As an extreme extrovert, I never really thought about life without people around me until this past week as most of the world has moved to work at home. The little things I took for granted like sharing how my weekend went, flirting with random strangers, even just absorbing energy from other human beings…is gone. It’s just…weird.
Greg, my introverted husband has loved it. As he puts it “I’ve been preparing for this all my life”. I however, have not. I need people. I need to feed off energy of others, its how I get MY energy levels up. And I never once thought that energy source would every go away.
Until now.
The amount of panic, of anxiety, of weird-crazy-non-vibes I have been through this past week has been insane. On top of that, let’s add a 5.7 Earthquake, and several aftershocks of 4.0 and up, and you have a very different valkyrie. I haven’t really been able to describe how I am feeling, other than okay. I’ve gone for a run every day and while I have tried to stay in the moment, all I can think about are weird scenarios like “what if we have an earthquake while I run, how do I get away from power poles” or “that’s more than 2 people walking together – GET AWAY FROM ME”. Strange, odd, freaky panic that I normally never get. I can walk down a NYC street during rush hour and feel great, but outside in a pandemic with an earthquake…yea not good.
I am not able to settle. I can’t just relax, zone out or think the way I wanna think. It’s like my motivator is broken. I want a nice little button I can push and make everything seem normal again…and make the world stop shaking.
I think that might actually be the biggest issue. The earth shaking. I haven’t grown up with earthquakes. Until Wednesday I’d never seen my home, my world, my life…shake uncontrollably. That’s unsettling to me. I can handle a lot of shit. I do NOT want my safe space to come crashing down around me. And every time we have an aftershock, that’s what goes through my head. Fuck the virus. Fuck politics. Fuck everything. I want the world to stop shaking.
That’s all. Everything else I can handle. But toss in “Oh yea, the actual earth you are standing on could come apart at any given moment and you have no control over that” and I’m a bit freaked.
I guess we all have triggers. Evidently earthquakes are mine.
It’s been a weird week. I needed to get words out of my head.
This actually helped.
A lot.
Mostly.
The Badass Valkyrie 
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