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Our house smells like farts, and I had another panic attack, at 1 am last night.

We made an offer on a house whose marble countertops and double-headed shower felt like a ship on its way to rescue us, the Carpathia en route to the Titanic, but that one–our third–didn’t work out either, so we’re left to rot in moist-carpet hell.

Also, The Husband gave our precious, beautiful boys some haircuts that have been compared (by me) as Dumb and Dumber meets concentration camp.

What I’m saying is that these conditions are not tense, or a strain, or simply tough. They’re warfare. This is not normal–none of it is. So to react normally would actually be…a bit insane? To not lose one’s shit over their oat milk being shared without their permission? To step on that damp(est) part of the carpet and not want to punch a hole in the wall? To hear the kids complain about their charmed lives (but not haircuts) and not want to send them on a one-way ticket to a third-world country? That would be insane. And I am seriously wary of anyone who is taking all of this well.

But, per usual, I’m wary of anyone who is making it all out to be one thing, good or bad, without nuance. Because even in this messy reality of life together, I’m seeing what just would never have been without it: mornings spent at the beach, digging and exploring. Movie nights, every night (fun fact: we alternate between TWO of them! JUST TWO!). Board-game sessions spent teaching Little Brother the drawbacks of not winning fair and square (he has yet to internalise this). Impromptu trampoline sessions the boys get to have with The Husband (another fun fact: I tried, at forty-two years of age, to jump on the trampoline! It did not go well! My knee was hit with a piercing pain and it felt like my rectum fell out!).

Still, the hardest part of it all may be…me. Julia-Louis Dreyfus, one of the only celebs allowed to talk right now, recently posted a photo of herself with the caption, “Look, I’m just gonna say it. I’m fucking sick of myself.”

GIRL, SAME. I am sick of what’s been revealed about me during this time: how I can turn even an unstructured day into a set of rules, as if we don’t get to the beach before 9 am everything will FALL APART. How my thoughts won’t ever slow down, EVEN WHILE I AM ASLEEP APPARENTLY. How my indulgence in “quaran-wine” is going to have to be dialled back a notch because it’s affecting my sleep and is officially an overindulgence. How I rely on order and cleanliness around our house to maintain a certain level of well-being and THAT IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE IN FARTLAND, IS IT??

But.

Occasionally, like at one in the morning the day before two “huge social outings” (The Kid’s speech therapy appointment and my trip to the salon, cue the angels’ chorus) on a stomach full of wine, I (re)learn the simple truth that I am not my own saviour. That the line I used to venerate from the poem “Invictus”–“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”–may be some inspirational shit, but as far as it goes with me it’s just shit because (1) I’m terrible with directions, and (2) I cannot save myself. From myself, or from anything else. Salvation must come from the outside.

Which is why strategies don’t work. They can help–drinking less can help, saying “no” to preserve my unwillingness to be violated can help, funny memes can help, comedian Twitter can help (to a limit), some structure can help, meditation can help. But none of it can save me. I need a lot more help than that.

I think that it might start with not pretending to be what I’m not. (Which is why I want to run and hide in a hole when I see other people doing it–it taps into something deep within me that it took a lot of therapy and a lot of money to deal with; I can’t take others’ on too; I’m already tired.) With not pretending that this time is something it’s not, or is just one thing. Because there is no dark corner of myself or of this pandemic where grace does not go with me. Wherever I go, there I am–and there I AM is–the kind of saving grace that isn’t afraid of messy moods or bad haircuts or family drama because it is more with us when we are ourselves, and honest about it, than it ever could be–than we’d ever allow it to be–in our pretending.

My anxiety is a form of sensitivity that characterises much of my life, but here’s the thing–though it may be a bitch at 1 am or the LEGO table, it is a sensitivity that opens me up to things I never would have noticed without it. It leaves me raw and vulnerable, and it is often there–sometimes, only there–where the real magic happens. Where I, far from the captain’s deck and more in the bowels of the ship, collapsed in a heap–I am held, am made, am brought by grace to a place I never could have gotten to on my own.