Tue, May 26, 2020
Read in 3 minutes
Seattle Hub, Washington, USA Originally from San Jose, California, USA
I think I can finally admit this. COVID-19 is getting to me.
The first 1.5 months of quarantine and stay at home orders were fine. I felt like I was on top of the world. Each day, I was progressing somehow. An ab routine, hill repeats, an hour of reading, progress on Shaper work, etc. I was able to keep pushing forward.
But now I feel burned out. I stumble out of bed in the late morning. I make excuses at my workplace. I’m not exercising as often as I used to. I haven’t picked up a book in the past couple of weeks. I find myself buying more and more six-packs of beer. I opt to eat out rather than cook myself.
I hate the boom and bust. Why is there this oscillation between the highest of highs and the lowest of lows? Why can’t I just keep riding this until the coronavirus is gone?
I relate it to my childhood and early adulthood when I was fighting bulimia nervosa. Body dysmorphia sucks. Hell, low self-esteem sucks. But it models closely to how I feel now. There were weeks when I just won. I was kicking ass and taking names. I was doing well in school, running the fastest races, talking to people while looking them straight in the eyes… you know, solid wins.
But, a week later, I would be on the opposite end of the spectrum. I would be crawled up in a ball in my room, wondering who I had let down, why I wasn’t good enough, or what I wanted to change about myself.
I’m fine now… I think. Or I’m more fine than when I was from ages 8 to 22. Through therapy, I found that the oscillations wouldn’t stop unless I started grounding myself with some sort of a foundation. Who am I? What should you be proud of? Where do you go from here?
Forming an identity helped me escape the eating disorder. I had spent my whole life recognizing my flaws. But starting to recognize my strengths and accepting them as fact is really what allowed me to fight.
So how does that translate here? If I did it for bulimia, why am I struggling now with COVID-19? I relate it to my first blog post of being in limbo. My identity is being stripped away by this pandemic. The things that I was proud of prior to this are no longer things that I can look to for support. Until I find these new truths, I imagine I will keep vacillating between high highs and low lows.
I really hope I get out of this “low” soon. It’s really fucking annoying. And I’m all out of beer.