Relief Is Coming
One of the hardest things about the pandemic is the uncertainty of when it will end and what life will look like when we finally declare it over. Like infertility—I knew that it couldn’t literally last forever, but I had no clue when/if we would reach parenthood and what that would look like. So I spent a lot of time struggling to know how to make decisions. And I’m mentally back there again. The pandemic cannot last forever (right?), but I have zero clue what our lives will look like or what we’ll have/need when it ends.
I recently read a great piece on Substack about knowing relief is coming is sometimes more powerful than the relief itself. Evie Ebert tells a story about keeping jellybeans in her bra during a long distance run to explain how having a plan in place to get through work and lack-of-daycare gave her the mental strength to keep going.
When she would hit a wall while running, she would eat the jellybeans: “The first bite of those jellybeans, half-melted by tit sweat, gave me the thrust to keep moving. I needed the sugar but I also just needed to know relief was coming.”
Relief is coming.
If we could just know for certain that relief is coming—that we will be taken care of as humans on this earth (artificially national boundaries be damned)—we could gain a burst of energy. But that isn’t what is happening. And I don’t have a lot of faith that the world is going to actually come together as Team Earth and weather this.
I’m voting this fall for Biden because I believe he has the greatest chance of getting us a nationwide (and hopefully, worldwide) plan, though I also know that my local elections are just as important as the decisions that impact us nationally. Get a voting plan, everyone. Know how you’re going to cast your ballot this fall.
6 comments
I’m counting heavily on this election, at both the local and national election. The crushing weight of knowing how it could potentially end (where nothing changes) takes my breath away so I try not to think about it and just focus on the hope.
Well, there’s one milestone in November that will at least give us a sense of what we should expect in the future – that’s one form of relief, I think. I’m not particularly hopeful that I’ll get some improvement, but it will be good to know if I should expect some hope or continued misery. Uncertainty is difficult.
I totally agree that this situation and infertility share a common element of uncertainty and that it is one of the most difficult parts. We had the first lockdowns in our community a little over six months ago, and at that time, I couldn’t imagine that we would still be dealing with this by this date, but here we are.
I have a bit more faith in the world coming together, perhaps because I live in a country that has always had to work together with others, rather than do whatever they like because they are the most powerful, and I have seen the power of that in the work of international and UN agencies in war zones and developing countries.
The worldwide plan is already underway and led by the WHO. 156 countries have joined together to ensure that the research, purchase and distribution of any new vaccine is shared equally between the world’s richest countries and those in the developing world. Neither the US nor China have signed up. Of course not. China, however, has the vaccine largely under control.
So I support your call, because I think the US led by Biden is much more likely to join, and make real efforts that we can all have a more certain future.
These are dark times. RBG and USSC. Breonna Taylor. Fire and smoke (thankfully over in my neck of the woods, for now). Trump signaling he won’t leave if he loses. CDFuckingC downplaying things and putting out bad info (my workplace and children’s school pledging to follow CDC guidelines thus is not at all reassuring). So yeah, hard to believe relief is coming. And I’m very privileged (job, house, health, family ok) yet still feel despondent. A colleagues’s wife just died after 2+ years with cancer further darkening things. And the amount of hate and bigotry and stupidity and anti-science in this country…very depressing.
I am voting early in person. I do not trust that my ballot will be counted if I mail it in. I am struggling with the idea of relief coming. I fear this election, because of the insanity going on and the possibility of living in a situation I thought could only be fiction.
However, a friend found this amazing article about “surge capacity” and why it’s so hard to live in this endless uncertainty with no concrete relief in sight, and the idea of “ambiguous loss” that so many of us in the infertility community have experienced in other ways. It’s a great read:
https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c