Month five of the pandemic check-in. How is everyone doing? I know for me mentally it has been touch and go. May to June was by far the worst months. It was tough to get out of bed, but having a team and two dogs that rely on me, I knew I had to get up. I love my job, so the working part wasn’t an issue; it was the thought and realization that this is our new normal, and nothing about this feels normal. I wouldn’t say I like any of it. Change is hard, but usually change is a good thing, ie losing weight, changing your diet, leaving a toxic relationship, leaving a career that doesn’t fulfill you and so on and so on. Change in these examples is a good thing. For a minute during the last few months, it was hard for me to find any silver linings. Mentally, I was in a rut.
Gabe (my boyfriend) and I went through the hardest point in our relationship with him losing his father to COVID-19 in June. It was hard seeing someone you love go through the most difficult pain they will ever encounter. You feel helpless; you feel hopeless; there was no way out. Reality slapped us right in the face; this virus is real. It doesn’t pick and choose who it will hurt. Two weeks of being in Anaheim together as we tried to hold on to our sanity while also grieving was mentally taxing on us. I had brought my laptop to California to try and be present for work, but a few days of being there, I realized that my priorities were going to have to change, as hard as it was for me not to work, work for the first time in my life, had to take a back seat. Those two weeks in California seemed like we were there for months. June was tough.
July to now has been a little better. As my mind starts to understand that this is happening, this is the new normal, and I had better get it line. There was a point in time during May to June I did not think mentally I was going to make it. On calls with co-workers, I would think to myself, “hold it together, hold it together, you can do this,” hoping they wouldn’t hear the amount of anxiety or sadness in my voice. If they heard it, they handled it well, and I felt nothing but love and support during those months.
But now what? What do we do? Where do we go from here? Well, we keep pushing. We keep rising. I know for me, I want to go and pass out water and supplies to the homeless, I want to show them and the world that Love Matters. I want to continue to focus on my career can building it, and the relationships that I have. I would not have gotten through those months without my relationships. I was able to see first hand that mentally we need relationships more than ever.
As we face month 6 of the pandemic, remember there was a time during May-June, I did not think I was going to be OK. That mentally, I was going to crash and burn and lose everything: my job, my friends, my relationship. But I am here to say; I made it. I chose every day to keep pushing. I chose to fight the mental demons telling me to give up every single day. I did it and you can too. So here we go bring on September and month 6th.
Sande Charles
