At the end of annus horribilis 2020, the only promise I made to myself was to keep writing. Oh, sure, I had other things on my mind, but I knew making other resolutions would be fruitless if I couldn’t even keep this one promise. To be fair, though, throughout the year that just passed, I had managed to put down snippets of my thoughts in my personal diary, yet for some reason, I felt reluctant to share them with anyone.
Our lives, already removed from much of the world because of the difficulties of our son’s profound autism, became even more isolated. What respite we had, or what was left of it, was taken away from us by the forced quarantine measures of the pandemic. And our world, already small, got even smaller.
Many times, I would wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, the feeling of dread so overwhelmingly intense that I was convinced something bad was happening right at that moment. It took all of my energy to focus and concentrate as my mounting fears threatened to pull me down deeper into the quicksand of my thoughts. In the past, I had been able to quell and stifle anxiety by praying the rosary from beginning to end, but as the months in quarantine grew longer, it took more and more loops of the rosary to stave off the fear.
One night, sometime towards the end of the excruciatingly long year we just had, I woke up to another bad dream. As I turned over in bed, now wide awake but still terrified and confused, my hand was suddenly seized by my husband. Curled under a triple pile of comforters and still asleep, he clutched my hand to his chest. His breathing was calm and regular as he held on to my hand. I couldn’t move without waking him, so despite my tears, I curled right next to him and closed my eyes. I started the rosary in my head again but before I finished the first decade, I was asleep. It was the first time I slept dreamless in a long while.
I’m better these days. My dreams are still as vivid as ever- and in color too- but they no longer terrify me as much. I still have the occasional ones that leave me shivering in fear in the middle of the night, but when I do, I snuggle closer to my husband, clutch his hands, start the rosary in my head, and I can put off my fears for another night.
I wanted to put all this down before the first month of this new year ends. Already, the days pass us in a blur of ordinary sameness-today being a repeat of yesterday, and tomorrow, a repeat of today- that I don’t even remember where all the days of January have gone.
I guess I just wanted to let anyone who still cares to read this blog that I am still here. I’m struggling, like so much of the world these days, but I’m not giving up. Not just yet.
And with your help, perhaps I can keep this one resolution. Maybe then the rest of my courage will follow.
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