Circadian Dysrhythmia

I have a headache hanging on for more than a week now.  I know what it is:  things are out of whack.  Time is out of joint.  Tomorrow begins the new school year and I am having dreams that I am not ready, that I will forget to do something, or no students will show up, or they are in a room somewhere and I cannot locate them to start class.  I barreled out of bed this morning in the dark like a man electrocuted only to realize this is Sunday.

In short, I am plagued by a circadian dysrhythmia.  Night and day have become twisted and tangled.  I cannot sleep, then become exhausted at midday.  I forget where I put things and do some activities over again, forgetting that I’ve already completed the task.  I will go to my desk to retrieve something, a piece of paper, my keys, and forget what I went there to get.  Names of people and places sit just outside my memory and I must try to remember by not thinking about them.  Too much attention and they flutter away; emptying my mind and closing my eyes, sometimes they return to me.  Yesterday, in mid-sentence, I could not pronounce a word.  I stood there trying to form the illusive syllables.  I was, momentarily, struck dumb.

The stress comes from this new paradigm of teaching and working and living.  It is cognitive overload, and the fuse box is full of tripped switches and blown fuses.  The normal is gone; the new normal has not been fully processed.  We are in this hanging garden of obstacles and mirrors.  Did I do this already?  Did I write this already?  Am I paying attention?

Failing to find the land of Nod late Friday night, I ventured out to a twenty-four hour news stand to pick up some reading material.  To go out after dark is to experience a strange netherworld.  I drove past a few bars and restaurants that have taken over the sidewalk and street outside to set up tables for diners.  People packed these places, but no one was wearing a mask or practicing social distancing.  Other places were still boarded up and desolate.  No traffic on the streets, although buses drove past with throngs of riders, mostly grim people on their way home from the late shift.

At the news stand, the proprietor greeted me and asked if he could help me find something.  I’ve been there a thousand times, but I do not think he recognized me with the mask.  I told him I was browsing, and then he offered for no apparent reason, “Sure, yeah, I’m counting out the drawer.”  I looked over and saw stacks of bills on the little podium behind which he stood.  Robbery, anyone?

I drove back through the streets.  “We’re open for in-person dining!” screamed many dark and shuttered places.  They did not seem open.  Cars thronged the supermarket parking lot, even at that late hour.  Homeless people in tents lined the sidewalk under the freeway overpasses.  Among the tarps and carts, blue squares of light floated in the night.  People living on the streets with smart phones.  Back home, a lone rat ran across the telephone wire, a superhighway for the rodent world linking backyard fruit tree to fruit tree.  A cat screamed in the distance arousing the sleeping dogs to bark.

The list of stressors seems endless:  the pandemic, the start of school, the current administration and its threat to every American, the uncertainty of what is to come.  The only defense is to take one day at a time, one moment even.

As a new week begins, one that will bring new challenges and the stubborn continuation of old problems, all we can do is live.  I keep repeating that to myself as things shift and break down.  Put one step forward, bravely, and keep going.