I haven’t written here since July 7.
Today is September 23.
When I realized that yesterday, my first thought was that it couldn’t possibly be right. July feels like it happened six months ago. Maybe a year. Surely more than eleven weeks have passed since I was regularly sitting down to write.
But no. Eleven weeks. That’s it.
And somehow I feel like I’ve been hit by a semi, watched it back up, and then gotten hit by it again. On repeat.
For eleven weeks.
I originally thought I needed to figure out how to come back to writing. Maybe catch up on the things I’d planned to write. Figure out where I left off. Look at my content calendar. Decide how the last few months fit into what I had been building here.
Instead, I found myself asking a much different question:
What the hell happened to me?
Because I didn’t just stop writing.
I stopped praying. I stopped talking to God in my head.
I’ve been to church maybe three times in the last couple of months, and two of those times were because I was scheduled to work the Blast desk.
I stopped reaching for pretty much anything that wasn’t immediately required for survival.
And yet, somehow, I was everywhere.
I was at work. At the concession stand. At volleyball games. At football games. At band competitions. At board meetings. In spreadsheets. In emails. In Google Docs. In the car. At appointments. At home. At school events.
I was being an accountant, Treasurer, concessions everything, MBA student, wife, mom, chauffeur, problem solver, volunteer, referee of other people’s bullshit, and apparently the designated recipient of every complaint anyone had about marching band.
I was present for absolutely everything.
And somehow I disappeared from my own life.
I don’t mean that in a dramatic I lost myself and no longer know who I am kind of way.
I know who I am.
In fact, there were several occasions over the last eleven weeks when everyone else got to know exactly who I was too.
Sometimes quite publicly.
On Facebook. Oops.
I didn’t lose myself. I lost my cool.
A lot.
And I don’t love every version of myself that showed up.
There were Facebook posts I probably wouldn’t have made if I’d had another ounce of patience left. There were arguments. There were times I completely lost my shit. There were all-nighters because something had to get done and there weren’t enough waking hours left to do it. There were moments when one more complaint, one more rumor, one more problem, one more person telling me what “people were saying” felt like enough to send me completely over the edge.
But the explosion is only part of the story. Because before the explosion, there was usually:
I’m overwhelmed.
And then something else got added.
I don’t have the capacity for this.
And then something else got added.
Who said that? Give me names so we can actually address it.
No names.
Then please tell them who they need to talk to.
They won’t talk to that person.
They’re scared.
Okay.
So what exactly am I supposed to do?
People wanted things to change without going to the people who had the ability to change them.
People complained about how things were being done but didn’t come to meetings where those things could be discussed.
Parents and students told one person something, that person told me, but nobody wanted their name attached to it.
Rumors became facts somewhere between one person and the next.
And somehow all of it kept landing in the same place.
With me.
All while I was saying:
I am overwhelmed.
At some point, “I’m overwhelmed” stopped feeling like communication and started feeling like I was screaming into the void.
And then I’d lose my shit. And suddenly that was the event.
Not the fifty times I tried to communicate before it. Not the things I’d asked people to take off my plate. Not the nights I stayed awake because there literally weren’t enough hours. Not the fact that I was already running on fumes.
Just the explosion.
I’ve been thinking about chameleons.
Which is admittedly not where I expected this to go.
We talk about adaptation like it’s inherently a good thing.
Adaptability is a strength.
You adjust. You figure it out. You survive.
A chameleon changes according to what’s happening around it. It blends into its environment. The adaptation helps protect it.
And I think I’ve spent the last eleven weeks adapting.
Over and over and over again.
Something goes wrong? Adapt.
Someone doesn’t do something? Adapt.
Concessions data is a disaster? Adapt.
Nobody owns the task? Adapt.
Money gets tighter? Adapt.
My knee gets worse? Adapt.
Someone brings me another problem I can’t actually solve? Adapt.
Something has to be finished and I’ve run out of daytime? Adapt.
Make nighttime daytime. Sleep less. Get it done. Keep moving.
The problem is that none of my adaptations were actually protecting me.
They were just getting me through the current problem.
I wasn’t adapting in a way that made my life healthier or safer.
I was adapting for survival.
And apparently, if you do that long enough, your entire world gets very, very small.
Not physically. God knows I was absolutely everywhere.
But mentally?
My world became:
What has to happen next?
Not:
What matters to me? What do I want? What do I need? What do I want to write? How is my relationship with God? How am I actually doing?
Just:
What has to happen next?
And anything that didn’t have an immediate consequence slowly disappeared.
Writing could wait. Prayer could wait. Church could wait. Rest could wait.
I could wait.
Marching band, however, always had a deadline.
There was always another Friday night. Another competition. Another concession stand. Another volunteer need. Another cash discrepancy. Another parent complaint. Another student issue. Another rumor. Another email. Another program deadline. Another shirt order. Another event.
The urgent kept devouring the important.
And I let it.
Sometimes willingly. Sometimes angrily. Sometimes because I genuinely cared. Sometimes because nobody else was doing it. Sometimes because doing it myself was easier than waiting. Sometimes because I didn’t know what the hell else to do.
And sometimes because survival doesn’t leave much room for thoughtful decision-making.
You just adapt.
Now it’s September 23.
My bank account is overdrawn. Again.
I’m having knee surgery Friday.
And I don’t even know what recovery looks like yet.
They won’t know exactly what they’re doing until they’re inside my knee. Depending on what they find, I could be dealing with one recovery or a completely different one.
Which means I don’t know exactly when I’ll go back to work.
I don’t know what the next couple of weeks will look like.
I don’t know how much help I’m going to need.
I don’t know what I’ll physically be able to do.
And financially, this is a really fucking terrible time for uncertainty.
There is a part of me that wants to immediately solve all of that.
Of course there is.
I want the recovery schedule. I want the spreadsheet. I want the plan. I want to know what happens next so I can adapt to it before it even happens.
But I can’t.
For once, there isn’t enough information.
Friday, I’m going to go to sleep not knowing exactly what version of my life I’m waking up to.
And maybe that’s why, after eleven weeks of barely thinking about this place at all, I suddenly miss writing so much.
Because I’ve spent the last eleven weeks asking myself:
What do I have to do next?
And writing is giving me enough room to finally ask:
What the hell just happened to me?
I don’t have the answer yet.
I definitely don’t have the inspirational lesson.
I can’t tell you that I prayed my way through it, because I didn’t.
I can’t tell you that my faith carried me through this season, because if I’m telling the truth, faith hasn’t been anywhere near the center of my life.
I can’t wrap this up with a Bible verse and tell you what God was teaching me while everything was falling apart.
Maybe someday I’ll understand that part. Maybe I won’t.
Right now, all I know is that somewhere between July 7 and September 23, I stopped writing. I stopped praying. I stopped going to church unless somebody needed me to work a desk.
I kept doing damn near everything else.
And somewhere along the way, there stopped being any Danece left over for Danece.
I don’t know how to find my way back yet.
But I missed writing.
So I started here.