Onwards and downwards through the isolation levels the seven billion dwarves toddled, heading out of the mines and back to normality. That's where the fairytale analogy comes unstuck and I don't know the ending. We are not going back to normal so stop being so fucking cheerful.
It will never be the same but one day it will be ok. Thats what I tell people who I work with who have suffered big dramamtic changes in their lives. It's a mighty big pill to swallow at the moment and the giant size bottle has one gag-inducing dose for each of the little dwarfs on the planet. We don't usually think of ourselves as dwarfs, being the alpha's of the animal world but nature got one over us this time, all of us, all at once. We are dwarves who think ourselves giants with our massive frontal lobes and pocket computers and soy-chai-lattes in disposable cups.
In our home school today we have learned fractions by making jelly traffic lights, and cut up the house and garden magazines to make surrealist art. The teenagers mooch along independently and I am mostly leaving them to it, except for the odd check one hasn't developed bed sores from being permanently reclined and the other hasnt developed hearing loss from his earpods that are growing into his brain. They are happy as. So is the big guy, working, building and exercising, sending time with us all, thinking up a new future with the kind of relish. Why would you want to go back? is his attitude. This is great. He flicks a switch and has moved on.
But I'm still coming round. Does that make me slow learner? In the adult school learning I am stuck in a drawnout lesson in being kind to myself, being kind to others even if you have to spend weeks with only them, and being kind into the future. I find the first one the hardest, how about you? So many questions, this is what my brain pings off all the time. I have been learning from my school masters - Brene Brown who is doing an amazing pod cast navigating pandemic called Unlocking Us, Glennon Doyle who is my new lady brain crush, and of course revisiting the life lesson that is Kungfu panda for a booster shot of Master Oogway. I have been trying to use my happiness toolbox - walk, music, cook a nice meal, swim in the sea, do a jigsaw puzzle. The work days feel like the old normal but the other days, they are still pretty hard. Does anyone else feel like a mess? It would be nice to know I'm not alone. Brene tells me about the downfalls of comparative suffering. Oogway says a person often meets their destiny on the road she takes to avoid it. Glennon grammed a sentence I never realised I have waited a long life to hear - You are not a mess, you are a deeply feeling person in a messy world.