. I'm splattered right now and treading water. 

Supervisor Exit

 I am 4 months pregnant, still feeling the long haul, and I feel like a worm on the sidewalk drying out in the sun. 

I keep thinking things will get better, but they stay the same. The muscle soreness is still there. The joint pain, brain fog, trouble climbing stairs without being winded.. all still there. I curl up in a ball on my bed most days and try not to cry. I wonder if I'll ever be normal again. I wonder if walking will be as effortless as it was in the past.

And I can't help but wonder if things would be better or worse if I still had my super physical job. Forced exercise may help strengthen, but if I collapse after a day when I work second floor, I cannot imagine pulling pumps and hoses from tank to tank, picking up case after case, scrubbing tanks, lifting barrels. 

I was so sad after losing my last pregnancy that all I could think about was another one. Then I got COVID right around Christmas and thought -oh, I'll be over this in two weeks and be fine. Then the shot became available and I thought -oh, I should get this when it's available because I don't know when I will be able to have this offer again. 
I'm not sure if the symptoms never subsided or got worse after each dose. Then I got pregnant so I guess all those infertility conspiracy theories are out the window based on my personal case study. The stress of the virus delayed my period after COVID so when I was late the next month, I assumed it was the vaccine. the tiredness got worse and then when I felt nauseous when brushing my teeth, I knew I needed to take a test.

I stopped therapy after 2 expensive sessions. I fucking know self care bullshit. I don't need someone telling me that I should take warm baths and do things to take care of myself. I fucking know that. This is different than that. This is a visceral hurt that is stressing my entire system. This is wondering if I'm annoying everyone by complaining of being sore constantly when they ask me why I'm curled up in a chair instead of doing something. I can't move.

I started eating an anti-inflammatory diet. It helps a bit with the joint pain, but not the breathing or brain fog and headaches. I'm second trimester so I got all excited when I read my energy should return. It's half there. My mind woke back up a bit, but my body still feels like a dried up worm. 

My supervisor at work quit. Super mixed feelings about that. I know she was often frustrated. But now I have major fears of the unknown as she was the only supervisor I knew. My classmates had either great supervisors or horror stories. One of the horror stories may be my new supervisor. 

So I'm still in limbo. I'm between two different programs in two different offices throughout the week and I'm not sure if I stayed at the one office to stay with my supervisor. I just want to do a good job. I feel more pressure at this job than I ever have before. 

And then chuck some pregnancy hormones and irritability on top of all that stress and nerve pain and that's pretty much where I'm at right now. I have a super cute, nearly 4 year old that is the best part of my day. But some days when everything gets to me, I just isolate and cry. 

I wonder what "better" looks like. I'm not saying ideal. But just better. I got a smart watch and a symptom tracker to see if there's any day to day change. But work stress is the icing on the shit cake right now. The good clients I have are the best parts of my day. The court ordered, non-compliant, shit clients who don't want to work or listen or even be there are the shit part of my day layered on top of feeling like a pile of garbage. And now I don't have the support of my supervisor, so I'm standing alone in a shit storm wondering how the fuck I got here and where to go now. 

Transfer

 I am being transferred again.

I kinda knew my office wasn't that busy and the lead doc was kinda gutting what few staff we had. I kept jumping up and down in attempts to get my clients to show up, to trust me, to work with me, but most said they had a new counselor every few months so they weren't interested. Oh, I thought, -but I'm not going anywhere. HA! How naïve. I have been moved 5 different times in less than a year with this community nonprofit. I should have known better.

My supervisor told me during our weekly supervision that I was moving in one week and they did not have a counselor to transfer my caseload to. It seemed very haphazard and not thought out. I tried not to, but I cried. 
The counseling relationship is one where you both establish trust. And now I was to just leave, some clients I wouldn't even have a chance to say goodbye to and that stung. I understand some things need to happen, but this seemed unnecessarily jarring and difficult to swallow. 

I guess I could go into office politics now. I'm still trying to figure it out. I did not know that so many in the helping profession could be so different and at times toxic to one another. At times I feel like I'm just pretending to play doctor. Like it's not real because it's just a conversation. It's just me. And why the fuck would anyone want to sit down with me and chat. And how the fuck am I supposed to help them.

I enrolled myself in therapy. It's stuuuuuupid fucking expensive because my insurance does not take it and I'm worried I will know what she is going to say or she is not going to say anything helpful. At first, I thought it was to process my health issues lately, but now I can't sleep and my mind is racing from this work stuff and my boyfriend is tired of hearing about it.

I applied for other jobs but I don't feel comfortable leaving yet. There are still so many things that I do not know but need to learn. And -in these uncertain times... you know. It's hard to walk away from a sure thing. 

Do you ever talk to someone and wonder if they are great or they are the problem? Or maybe there are so many broken parts that there is no one specific problem but everything is just broken and ductaped enough to make it work, but barely. 

