Learning to Pay Attention
How the pandemic helped me remember myself
When the first quarantine order came in April of 2020, I ordered three pairs of spring shoes, posted them to Instagram with a cheery caption, and spent the rest of the month on the couch working from my laptop. Life wouldn’t change much, I thought, I would just distract myself with a few more cute pairs of sweatpants.
I had a rhythm, like everyone else: going to work, eating dinner with my husband, then maybe a hike or shopping on the weekends. It felt predictable, like I was swimming with the current toward the inevitable — kids, maybe a house, etc. But underneath, the current felt wrong, maybe made of molasses, if I really stopped to think about it. My marriage had been in trouble for years, but I had run out of options and ideas for how to fix it. We’d tried everything, from psychiatrists to counseling. He was unable to make intentional and very needed changes in his life, and I was deeply unhappy, thoroughly addicted to distraction in mine.
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As the pandemic lengthened, the hours spent trying to live and work in the same two-bedroom apartment brought our struggles into even sharper relief, and it felt like we were in one long, drawn out argument, each hour bringing new, small power struggles, and underneath it all, for me, a current of intense fear.
Would he ever keep a job? Was it my duty to be the sole breadwinner for us as well as producing the children he often asked for?
The pressure felt like how I imagined Covid might feel in my chest; dark, squeezing, heavy. A different kind of illness.
The lowest point for me was probably in May of 2020, when I sat on a park bench and cried hard and silently, snot sliding down my face into my soaked sweatshirt sleeve. I knew I needed a change, to start paying attention to my real feelings, but my religious upbringing told me that they didn’t matter: I was stuck with my husband for good, no matter what. I’d promised. He told me that too.
I don’t know that I would ever have really made a change, but for the long hours of soul searching I was able to do that summer, out of my current of routine, away from the distractions, the pandemic pushing me out of my comfort zone, world events giving me more perspective. My counselor told me my feelings did matter. We talked for weeks about what to do. I grew in my job, tried new recipes, read, took long walks. I started paying attention to the things that were working in my life. In September, I decided to take a tiny step: I’d look, just look for another space to live in for a couple of months to give my husband and me a break from each other. Just a small break.
The day I walked into the tiny, 400 square foot cottage, with its powder blue walls, the sunlight dappling the floor, I cried with relief and happiness. Having my own space, my own thoughts and feelings that I didn’t have to sensor to get through the day, was incredible. It felt like crawling out from under a heavy cave into a sunlit field. I’d never imagined it would feel this good. Three months in, when the time I’d meant to stay in my cottage was up, I realized there was no going back.
Today, I’m intensely grateful for this second chance, this new, but still hard, path. I have a cat, I regularly walk to the rose garden, and cook every night for one. At night, I read about co-dependence, about faith, and reworking it, and journal about what I’ve learned. It is the fullest, least distracted, most authentic version of myself I’ve ever lived, and I finally feel at home in myself. I’m no longer afraid.
So many things about the pandemic and the world events we’ve lived through have been terrifying and soul-wrenching, but there has been some incredible good that’s come of it too. It’s both the best and worst thing that could have happened. It taught me to pay attention, to trust myself, and when to let go.
