Escape. In these days of sheltering in place and self isolating, it is so desired it’s become even more of an opiate than usual — and perhaps harder to come by than a drug.

Today, my form of escape was pouring over some doctorate program info I’ve been back burner-ing off and on for a couple years. I’m not sure the work is something I want to put in, or maybe I haven’t found the right program. Or maybe I haven’t nailed down what I want to research for the next half decade. Something with digital activism and writing, but what? None of that mattered today though; wasting time looking at course lists and descriptions was a good escape.

Tonight, after staring my toddler down with the kind of anger-puckered face that comes from being hit by said toddler for the fourth time in five minutes, I blissfully escaped upstairs to my office. Because I’ve been depressed for the last 48 hours and didn’t do any work today, I wasn’t going to do any as I settled into my desk chair. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go. No escape.

I thought about having another good cry, but the emotion wasn’t there.  I swore a bit as I tried to write something, failed to organize my thoughts and thus felt worse. Finally, I opened up a browser and looked for something to read.

What I found was this piece in the Atlantic about feminism and the pandemic.  As I read it, the feeling of existential doom weaving about my feet all day curled up in my lap and made itself deeply at home.  I read that domestic and sexual abuse go up in times like these. Women with children do more work (surprise!!) during health crises like this, and all women don’t recover as quickly or as much as men do after a pandemic. Female  education and careers can be forever stunted by this type of crisis as well.

I read on feeling sad for my sisters around the world, and sad for myself, as a sense of survivor’s guilt joined existential doom on my lap. I still have a job. I don’t need another degree to keep what I have no or find more work in the future. I’m healthy, and so is my family. Even if I DO do more second shift work than the hubs, at least I have a partner to step in when I need him, like tonight. And we can afford to weather this storm for quite a while and have the space to do so.

So what right did I have to feel a sense of dread or sadness or doom, I wondered, reading and kneading tension knots in my neck. Why could I not just focus on the positive? I bounced into a new browser window and tried to find an article about why it’s hard to focus on the positive during moments like this, but there too, I failed. Finally, I quit reading the Atlantic piece. Yet there they were, those triplets of depression. I got away from my naughty child, but this triumvirate was just too much.

For the first time since shit started to get real, I felt like the world awaiting us on the other side of this reality will be so changed that nothing we do now, or are now, will matter.  And so here I am, trying to write it out yet again.  Yeah.

Remember that I said I failed at finding the piece I was looking for, the article that would help me explain why I was having a hard time feeling positive even though I knew I had lots to be positive about? Instead of that one, I found this, a piece from Mental Health America that explores how writing can help people get through tough times.

Yep. Writing. It doesn’t matter that these words aren’t inspiring or profound or even new.  They are all I can do to escape, if even for just a few minutes. This blog is nothing earth-shattering or special or even very well written, but like this post, it’s something I can do to put myself in a different place and a different way. It’s an escape.

What sort of escapes are you turning to?