Languishing.

I heard it from my Mom. She saw it on Instagram and screenshot it because that’s what you do after 40 if you’re going to share anything. She said she had to because it was “just too bullseye.” Of course, we both googled it, but I didn’t need to. I knew exactly what this meant. A perfect name for the “blah” I’m feeling.

First thing in the morning, I drag myself to the coffee maker and go outside to smoke. Despite my desperate need for caffeine, I usually opt for Decaf. Just in case my anxiety calms down long enough later for me to grab a nap before I settle down for the night and catch up on season 7 of the show I started earlier that day.

I think the same thing every day, “I should be meditating, do yoga, set a positive intention for this day…something. Drink some water for Christ’s sake, WALK from anywhere to anywhere…fuck.” I’ll light another cigarette.

I hate smoking. It smells terrible, tastes terrible, and makes me feel like a lesser human. I do it anyway. I sit in my car chain-smoking, watching my productive neighbors, who look like they’ve been up for hours and sink lower in my cloud of ash. My hair is still wake up disheveled, in yesterday’s bun, which has become the only hairstyle I can muster. I’ve long given up wearing any clothes I can’t also wear to bed and go to great lengths to avoid going anywhere.

My apartment is a million degrees. My now ex-boyfriend, Rip Van Winkle, whose cope with shutdown is to sleep it all away in a makeshift sauna-house, emerges from bed just long enough to crank the heat to unbearable and say he’s hungry. The kids are always bored, also hungry, and fighting.

Sigh. Every task was monumental. Except, but also, sleeping. I loved and hated everyone’s guts. I can’t believe we survived this year. There were days I thought I was going to rip my ears off if I heard my make one more ‘Dad noise’ or leave forever if anyone else said, “I’m hungry.”

I tried to self-help. It’s hard, Netflix has so many good shows, and I love naps!

I feel scared. The world is waking up, getting back to it, and I’m still “languishing.” I’m trying, but it feels like time is going by so fast. I wanted to find my footing by now, but things keep whooshing by before I have a good landing spot.

If you feel “blah," hang in there. So do I. We’ll be okay. There will still be jobs when we’re ready to get back to the job market. There will still be events to go to when we’re ready. You may have to accept that you’ll be wearing yoga pants and sweatshirts all summer and worry about the diet when you can. That’s my plan. Someday, maybe we’ll even go back to a theater without arguing that it’s cheaper and easier just to stream the movie from home.

I want that day to be tomorrow. It never is and, it’s annoying. At the start of lockdown, I shot out like a bullet from a gun towards personal progress! It got really hard. I got sad, felt blue, had some health issues, became anxious, gained weight, and started questioning the meaning of life and the probability of imminent alien intervention on earth.

The fact that I got my medical marijuana card during lockdown might have something to do with the last part, but you get it.

I crawled from there to ‘blah' and 'languishing.’ I’m just now at a slow toddle towards 'mostly okay.’ The rest of the world is planning its restart date.

I can’t finish the list of shit I need to do before the world is back to it. I can’t lose the shutdown weight, and no Pandemic GlowUP is happening here. I am not going to emerge with a new skill or amazing success stories from the last year. I’m not killing it.

I am almost out of 'languishing,' though, and that’s pretty fucking great.