Don't quote me. Replies welcome.
I'm in one of those crappy, grayed-out moods that I get in. Not quite depression. Not really not-depression either. I told my closer friends that I probably wouldn't be very available for the next few weeks.
I know I really need a break or at least a change (I've been working straight through most of the past 4 years), but I'm not going to be able to get one until the first week of July. I feel bad because I've been kind of "off" at work for most of the past couple of months, and on the other hand I've been going through a lot. I feel both alone and socially overstimulated. Emergency teaching took a lot out of me. I need to do more of the self-care things that have fallen to the side since the beginning of the pandemic.
I thought I was angry at my friends for not checking in on me very regularly, but I think I'm really disappointed because my neglectful and occasionally abusive family never quite rose to the occasion, and it is very definitively too late for them to rise to it, regardless of what they do from now on. I made the mature decisions that ended the violence in my extended family, but also mean that I am no longer asking to be taken care of by them. Well, anyway: war's over, I ended it.
I've made it to responsible and dutiful adulthood after a childhood characterized by not just suffering through but actively being made responsible for other people's problems. It's a hurt that's not going to be repaired in the way that I always imagined it being repaired: someone coming to help take care of things, to make sure I was okay. Instead, the person who came to help me out was adult me. Adult me finished "raising" my parents. Adult me is still taking care of the people around me, just in a healthier and less codependent way.
In retrospect, it seems obvious and inevitable that this is what was going to happen. It still doesn't really hurt less.
I also always thought that the pain from this was going to feel sharp and overwhelming, but it turns out that it's a dull ache of mild disappointment. On some level it feels like I have much more important work to do than sitting here and mourning the past. There's a whole life to live, left over.
On some other level, I feel like a fountain of grief. None of this was right, and although I've played a bad hand well, the conclusion isn't just.
Anyway, I'll be all right... I have three weeks here before I've told myself I'm going to put my nose back to the grindstone and be social again, so I only have to focus on taking one foot in front of another for now. I certainly don't feel good, but I can get through this if I try, and there's a lot to look forward to from now on.