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| This picture is here because sometimes staring into water is good for the soul. |
If I were in a snappier mood right now, I'd put a smirk on my face and say "Oh yeah? I was nonessential before being nonessential was cool!"
But I'm not in a snappy mood at all. I've seen the different comments and posts over on the Facebook about how, on one hand, what a privilege it is to be able to shelter in place at home during this quarantine, and then I've seen the others about how being told you're "nonessential" is such a blow to the ego.
The first flavor of post makes a person feel like an utter shit for being thrown for a loop by all this, because at least, hey, you're not having to put yourself on the frontlines as we fight this virus, and you get to ride this out at home. The second flavor of post, with I've really seen only as stray comments from people, is a painful coming to terms with not being quite as essential as we thought. I get hit right between the eyes by the first kind of post- when I get whiny and complainy over all of this, someone seems to post a "people should be more grateful/can you BELIEVE the privilege on you people?!" posts that make me feel put in my place.
But that second kind of post. Those fleeting wisps of stuffed-down emotion. There's so much more to those words "finding out you're nonessential is a blow to the ego" than a comment on social media can contain. There's a lot of pain there, and a sense of someone getting a reckoning they don't know how to take.
So like my post from a week ago, where I told you about how I'm a reformed hermit and I had a bunch of tips for you on how I've historically been able to stay home for a long stretch without going nuts, in this one, I've got to tell you, I've spent YEARS coming to terms with just how nonessential I really am. And I don't have tips for dealing with that. I just want you to know that I live in this neighborhood.
In fact, I think I'm basically the frickin' MAYOR of Nonessentialton.
I know this sounds like whining from a VERY privileged person. I know it sounds ungrateful. Looking at me from the Outside, especially before all this quarantine, I had the world by the tail. I didn't "have" to work. I got to stay home with my dog and my daughter. And before the daughter, just the dog. I didn't have a lot of material worries. So how DARE I talk like this? What an ungrateful bitch, huh?
So bear with me.
Career is a big part of our identities in our world. Think about what one of the first questions you either ask or are asked when you meet someone new. "So, what do you do?" For my husband, he's a dentist, which usually brings up whole entire conversations and takes the heat off me so I can either stand there with my Dentist's Wife smile plastered on my face, hoping they won't ask me, or else answer "I'm a dentist's wife," or "I'm a stay-at-home mom." Every so often, it'll come up that I have an advanced degree in creative writing, but then that leads to questions for which I have disappointing answers, and I'm left weighing with each person whether it's worth bringing up and having to field follow-up questions, or if I should just admit outright to being a hausfrau and deal with the dismissive nod while they return to rapt conversation with my husband about a twingy tooth they've wondered about for months. Years ago, my own mother one time referred to me a "kept woman" while I was buying a new duvet at Kohl's, and it just really stuck in my craw and made me feel ashamed for not having a career of my own. She herself was a stay-at-home mom for the first sixteen years of my life, and maybe that comment was her frustration that she and my dad sacrificed a lot to send me to college, and here I am, hausfrauing it up as though I didn't hold any degree. Maybe she was frustrated with me that I was buying a duvet that I didn't really need, simply because I was tired of the way the old one looked. I've been a big spender going way back, and it's a point of contention with everyone around me. I don't know.
From the moment I signed on to life with my husband, I've been the trailing spouse. I have made a career of it. I followed him to Philadelphia for graduate school. My heart was not in my graduate writing program at that university and it was a mutually poor fit, although I found a wonderful job in another part of the university that I could have stayed happily in for years and years. I earned a Master of Fine Arts- the terminal degree in my field.
I followed my husband back home so he could practice dentistry where he's wanted to practice dentistry since he was twelve years old. Although I didn't come back without kicking and screaming a lot. In the end, though, I knew this was the right thing for him and for the people who live in our area. It's a medically and dentally underserved area. And the thought was because I was a writer, I could "write anywhere," even though I have not written anywhere. But I have tried to make the best of it, wherever I end up. It's just that his type of work is needed where we grew up, and nobody really needs my skills. So I can either do them or not do them wherever.
