astranoir

I thought I was doing okay on the weekend, but now that I'm back at work things are really rough on my brain.

Work is intensely demanding. My dreams were violent and graphic last night and I woke up wanting to do nothing more than call in sick but the work-placement person I'm responsible for started today and I had to be there to talk to her and try to find things to do despite having no idea what the rest of my team is doing and being in maybe the worst possible position to find tasks for a bright graduate who'll be here two days a week for a few months. I had two meetings in a row this afternoon with different parts of the org I work with that were properly existential: we stumbled over questions like "who's responsible for drafting the Scottish guidance on active travel?" or "what exactly do we want local authorities to do regarding the built environment?" This would be so unfair for a new person who feels like she's jumping in at the deep end just being in a meeting about what we're doing on one Government consultation.

I only realised today that I'd kinda conflated two different TfL invites and now the thing I'm going to London for tomorrow, I dint even want to and it doesn't seem worth it. I've got a train ticket I hate to waste, but bleh. Bleh!

Counseling is right after work on a Tuesday, so I managed to squeeze in a quick Teddy walk in the glorious sunshine (the weather has been amazing today, that's today's one saving grace) and then absolutely exhausted myself trying to explain my week. She's not available at rhe usual time next week but I won't be the week after, and the week after that she won't be, so I took the unusual step of fitting in an appointment at a different time next week; usually if my normal one doesn't work I just skip it, but it feels like I need more at this point.

I read something that seems particularly relevant on Long Covid Awareness Day, a day which as an online pal who has LC says says,

We are combatting willful ignorance. People actively do not want to know about Long Covid, and the long-term health consequences of Covid infections. They do not want to see us.

The thing I read is about "AI" as currently understood, and grief. And I'm glad it connects both of these things to covid.

Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).

Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.

And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."

There was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

Surprisingly, I slept fine -- well, I was surprised anyway. I don't remember any of my dreams.

I am very amused that two of the smartest people I know (one of whom is a psychotherapist!) told me to play Tetris.

There are studies on this, often in particular groups of people who might acquire PTSD like healthcare workers or combat veterans.

I'm good at games like that and I love them. I have not literal Tetris but a similar simple colorful block-positioning game on my phone, which I play all the time anyway -- usually as something to keep me busy enough to be able to listen to a podcast or sometimes to watch something on TV, or sometimes to tire my eyes out enough to let me go to sleep.

But now I can tell myself it's medicinal!

I had a nice day: walking to and from angelofthenorth's this morning to help unload the van into her flat, enjoying the nice springlike weather for a change, and by the time I was home and showered it was almost time for said psychotherapist and her wife to visit, which is lovely as they are friends I rarely/never get to see, who were just nearby for the afternoon. I made dinner for us -- curry with sauce from a jar and added peppers and leftover chicken the others had last night. We're all pretty floppy, after those two had to take on tasks that were meant to be done yesterday by the two of us who were in Wales so much longer than we planned to be. But in a nice cozy way. No plans at all tomorrow, which I'm very much looking forward to.

I am sure there was toothpaste in my washkit the last time I traveled... But there is not now.

Apart from this and lack of snacks (why didn't I think to bring snacks, ha), I am doing alright. I slept decently last night, and slept a lot more this afternoon, once the van was as loaded as it was going to get.

I feel for angelofthenorth, who basically has the same level of difficulty extracting the things she wants from the two big storage containers that I would've had if Andrew had decanted all of our house into similar, since that's more or less what has happened here.

Everything has been a sliding-tile-puzzle of needing to move things to get to other things, and all the tiles are heavy, and you also have to think about whether they're packed in a structurally sound condition and whether they can get wet.

We have been remarkably successful at furniture, but also some things have just been too difficult to unearth, particularly in the worst weather possible for this: rain and heavy wind. She has dealt with it all very well, being very practical about what can be replaced via Manchester's charity shops or Ikea.

All of this is such an emotionally exhausting undertaking. I'm glad I can at least handle some of the physical burdens for her.

I'm in south west Wales now, helping angelofthenorth get her stuff from storage so her nice flat will finally have her nice furniture and books and etc.

We're here with a church friend of hers who drove the rented van, and we'll get to meet local friends of hers tomorrow as we tackle it.

We had a little look when we got here and I can see why she's intimidated by the task at hand: there's a lot of stuff and while we don't want much of it, some of what she does want will be way at the back so everything else might have to get moved. I brought tape and scissors and a sharpie so boxes that have to be opened can be re-packed and labeled.

It's nice to have a few days off work, and to be only needed as a henchqueer. I've had a nasty headache most of the day, so my two wishes for tomorrow are that it fucks off and that we don't get the rain that is forecast here (the storage containers are open to the elements).