Before the pandemic
I attended community potlucks.
I folded my anxiety into a handkerchief,
something to fiddle with in my pocket,
as I planted the seeds of friendship.
After the pandemic
the potlucks were cancelled.
Some members came out anti-science
and my seeds have all failed to yield
anything more than broken confidence.
Before the pandemic
I made my first ever parent friends.
We met at the park most mornings,
shared meals once a week,
and took turns filling oxygen tanks.
After the pandemic
the housing market got so hot
they left the country to cool down.
Parks and tanks are left empty now
and my lungs are learning to adapt.
Before the pandemic
we had library and market days.
Familiar places, friendly faces,
comforting routine and connection.
A safety net of welcome and belonging.
After the pandemic
we found desks, stalls, and smiles vacant.
I stretch my anxiety around my neck,
a scarf to protect against the chill,
and let my husband do the talking.
Before the pandemic
I didn't have many friends to talk to,
but I called my Granny every day.
After the pandemic
I watched her get sick.
Her number doesn't reach her anymore.
Before the pandemic
panic attacked once or twice a year.
After the pandemic
it has learned to hunt in packs.
Before the pandemic
nausea, dizziness and pain meant
I was coming down with something.
After the pandemic
they mean that I am awake.
Before the pandemic
my husband and I talked about
growing old together.
After the pandemic
he wonders if I'll make it through the week.
Before the pandemic
I believed in a future.
After the pandemic.
After the pandemic.
When is After the pandemic?
Before the pandemic
there was no Before or After.
Before the pandemic
I didn't need to wait for an ending to begin.
Before the pandemic
is gone.
And all we have to work with is now.
At least that much hasn't changed.
**Author’s Note**
If you want to check out the visual version of this poem and a lot of other poems that haven’t made it on the blog yet, make sure to check out my Instagram account @amnotpoetry.
Mid-autumn shrinking of days: waves of midnight blue lapping an island of grey cloud. I watch their constant approach and retreat, and think of how my Granny used to call them the longest days of the year. To wake in the time-shrouding darkness and not to know whether you’ve slept early or late, to pass the hours in a smothering dimness that seems to seep into the tiniest crack and expand so that every interaction, every experience, is muffled and flat. I pretend this embrace is a comfort, isolation an inspiration, but it is not. I want to make beautiful things, to weave words into brightness that can outshine the fog, cleave the day in two the way my Granny’s phone calls used to. Yet here I am complaining about the weather because the days are just too short. Or maybe they’re too long. Or maybe my Granny was wrong and the days aren’t longer or shorter, but heavier, so that even though we carry them the same distance, we are consumed in the effort. And her calls made them so much lighter because, for a while, I didn’t have to carry them alone.
I dive so deeply into days flooded with motherhood eyes closed breath held that by the time I surface the dusky light burns my eyes silence pierces my ears and my atrophied lungs stutter starved for oxygen I tell them to pace themselves but they are ravenous in out in out in out until I am drowning in rest
My creative process is a bomb defusal in a crowded room where the people keep wandering by to peek over my shoulder.
My mother cringes as I touch the red wire, so I drop the pliers and pick up a screwdriver. Left, left, left — until the screw wiggles and I hear my old professors sigh in unison — right, right, right.
I pore through the pages of a tear-stained manual but can’t concentrate amidst the impatient chatter of an Instagram following. I press a button on a whim and brace myself. A gasp. A cry. But nothing happens.
For a moment I think this might be luck, but as the voices die I hear it in the silence: tick, tick, tick. The trickle of time running out.
I check the manual. There is a whisper. I whip the book to the floor. A muffled clatter. A tut and a groan. I pick it up again and get back to work.
My every day is balanced on the knife point of panic. Tonight I lost my voice, my words refusing to file neatly in line, rushing so quickly that they caught in my throat, my breath trampled beneath them. My husband found me on the floor drowning in a scream so vast that it left me silent.
I am not okay.
Life is a trap: just when I think I’ve got the knack of shrinking myself a little bit smaller, the walls close in a little bit tighter. And maybe the daylight will make things look a little bit brighter, a little bit wider, but I am not ready to surrender today to get to tomorrow.
So I guess this is me tearing up my white flag, claiming victory with the words that sought to suffocate me: I am not okay. I am tired. I am angry. I am grieving. I am afraid of tomorrow.
One moment you will be here and the next you will be gone. There is a line somewhere, as fine as spider’s silk, that divides a world with you from a world without. I am afraid of stepping over that near-invisible crack without even noticing, until I look back and find it has grown into a canyon.
I am the shadow of my motherhood. I am what comes after the stroller, so that you already know the shape of me before you’ve really looked.
I am cast with the waking of the sun, and warp around demands much bigger than the mouths that make them, stretching and shrinking as needed.
So please excuse my melodramatics and the volume of my voice when I talk about politics, science, poetry, video games, or anything but my kids. I’m just trying to cast the shape of myself.
