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Tuesday, March 31, 2020

CVSD: Day 20

Today was cold and rainy and we stayed inside all day. That combination makes this social isolation thing feel harder.

I have been thinking about some of the close calls I've had in my life. And how before those experiences happened, I had blinders on, not really having a clue about the effects of trauma. My close calls seem to have come about once a decade:

I was hit and thrown across the road by a car that couldn't stop on ice when I was 10. I had a DV-T (blood clot in my leg) that turned into a Pulmonary Embolism (a clot that has traveled to the lungs) which landed me in the hospital for a week in my 20s. Daniel and I were hit hard by the downturn of the economy in 2010. Daniel was laid off and couldn't find work for a year. Our stocks tanked. We lived in separate states for 6 months. Then I experienced a miscarriage in my 30s and a Placenta Abruption the following year requiring an emergency C-section to bring my youngest safely into the world.

I don't why any of those things (and others) happened. Or why they happened to me. I just know each experience changed me. They left me with the knowledge that life is not always ok. Before my miscarriage, it never occured to me that pregnancies could just end. I didn't know the grief these experiences would bring or how they would be play out for years to come. But they did allow me to see others differently. They helped me to be there for other people when their lives were falling apart.

Now I am looking at 40 and the world is falling apart. I can't decide if it is worse to know what *might* happen to someone I love. To me. Or that this terrible thing might pass over and just leave me with a heavy sense of guilt.

I sit every day with the knowledge that I am incredibly privileged. The way life is right now is a mostly a nuisance. It isn't terribly hard. Which is a weird burden to carry, because it is still feels hard, particularly because of the unknown. And then I sit in guilt some more for feeling that way. I'm trying my best to do my part. I am staying home. I am checking in with my people and my neighbors. I praying for my siblings and friends who are working in hospitals every day. Just waiting, along with everyone else, for whatever is bound to happen to happen...

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