As a dentist, in this current climate, my husband's not essential enough to carry on with business as usual, but he's essential enough to have to go in to field emergencies. Old Dan Tucker died of a toothache in his heel, and people can definitely die of toothaches in their mouths. It's no laughing matter. His emergency days are filled as much as they can be with the enhanced safety measures in place, with people who are suffering from true dental emergencies. And Before All This, he worked a shit-ton of hours every week. So much so that it's always been a point of contention between us, just how very much he works. Worked. With the shut-downs, I've seen him struggling a bit with who he's supposed to be outside of his career.
And I used to work for him. I chairside assisted, until it was deemed necessary that we put a little more distance between us than the requisite three feet that an assistant spends away from the doctor, to facilitate the exchange of mirrors, explorers, endo files, and dirty looks during a dental procedure. I moved out to the Front Desk. And then because of my sparkling personality and winning demeanor, I was invited not to attend work activities there. Not even remotely. For both jobs, there were people who were better qualified and better-tempered that stepped right in and filled my shoes.
How about THAT for a one-two punch of nonessentialness?
From there, because opportunity is sparse for creative writers in my home area, and because I really didn't "have" to work, I embarked on an exciting career of being "gainfully unemployed," which is to say I mooch off my husband. I also took up ghost-writing, where someone needs something written, I write it for them, they pay me some money, they take credit, and it's like I was never there. If I really wanted to, I could make a gainful career out of this, but for someone like me who has a bit more ego than I care to admit, and who loves writing and being creative even more than I'll admit, this line of work is soul-crushing.
But I have this thing where I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read any of the shit-thoughts I have.
The irony is neon light in my face right now, Reader. I know. I wrote this, you came here without me forcing you, you're reading it... I know.
So the only people a ghostwriter is essential for are the people who need to be haunted, and even then, it's only until the piece is written. I can be plugged out and another ghostwriter can be plugged into my place. Seamlessly. As though I was never there.
Right around the time I really realized how Nonessential applies to me is when I started flying. Or more to the point, when my husband decided he'd learn to fly, too. I threw a pretty good tantrum over it. I remember saying to him that it was utterly irresponsible of him to learn to fly planes, that if he were to go into the trees, he'd have ten employees without work and thousands of patients without a dentist.
But me? If I went into the trees, he and the dog would be sad for a little while, but life would go on. And probably he'd have it easier without my power-shopping and power-bitching. Of course he disagreed with me, but I'm pretty sure a part of his brain that he likes to deny exists saw my point.
I kind of cook, clean, do the wash... but all those things could be hired out to someone who'd do a better job than I do. Money motivates. I just kind of hate all kinds of domestic work, and it shows around here. It shows. And I truly feel like such a whiny, entitled bitch for saying so, because if those things were off my plate, what would I do instead? Write shit I'm not going to let anybody read anyway?
I did feel essential while I was pregnant with my daughter. There was a job nobody but I could do, right up to delivery. And maybe a little while afterward, but with the availability of Similac, I could have died in the delivery room and she and my husband would have been able to hack it just fine without me and with a nanny or nurse. And a recurring nightmare of mine, throughout those magical 41 weeks and 6 days of gestation was that exact scenario.
I realize that's all literally up in my head, but mothers die during childbirth every day, and everyone carries on without them. If this weren't true, women's reproductive health would be a much higher priority than it is, and Disney would have exactly zero storylines.
I really can't point to anything that I do that's essential. Something that couldn't be replaced by someone else if I weren't here. That is not as whiny as it sounds. I tend to be very pragmatic sometimes. When I take stock of my life and my noncomplishments, the fact is, I am nonessential. Easily replaced. I've often wondered if anybody would miss me at all if I just slipped out the back and went somewhere else and didn't come back for a while, if ever. Or how long would they miss me? And why? (I'm pretty sure DiscoverCard and Amazon would notice right quick.)