I’ve had depression and anxiety for a very long time, but there’s always been a good reason to push it aside. To tell myself that I’ll be alright as long as I keep moving. That I don’t need help. That it’s “normal.” That I can handle it.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has had those beliefs shattered in the past year. My existential crises suddenly found themselves with some very real material, and my coping mechanisms — social events, going out by myself, getting someone to watch the kids — went flying out the window.
To be honest, it didn’t feel like what I was experiencing was even related to the pandemic, and in some ways it wasn’t — my mental health wasn’t great to begin with after all — but whether I acknowledged the pressure bearing down on me or not, it was still there. In the way I couldn’t take my children to the park or to the grocery store. In the way I hadn’t been away from them for more than half an hour in several months. In the masks I saw hanging from rear-view mirrors as I walked down the street. In the way that walking those streets had become a sick strategy game — weaving back and forth or meandering blocks out of the way so that I didn’t have to go within two metres of anyone else.
I felt it in my core even if I didn’t acknowledge it. I stopped doing anything. I stopped being anything. I wanted to just stop altogether.
So I got help. For the first time. And just… thank God. Why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?
Please, whether it’s been a lifelong thing or it’s a new thing… if you feel empty, overly anxious, meaningless, like your entire self is about to implode… tell someone. Preferably your doctor. Look for community resources if you don’t have access to paid therapy and can’t afford it. Online therapy. Just, ask for help. I promise you deserve it. (For the record I signed up for a government-funded online therapy clinic and used a free CBT app called Woebot while I was waitlisted.)
And if you are in crisis, please call a crisis support line or stop by your emergency department. Your life matters and I swear you are strong enough to get through this. You just haven’t been given the tools yet. You’ve been climbing a mountain with your bare hands and you’ve still gotten this far. Imagine where you’d get if someone gave you some climbing equipment (and taught you how to use it).
Anyway. Therapy and mental health supports aside (but seriously, access them if you think you need them), I thought it was about time for an update.
Even before the pandemic, I was really struggling with my creativity. Not so much a writer’s block, just a lack of passion for… well… anything. Writing included. This of course, caused extra anxiety as I thought to myself… will I ever be creative again? Will I ever feel again? Despite the way we romanticize mental illness, that poetic melancholy or artistic moodiness, it is NOT conducive to creativity. I am a much better (and definitely productive) creator when I am mentally well.
While I was recovering, and within the pressures of parenting during a pandemic, the only thing I’ve consistently found time for has been poetry. It’s short, I can write and edit it on my phone, and it’s cathartic as hell. I’ve actually started a poetry Instagram with the tag @amnotpoetry. You can see the feed over there —> I’ll do some poetry posts to update any new ones to the site and file them under the Poetry section up there. ^
I also quit twitter for now, because who needs that negativity?
An example of the kind of stuff I’m doing over on insta
As for what comes next… well, I’m trying to take it easy for now in terms of setting goals, but I AM working on a few stories again. I’d also still like to work on finishing the voice recordings of Ganymede, but ultimately that comes down to finding a period of time and a space where I can consistently create a quiet enough environment. Worst case, it’ll happen as restrictions from the pandemic ease off and I can book a space. The focus right now is on creation, and eventually the debate of going the webfiction route again, or trying for traditional publishing. But that is a ways off (though I’d love to hear what you think!)
I’ll try to do more consistent blog posts. I have one mostly written already about media that’s kept me sane and helped me deal with my depression over the past year. Books, podcasts, video games, etc. So stay tuned.
Anyway, I’m back. It’ll take some time for me to fall into a regular habit of posting, but for now, I am just so ecstatic to be creating again. I hope everyone out there is doing alright and taking care of themselves as best they can. It’s okay to take a break, sometimes just getting through the day is enough. We’ve got this, one day at a time.
This is for the moms whose vacations were taken in the aisles of grocery stores, at the tables of cafés, in efficient trips to the shopping mall or gym. Whose nights off meant eating out or leaving the kids with Grandma. Who see no end in sight, no relief, no breaks, no peace. Who hate to complain ’cause they signed up for this right? It’s a sacrifice they have to make and damn, but they’re good at those.
This is for the people who’ve found all exits blocked, trapped in homes that threaten to consume them. With partners or parents or whoever it may be that beat and belittle and go off like bombs leaving nothing but ringing silence in their wake.
This is for everyone whose schedules, consistency, and routine were medical requirements abandoned in the crossfire. Kids and adults panicking, lashing, crumbling because suddenly their needs come last.
For Asian communities forced to carry a weight that isn’t theirs.
For those without homes and those with no one else to share them with.
For those who can’t work and those who can’t stop.
For those stuck with their families and those kept away.
For adults and children with mental health conditions, or disabilities, or everyday worries and fears.
For seniors, and in-betweeners.
For health care workers and delivery drivers, small business owners, grocery store staff, the helpers and the helped.
This is for you. Whatever that’s worth.
It isn’t a promise that things will be okay because I don’t know. I suppose it’s a wish — a midnight thought, an hour (probably more) of lost sleep imagining I could reach you.
All I can say is: I will do my best to see you. You deserve to be seen. Your needs deserve to be met.
I hope you find safety and peace and justice and connection wherever you are.
And if you’re lucky, I hope you find a good night’s rest.
Amy Notdorft 