In the particular phase of our global pandemic where my little part of America is now, a lot of people are reaching their milestone of ‘fully vaccinated’ just as the weather warms. More and more social opportunities are becoming safer and safer (at least for now, I hesitate to guess about exactly where we’ll be next winter). But rather than feeling excited about getting back to some of the things that I used to enjoy, one of my main emotions around this time is overwhelm. The world may be getting ready for me, but I am not ready to face the world again.

Rereading this article from August 2020, ‘Your Surge Capacity is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful’, I can make some sense out of my hesitation. As an introvert-leaning ambivert, taking up my former social life isn’t something that feels refreshing or relieving to me, it’s something that feels like another chore to navigate, another activity that I’d no doubt enjoy… if I only had the mental and emotional capacity to actually engage with it.

The fact is, my surge capacity was depleted by last May. And I pushed on through the summer. And THEN I became my kid’s personal teaching assistant for fifth grade (an experience shared by many parents of kids with executive functioning challenges, as evidenced by this piece ‘Our Pandemic Diary, A Day in the Life of My Elementary School Student with ADHD’ from ADDitude Magazine). Six weeks left to go on that project, and all of the end-of-year and promotion-to-middle-school extra activities that it involves. So the fact that I’ll be fully vaccinated three weeks from now? The fact that a lot of my friends are excitedly posting their vaccine selfies and making plans to get together all over my social media? It just feels exhausting. I resent the accidental peer pressure, because I haven’t had any space to recover.

But what does recovery look like? How *do* I restore my surge capacity? First I have to look at how it has gotten so depleted for me in the first place. I have a lot of advantages and a lot of resources, both internal and external, to draw upon. I’ve built for myself, in learning to deal with my chronic pain, robust supports for my physical, mental, and emotional health. I exercise. I get outdoors. I take breaks, and read books, eat nourishing foods and stay hydrated. I’m fierce in defense of my sleep. I have two partners, many friends, supportive family, and a therapist to talk to. Some of them I’ve been stuck talking to online, but not all. I meditate daily, and have unusually high self-compassion. All this, exactly the sorts of things that get recommended for recharging, and yet. The burnout has been terrible for many months. 

So what’s missing? What did the pandemic change for me? It changed the level of support I have in my parenting life, and made it difficult to access the kind of ‘alone time’ where I can lay down my burdens of responsibility. My monthly sleepover dates at my bestie’s house, my week long visits to see my parents several times a year, both gone. And especially, I lost the seven hours a day on school days when I used to be able to rely on a dedicated network of helping professionals to educate and supervise my child. Now, we’ve shuffled things within the household as best we can to support me. While doing more school and kidcare activities, I’ve been offered the chance to do less cooking and cleaning, and that’s been very helpful. It’s been enough to get through. But I miss thriving.

As much as I want to dive right back into life as we knew it, realistically, I’m going to need time to recover. And I can’t guess what the timeline is going to look like for that. Once school lets out in June, I can reclaim some of my alone time with people outside my household. (I get this mainly by letting my co-parent delegate parenting to screens while I absent myself, so it’s not totally ideal, but it’ll do). Will that be enough? Or will it take weeks or months into the next school year in September before I feel like myself again? And at that point, will we be bracing for a new surge, and pursuing boosters, and tracking the next twist in the covid tale? Or will parenting morph yet again into some new form of extra-challenging with the advent of middle school? There’s no telling.

All I know is, while the sun shines and the flowers bloom this summer, I’ll be taking some time to rediscover what a break feels like.

Maybe I’ll be ready to see you on the other side.