I’d like to blame my current malaise on COVID.

Not the having of the virus, though two times was punishment enough. (I know, it certainly could have been worse. Believe me, I know.)

And while the pandemic and attendant lockdown messed with my time-space continuum royally, it started in the months before.

When I let myself get so low, I had a near-panic attack just going to the doctor’s office to ask for meds.

When I got so low, I let my mind trick me into thinking needing meds was a moral failure on my part.

When I stumbled around in a fog so thick, I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.

And then as I climbed out, I felt the need to tell the story.

I knew I needed to explain how I’d gotten there – for the mental health narrative and for my own mental health.

But the story was so huge. The path so steep and craggy, I knew not where to begin or how.

And the more time passes, the harder a thing is to tell. Details forgotten, edges dulled.

And then the world stopped.

We were all in survival mode. Myself acutely.

I thank God for the fortuitous timing of that first appointment.

For if I hadn’t started meds when I did –

thrown into ‘homeschooling’ and online learning and personal loss from afar. . .

But after months of bizarre, those details began to be forgotten and those edges dulled.

And this was life.

We were expected to pick up the baton and keep time

when time was wonky, hearts were broken, and psyches scarred.

Five years on

I’ve picked up bad habits, sloth and sipping alcohol.

Smack-dab in the middle of perimenopause

and the slog of midlife.

What started as peeling back the layers of over-exhaustion and exertion

flipped the other way into inert.

Achieving perfection and avoiding failure by not attempting at all

has settled into paralysis.

And now, what is life, but this fragile thing that can be taken and wrenched dry in mere months.

When the acute sorrow is gone and you’re left with nothing but the days

and another load of groceries to unpack.

Five years on

and I still can’t tell you how I got here.

But I have begun.