In good news, I held it together for the most part. I have learned to bite my tongue when I don't know who to trust. But it is not how I want to work. I wish I could be open and build something positive that would not keep me up at night. I wish I could speak my mind or collaborate instead of not know who to trust or what not to say. 
I feel these waves of stress emotions that are overwhelming and I cannot let them go when I come home. I may fall asleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night and can not shut my brain off. I keep going over different scenarios and wondering what I should say and how I should say it. I appreciate that my brain is in problem solving mode, but I really want to shut it off and get some rest. 

So I guess now I'm taking my own advice- write things down. The difficulty is when I'm not sure what others are going to say, I expand the scenarios to these infinite amounts where I'm about to articulate perfectly what I want to say. ---but in reality, it doesn't really work like that. 

COVID and lost love

 The past week has been rough. I go to work, get exhausted right after lunch, then come home and collapse. In fact, the past month.... or few months have been rough.
In November, I went in for an ultrasound and found my baby had stopped growing 4 weeks prior. One pill and a few super uncomfortable days later I bled and cried for a week. 

Then in December, I woke up with a tickle in my throat and just to be safe, I called off work. But you can't just call off for one day with COVID so I went out and got a test, 3-5 days for the results right before Christmas and I imagined all the things I would get done in my quarantine time. The next day, I felt weaker, and by the third day my joints started seizing up with screaming pain. I tried to cancel Christmas with family, my brother was furious and still wanted a "normal" Christmas at his house with no masks. I declined and hunkered down with a very energetic 3 year old also in quarantine just to be safe. By day 4, the muscle aches started and all I could do was lay around. Day 5, my taste became dull and I could barely smell. I would chug coffee and eat Tylenol in the morning and hobble around to get to the basics before completely falling out in the afternoon.

Two weeks recovery was not long enough and searches online provided bleak outcomes for others recovering from the virus. Thankfully, no one else in my house tested positive, but they got quarantined as well so we all hung out watching Super Wings and doing a ton of art projects while I watched from the couch or went to bed. I made it my goal to drink all the tea in my giant tea drawer that was overflowing. I made it through about half before I had to go back to work.

My sick time was through and I got back to seeing clients, but I ached so bad I could barely move. I kept a heater by my chair and wore three layers and a scarf that doubled as a blanket. My appetite didn't come back, I couldn't taste anyway, and I kept chugging tea. I got down to the weird loose leaf green teas and the bagged ginger and kept going. I let the leaves bloom straight in the cup in hopes that some magic green tea energy would activate something in me that would stop aching so much.

My second week back at work the health dept came with the first round of the shot. I never want to get COVID again so while I may have been hesitant before, I definitely had decided to get it. But I read immunity and waiting and blah blah blah so I asked. They said it should be fine, but my reaction may be more severe since I just had COVID. 
I felt so proud of myself for being brave. I didn't pass out. I barely cried. I just talked to co-workers, saw the head boss, chatted with the nurse that COVID tested me into a bloody nose, and I took my shot. 
It took a few hours before the soreness really hit. The fatigue had clenched down on me by the evening, and the following day I woke up crying. My symptoms had come back with a vengeance. It felt like the worst of my COVID days when I was fighting the virus. I would go to work, limp through, and then go home and crash. I slept from right after work until the next day for work, waking up for an hour or so to eat dinner and then go back to sleep. And I wouldn't feel rested after, just tired and sore. 

I think between the miscarriage and the corona, my body has aged 10+ years in just the past few months. I ache. I am winded walking up stairs. I worry when I wake up that something new will hurt. But I am so grateful at how healthy I am because there were times when I was trying to breathe that I thought -if this gets worse, I can see why people don't live. I could feel it. I am a mass of sinew and bone with skin stretched over as my brain pushes my flesh to turn the head, to move the fingers, to pull air into the lungs. I could feel the immune response and the attack as it would rest in one of my joints for a day, holding that joint captive in agony until migrating to a different joint or vertebrate in my upper or lower back. I try to feel the air as it passes through my windpipe, down into my lungs and I wonder if I'm getting enough carbon dioxide out in order to keep my brain functioning. I wonder if walking would tax this body to the point of breaking and I may pass out. 

I take a lot of baths now. I try to relax or stretch, but nothing changes. So I cry a little, I let myself feel it and I let my mind wonder to -what if this never goes away. And then I set that thought down and walk away. 

Spending 2 weeks at home and not going anywhere is not something I would have ever thought to do. That time helped me realize I need to take time to not do anything. I do wish I could have had that time off and not felt like a steaming pile of garbage, but maybe not being able to do anything was an extra vacation on top of not going to work. It was a way for me to forgive myself for not vacuuming or for learning every character on my kid's favorite show. It was ok for me to have all my projects that I started just sit there and not get finished. 

I'm still recovering. I hope I'm on the mend. The pain is in my left shoulder and my right foot right now. Maybe in the morning it will have migrated and set up camp somewhere else. I am not sure how long I will feel this way. I do know that I hope that vaccine works cause I never want to feel this way again. Well, except for the second dose....... ugh.