It is liberating to know what I am capable of. Certainly it has taken long tentative years of delicate investigation but I am now venturing into a new territory as a cycle mechanic. I truly don't know if I could have made this move if Ruby was still here but I doubt it. Her death has been enabling for me and for Claire who is now the manager of her team in the NHS service she has been working in for many years.
I am taking no serious financial risks in becoming a bicycle mechanic- the only expense has been tools and training, money I quickly returned- and the only other risks would have been to my pride, had I received no work or if I had been truly talentless, or risks to my family relationships as I have been taken away some evenings and most Saturdays, outside my usual 9-5 job.
I consistently weigh and consider the advantages of this extra work- my bank balance and my mental health, mainly- with the disadvantages- hours away from Tom and Claire. So far, almost all the time, the positives far outweight the negatives- some debts are being paid off, we spend a little less time worrying about money and, because my overall mental health has improved, there are huge benefits to our bonds as a family. Some weeks are different though. Some weeks the three of us need to close in a little, hunker down, turn our back a little to the outside and shield ourselves from, what exactly? The world, other people, difficult times? As those difficult weeks approach- an anniversary maybe, Father's Day, Ruby's birthday- I cut back on those extra work hours as a mechanic and spend as much time as is necessary at home, together.
I am a nurse but I don't work on the frontline. I don't work in a hospital, I am not a surgeon, I am not a paramedic, I am not a nurse discussing (literally) life or death decisions each day. I have a specific and vocational qualification that, for the entire time that Covid has existed, has been utterly ineffective in contributing to its reduction or barely ameliorating any distress. For the first time in my professional life I felt useless. I have contributed 25 years of experience towards futhering my skills as a qualified nurse but, in the end, a tiny but highly transmissable virus was the identifying key to the potential futility of my career.
It was clear to me, early on during initial lockdown in March this year, that my contribution could not be based on using my qualification but instead it would have to be personal and social. I felt a great weight of responsibility- we were all in the dead centre of a health pandemic and I was a health worker with no appropriate skills (I am, after all, a Mental Health nurse not an "Adult Nurse", the specific qualification that a nurse would have if they were to work in typical hospital ward for direct patient care). So what could I do? How do I help?
Since March, a typical week has consisted of home-schooling my son through the day and trying to squeeze in my own "working from home" as a nurse in the community. I would be with him from 7am until 9pm. I would be providing the education he needs through the day, the love he needs from me as his dad and some playful company as he can't see his friends. He is nine years old, an age that demands constant input for his psychological and neurological deveopment, an age where he is curious about the world and about Covid and needs food for his brain and for his body. He needs to be non-sedentary and needs good physical activity every day. I would have to provide this. Then I would, as almost always, prepare and cook dinner and hope that Claire could get away from work in time to have dinner together as a family. She often couldn't. There may be homework to do later on, maybe some work emails, some thoughts and discussions with Claire about her job and my job and some attempts to de-stress. There would often be tears and passionate ventilation about those pressures. I listened to Claire's stories about Covid and her nursing work for week after week, for months. This happened every day Monday to Friday, every week, for months. At weekends I grabbed a few hours to work at my new cycle mechanic business on Saturdays and to have a run on Sundays for an hour or two- my most valued time for self-care.
Now that Tom is back to school (for how long before another lockdown?) I can concentrate more on my nursing job. But the feeling remains- I continue to feel great responsibility to look after others- for Tom's childhood, for Claire because of the stress she is under, for my own clients and patients, for my relatives at distance in England, for the rest of the public.
I have, in essence, been cocooning myself since March as my primary contribution to reducing the spread of Covid- this year I saw a friend for a walk in the hills once, I travelled to London once to see my relatives for five days, I went for bike ride once with another friend, and that has been the sum total of my personal interactions. I avoid all shops and contact with other people if I can in any way. I walk a wide circle around others on the street, I have been distant from friends and from family for reasons of safety. But it's difficult and it can be exhausting and it can get very lonely, month after month of month of deliberate diconnection from others.
Since I was a teenager I have experience clinical depression and have been prone to such bleaknesses, complicated in the last seven years by the traumatic death of my daughter Ruby. Although I spend the vast majority of my life content and stable, appreciating my good fotune in many ways, it still takes daily effort to maintain my mental wellness. Daily, I have to spend time and work thinking in a very particular way and deliberately performing certain behaviours, putting myself into uncomfortable social situations for example, to steady my mental keel and to keep it stable. And I have chosen to purposely distance myself from much of my external world during times of Covid which has compounded the complexity of coping. Most people have found 2020 more stressful than many other years due to Covid. But this is just my year- we aren't all in the same boat, we are in different boats but in the same storm.
Then Trump was kicked out of the White House and the world breathed a sigh of relief and everything felt brighter and more hopeful again. It is the news the word needed and is a return of all our potential. A lifeline has been thrown from each boat and I know we can be tethered again.
This blog entry is about three seemingly disconnected ideas I wanted to write of- the liberating power of grief, the difficulties for me during times of Covid and of Joe Biden winning the US election- but, put together, give some indication as to how 2020 feels for me, unprecedented, variable, new. Covid makes almost everything a little more difficult- coping with grief, for example- but it is also a year when some self-reflections can have great weight- such as the liberating power of grief- and has been punctuated with occasional bursts of celebration such as the US election. As with managing grief, it appears that the primary skill I need to weather this difficult year is one of navigation. Like grief, it pays me not to ignore or circumvent my difficulties, but to navigate my boat through the storm.