Here's where it comes in, my being mayor of this neighborhood that you've all recently moved into through no choice of your own (but make no mistake, ALL my own choices put me here, and I have no right to be so whiny): I understand how you might feel.
At first, it's kind of fun, being nonessential, because the pressure's off. It's like a vacation. You don't have anywhere to be, and nothing to do once you get there. In the case of all of us on quarantine, you aren't going anywhere, either, but hey, I've always wanted to have a bunch of time at home. There's so much to do at home! To catch up on!
But after about two weeks, you get kind of sick of that. The walls start to feel like they're closing in. If you can still work from home, at least you have that. You still have your career, your identity. You're just practicing it from home. But that presents a different set of challenges, doesn't it? There's a structure to the workday, a boundary between Home and Work that just doesn't exist when your commute is between your bedroom and your home office. It really takes discipline and practice to be able to work remotely from home, and under normal circumstances, when you're working from home, you still get to run out to coffee shops and do the shopping or go out where the people are, without getting stink-eye from your homebound neighbors.
But if your job is one that you cannot do remotely, it is a blow to the ego to be "nonessential," even temporarily. We don't know when this is going to end, and we don't know what the work landscape is going to look like when all the travel bans and lockins are lifted. Honestly, some of us aren't going to have jobs to return to.
I cannot put words into your mouth, buy in my experience, being a nonessential, being a trailing spouse, the one who "can come along if you want to" can make a person feel a little isolated, even in a crowd. Even though my husband is the picture of Constant and Reliable, there's always the feeling that you're at the mercy of the whims of someone other than yourself, that you're not quite in control of your own destiny. Even if you're the breadwinner, displaced right now by the larger Nonessential picture, I think you can tap into this feeling of lack of control over your own destiny, because you are not the one calling the shots on when you can get back to work and being in charge of that. That's a frightening and frustrating place to be in.
This can bring on some feelings I can only describe as "icky." And that's not productive. Feelings are feelings and they shouldn't be sorted into "good" and "bad" bins. I'd say it's best to acknowledge the icky feelings. Frustration, anger, weepiness, anxiety, sorrow- they're all like little kids inside your brain. They just want some acknowledgement, and then they can go do something else. If you try to stuff the unpleasant-to-hang-out-with feelings this brings up, the feelings will fester the longer you're Nonessential.
Trust me. I've been Nonessential and stuffing feelings I'd rather not hang out with for a decade and a half. There's a lot festering in me. It makes me kind of ugly when I'm in one of these rotten funks. It's why I've finally turned to seeing a mental health professional. I've tried to deal with the repercussions of choosing a nonessential life for so long that they're too big for me to deal with on my own, and it's like a lifeline, having someone I can talk to over the computer to help me untangle this ball of stuff and work through it.
Even if your situation of Nonessential is temporary, and you know you'll be back to Essential once all the bans lift, maybe talking to someone through your employer's Employee Assistance Program, or if you can swing it, a private therapist or counselor could help you identify and let out some of the uncomfortable feelings you're living with. It's hard to be in a holding pattern indefinitely. It does booger with a person's self-esteem.
Self-care is a big thing that can keep you going. My go-to is spending time in the gym section of my home. Listening to good music can help, too. Staying hydrated and getting proper sleep is key, and it can be hard if everything else is out of whack for you. Control what you can. Try not to worry about the rest. Try. Again, I know this is rich, coming from Yours Truly.
The thing I'm struggling to get to, and maybe you are too, is that the only person who needs to believe you're essential is yourself. You need to be here for yourself. Everybody else is just window-dressing.
And if we could all be direct with each other, there might be people who think you're absolutely essential, and you don't even know they feel that way. You might not ever know, but I think everyone is essential to someone and they'd miss you if you were not here.
I don't know what to tell you, Friends, other than Nonessentialton is not an empty ghost town that you're living in alone. I'm here with you. A lot of your friends are with you, right now. Eventually, this will all end, and I hope that when it does, we have a greater appreciation for each other, and for ourselves.
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