This quarantine is hard enough, honestly. Not only can I not leave my house, not only do I have crippling anxiety whenever I think about my family members getting the virus at their essential jobs, but now there's the religious pressure ontop of all of this. Because it's easter, and because my family celebrates easter in a religious sense like most of the families I know in the midwest. So I get a text from my dad that's innocent enough; he sends a picture of a scrapbook I put together in my old bible when I was a kid, when I was brainwashed into thinking the things they do because I was 9 and I didn't know any better. He sends a caption, saying "A fun little easter surprise we found this morning". Which means not only has he been going through my old things at their house, but he's been reading my old bible, probably wishing I was still in a place where I didn't question anything, when I read that book, and even though I didn't understand any of it, I accepted it as my truth. He is idealizing a situation where I am celebrating easter with them for the same religious reasons, and he's subconciously inferring that the way I am now is not good enough, that I would be more loved and more worthy of being his daughter if I believed the things that I used to believe when I was a child. I can't get away from it. Every time someone says "happy easter" or something to that extent I feel like they're unintentionally delivering the same kind of blow to my self-worth. I feel like so much of a failure, but also I don't want to be like my parents. There's no place for me in the world, and I don't feel like anyone I talk to can really relate to how broken I feel. So instead of doing a family zoom call with all of my uncles and aunts on this glorious holiday, I'm going on an 8 mile run in the rain so I can try to make sense of some things in my head. The first 30 minutes are going to be hell, but after that I feel like the clouds kind of part for me, and it's really the only way I can think clearly. I hope everyone else is having a better day than me so far.
