My Account at the Emotional Bank
I like to think of my brain as my emotional bank, and I store my weekly paycheck of emotional energy in its vault. Most of the time, I have enough energy to cover all of my bills—family obligations, work obligations, time with friends—and still have enough leftover for frivolous purchases, such as scrolling through Facebook and remaining friends with someone even after a fake pregnancy announcement for April Fool’s Day. (Please don’t do this.)
But the pandemic has thrown my careful budget into disarray. There is emotional energy I need to spend to keep the lights on—family obligations and work obligations—and I usually have enough in the account for Zoom calls with friends, though I keep the circle smaller some weeks more than others. But that leftover emotional energy I enjoyed before the pandemic is usually not in my account at the end of the week. It’s all spent. Zeroed out.
I don’t have the energy for social media itself much less fake pregnancy announcements. (Please don’t do this. It bears repeating.) I don’t have patience for other people’s poor decisions.
This article summed up how I feel as we round on one year of this. Sometimes I look at what needs to get done, and I think inside my head: “I can’t.” It’s almost like I need to let myself say those two words in order to make a withdrawal from the emotional bank. Those words have become like a password.
It’s not that what I need to get done is so much. It’s less than I did pre-pandemic because there’s less socializing, fewer meetings, no travel. But it’s more than I have energy saved in my emotional bank.
Except for the days or weeks when I feel fine.
Because that’s how it is now. There are the weeks when everything just is. It’s fine. We’re all fine. The word for “okay” in Hebrew is b’seder—”in order”—and that is how it is most of the time. My emotional account is in order. It balances, even if the amount in my emotional savings account is negligible.
One year.
6 comments
Yes. This is an excellent description for how I also feel right now. A friend texted me she was going out to (dine in)dinner, had a new babysitter coming, was so excited to “get out” and I couldn’t even text back. I didn’t have a positive, sincere response. And I just don’t have it in me to placate other people and their choices.
I experience this too. Days or weeks when I feel things are ok, I’m on top of things, we will be ok. Then I hit the wall—way too much on my plate at work, parenting fails (I am relying way too much on bribes/threats to get thru the day—my kids now earn/potentially lose TV in the afternoons, etc.), talk of schools opening causing me extreme stress over my unvaccinated kids getting ill or me being forced to return to work in person. And it’s still very disconcerting that with everything going on – – yes numbers are way better but are still way higher than they were for example last summer – – some people are just carrying on as though we’re not in the middle of a pandemic.
A year ago today I flew to a short conference. Observed a few people wearing masks at the airport and thought “really.” Not realizing how the world would change in just a few short weeks, how that might be the last time for quite a while that I get on a plane or stay in a hotel room.
Yeah. . . .
Thanks for posting this. I try to remind myself that we are in a pandemic and nothing is normal, but it is still a challenge to not be hard on myself when what used to be easy now requires so much more energy from me. Everything is just harder. Like I said, I try to remind myself why and give myself some credit, but it’s really nice to read this and get some outside validation. Thank you.
One year. Wow, amazing the toll it’s taken in that emotional bank. I’m feeling… Depleted, lately. More so than normal for February, methinks. I do like the “I can’t” password.
I’m so behind on blog reading. I haven’t had the emotional energy it takes to read and comment properly. These days, it feels like we are all just doing what we can to survive. Sending love.❤️