Title: "Cathy’s COVID Breakdown (and Unexpected Rebirth)"

It was early March when everything started to change. Cathy had seen the news reports, heard the whispers at the grocery store, and had even started hoarding extra rolls of toilet paper (because apparently that was what you were supposed to do, right?). But no one—no one—could have predicted just how much the COVID-19 pandemic would upend her life.

By the time lockdowns hit, Cathy’s house was full of energy, chaos, and stress, but that was just the beginning.

CATHY pacing the living room, phone in hand: “This can't be happening. I can’t even go to the store without worrying if I’ll catch something. I can’t get anything done with everyone in the house all day. How do I keep this up? How do I—”

She was talking to herself, and she knew it. Preston was in his room, doing nothing productive as usual. Samantha was binge-watching a show she had seen five times already, completely ignoring her mother’s pleas for any form of help. Timmy and Stenson were having a loud, constant war involving action figures, a vacuum cleaner, and a roll of duct tape that was now stuck to the floor.

The house, once full of life, now felt like a pressure cooker with the lid on too tight.

CATHY snapping, to no one in particular: “What do I do with all of this? I’m supposed to keep it together, I’m supposed to be the strong one, but this—this is too much!”

She had always prided herself on being the glue that held everything together—the unflappable mom, the solution-finder, the one who kept things moving. But now? The constant confinement, the fear of the outside world, the endless cycle of online everything, and the tension of being with her family 24/7 was breaking her. She didn’t know how to manage it anymore.

Cathy sat down, her head in her hands, overwhelmed. Her emotions were teetering on the edge of a meltdown, and she felt like she was suffocating under the weight of it all. The pressure from the kids’ constant need for attention, the worry about her parents, the work she still had to manage from home, and the inability to leave her house for even a minute without fear—it was too much.

And then came the breaking point. She looked at the pile of dishes, the laundry she hadn’t folded in days, and the fact that Grandpa was outside again, trying to start the lawnmower in the middle of a downpour.

She snapped.

CATHY yelling out to the yard: “GRANDPA! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? IT’S RAINING OUT THERE! STOP IT!”

GRANDPA from outside, shouting back: “CATHY! I’M TRYING TO FIX THE GRASS! I DON’T WANT THE NEIGHBORS TO THINK WE’RE LOSING IT!”

CATHY sobbing, to herself: “We’re already losing it…”

And with that, the tears came, rolling down her face. She felt like she had no more room to keep it all inside. The facade of “I’ve got this” had shattered, and she was left holding the wreckage.

CATHY through her tears, looking up at her children: “I can’t do it anymore, guys. I don’t know how to keep pretending that everything is fine. I’m exhausted. I’m scared. I don’t know how to keep being the one who holds it all together. I’m failing, and it’s making me feel... broken.”

Samantha, always the more emotionally tuned one walks over and hugs her mom.