So, on Thursday I used the last of my coffee. No problem, I thought, just go to the grocery store and do a weekly shopping trip and load up on supplies.
But I couldn’t do it. I was paralyzed to open the door and walk outside. I decided I would wake up early and go first thing in the morning when the traffic would presumably be lighter. But I didn’t. I stayed up watching documentaries until 4am and then woke up late and was atrophied by fear. No coffee. I hadn’t started a day without coffee in decades and it psychologically devestated me, that one bit of comfort taking on a much bigger, out of proportion importance.
So last night I went to bed before 2am, early for me, and got up at seven, dressed and steeled myself for a trip to the store. The anxiety was immediate. As soon as I walked out the door I felt vulnerable, exposed. I have no mask and no way to get one. I went, got the things I needed, avoided others as much as possible, panicked every time I walked by someone, knowing that their very breath could be a death sentence for me. I got to the car and realized I had forgotten something I went in for, ran back in and picked up the creamer for my coffee, went back to the truck and drove home.
After putting the groceries away, carefully selected from the back of the offered grouping, I took off my clothes and threw them in the washing machine and went and turned on the shower.
The hot water felt comforting, but my anxiety had grown far higher than I had realized, and I found myself short of breath. I let the hot water course across my neck and shoulders and did some deep breathing exercises and allowed myself to return to respitatory normalcy, at least for now.
This will linger for me. I had been inside for the better part of two weeks. I felt like any gestation period for the disease had passed. I didn’t have it yet, and isolation was protecting me.
And then I went to the grocery store.
Every time I walk out the door I feel like the clock gets reset. I need to watch for signs for the next two weeks because I made myself vulnerable again. I was in the world, and the world is dangerous. Any other reaction to this seems irresponsible to me, in spite of the Administration encouraging normalcy as soon as possible.
It just isn’t normal to me. Whenever the horn sounds and we are told to crawl out of our rabbit holes, I will be afraid. The point of isolation is to flatten the curve, not to “defeat” the virus. It won’t defeat it. It will make our rate of infection slow enough for the hospitals to try to keep up. When we come out of hiding the second wave will come. This is not negativity, this is the plan. Two or more waves that can be handled by the system rather than one huge one that can’t be. That is the best case scenario, what is being hoped for. Not defeating the virus, but rather delaying it as much as possible. If we do this, there MAY be a ventilator available when I need it, but only if we do this.
We aren’t.
There is no federal mandate to stay home. The Defense Production Act was activated but not used for the better part of a week. That lack of leadership will cost us thousands of lives. Just that one error will cost thousands of citizens to lose their lives.
And there have been so many.
So my two week timeline renews, and each day that goes by without body aches or a tickle in my throat gets me closer and closer to feeling relieved, just in time to start the process of building anxiety about leaving the relative safety of my home for survival needs.
That is my cycle of psychological tides. Bromides from well wishers are not the cure for me, because I don’t find my response to be an irrational one to the established threat. My anxiety seems well founded to me, so much so that I don’t understand a more cavalier reaction to what is going on. I have no sympathy for the nay-sayers. I have huge resentment for the President of the United States, disgust really.
If this whole thing was a movie and you actually had fictionallized the President’s response to this pandemic, the plot would have seemed absurd. No one in that position would ignore such a threat, purposely hide it from the public for fear of it’s impact on his reelection, stand in the way of critical manufacturing to avoid any semblance of the necessity of a coordinated Federal effort, the very justification for why we have a state in the first place.
This pandemic is revealing the necessity for a robust federal presence, the inability of the marketplace to be the rudder for the countries survival. A character that would turn his back on information and on the country itself would be so implausible as to ruin the willing suspension of disbelief. It would be too unbelievable to allow us to enter such an absurd fictitious world.
Sadly, this isn’t a movie.
The man in charge has been dedicated to eliminating the federal government from your life in every way he possibly can. This is a classic tragedy in the Greek sense, a fateful personal flaw that exposes someone to consequences that are unavoidable because of those weaknesses. The tragedy for the rest of us is we are the victims of his actions. We can’t impact the federal response. Sure, we can do all the mitigating that we have at our disposal, but the big strokes, the things that will impact the population as a whole, are beyond our influence. We are consumers of the federal response, or lack of same.
So while there are better strategies to getting through this without losing ones mind, this is my defense for anxiety. It isn’t an overreaction.
I’m just paying attention.