These times are intimidating; upon that fact, I think we can all agree. They are also unfamiliar, unnerving, uncertain.
Uncertainty is one of the issues that I struggle with the most in my personal life. I thirst for knowledge; I thirst for knowing. When I do not know, I am not comfortable. And in these times, there is very little that I do know. The logical conclusion to arrive at is that I am uncomfortable—and I am. But it is a quiet kind of uncomfortable, the kind that is easily pushed to the back of my mind and ignored. It is not the kind that leaps to the forefront of my thoughts, constantly demanding my attention, and for that I am grateful. This quiet kind of uncomfortable allows me to cope, allows me to go about my days and weeks and what will quite possibly be months as though nothing has changed.
And if I’m being honest, not much has changed in relation to my personal life. I have been homeschooled my whole life; the only difference now is that the weekly meetings with my class are online instead of in person. I can still walk the beach in the sunlight, or surf if I’d prefer. No longer can I spend time with my friends in person, but I can busy myself on Instagram or Snapchat and make plans for the summer as though it’s a surety that we’ll be able to socialize freely by then.
But, both of my parents are out of a job, and the reality of a lack of income in both of my houses is a frightening thing. No income means that in order to compensate, we will have to dip into the savings that have been scraped painstakingly together over the years. It means using money that should never have needed to be used, that can’t afford to be used because what if something even worse happens after this and then there is no backup. It means that my uncomfortable is a little closer to the surface now, thinking about it.
We will be fine; that is what I tell myself. We will be fine, we will pull through, we will be all right. But the veracity of the words that I tell myself is uncertain, and I know that, and that knowledge catches at the back of my mind, and lingers.