The Couch

The Couch.

The place I didn’t want to be during the first month of Covid. I couldn’t handle feeling like life was hard. After all, I’ve done hard, and I won’t go back there again. Much like the kitchen floor that I won’t sit on when I’m sad, I won’t go back to that hard, the can’t eat, can’t sleep, want to hide in a hole hard, or at least I’ll do everything in my power not to.

So, the floor can’t find me, the couch can’t find me. I’m going to run. Boy did I run, and walk, and do yoga, and paint, and organize, I did anything I could do to avoid the Covid feels. Don’t get me wrong, I felt feels, I felt the loneliness, I felt a ghosted relationship, and certainly felt the feels for every one of the people I care about but now, it’s different.

Our little people, they really are amazing little people. They are navigating school, remembering to always use elephant arms, wear their masks, and seemingly wash their hands as if it’s something their life depends on, and really.. it just may. They aren’t experiencing life as they knew it before Covid. The birthday parties are few, if any, the sports though there, are different, and their teachers? Yeah, they remind them that to be safe we must always be in our own space, there is no more Robert Munsch “We Share Everything” being read, heck, we can’t even sing unless we go outside. There will be no school wide Christmas concert, or school caroling. But you know, those little people, they smile every day. Nothing about their daily school lives are the same but they smile.

When I’m honest, really honest and true. My heart in my classroom is heavy. My heart at the dance studio is heavy. My heart that can barely be at the arena is heavy. These are new heavies for me, because Spring Covid was different. It painted a clear opportunity for Ashley to grow, an opportunity I at first shied away from, then jumped at. A clear opportunity for a tremendous amount of down time with my kiddos.

So now, the couch, it has my name on it. I finished the Queen’s gambit in just days. The Crown, and the ridiculous love filled Christmas movies I said I wouldn’t watch, you name it, I finished them. I’m binge watching from the couch and mad at myself for not getting up and getting out like I did in Spring Covid. Spring Covid was good to me, it brought me Peggy, Kelly, Marsha, and all the other women I am lucky to be surrounded with, as well as never ending opportunities to run first thing in the morning, but Spring Covid wasn’t the real world Covid for me, and that’s where I am now.

In the real world of Covid. This time though, this hard, I’m not alone in it, and that’s what I need to remember. We are not alone. Really, we are never alone, it just sometimes feels like it. So I can eat, somewhat sleep, and I don’t want to be in a hole, it’s just time I allow myself to just be this way. Not torture myself for more. Just be.

So, I’ll be over here netflix’in it up for a little longer, or maybe a little past that, and that’s ok for now. I want you to know that however you are dealing with it, whatever it is, it’s all ok.

Just so you know, after the now, I’m gonna be on fire.