scaredy cat
I’m genuinely scared. I am terrified of COVID-19 and today I feel like the walls are caving in toward me. This year, two direct relatives of mine tested positive: one died from the virus within a week and the other survived the virus only to subsequently die to cancer.
I have not had any tests done because I have not experienced the symptoms. I haven’t gone out of my way to get a test because I’m frankly afraid of standing in a line with other people who are going to get tested and possibly have symptoms already.
Now, there is a “mutant” variation and apparently we shouldn’t panic. Two members of my household had colleagues who recently tested positive, one of whom has been admitted to the hospital.
The virus is seemingly everywhere and all this talk about returning to normal and the world opening back up sounds more and more delusional to me.
It reminds me of the weeks after September 11th when politicians and civilians gave zealous speeches about avenging the deaths. Years of that rhetoric went by. Wars fought. Missions accomplished and later disputed. Normal changed.
Perhaps, normal is always changing. I’m scared and I cannot deal with news anchors talking in their monotone voices about best practices for social distancing. I cannot stand hearing public health officials leaving out details to avoid panic. First, they said not to wear masks. Then, they demanded masks all the time. I understanding shifting policies to address ever-changing needs, but obviously they knew we needed masks all along. I’m officially panicking!
There’s a very grim story from September 11th that still haunts me. After the first crash, the workers in the second tower started to evacuated. Some of them were allegedly encouraged to go back inside because their tower was unharmed. This was not a conspiracy; it was an anti-panic measure. Go back inside. This is awful. We’ll take care of it. Then, the second strike.
Sometimes there are reasons to panic. It is not an unnatural state. Alarm bells have a time and a place to be rung. We’re not getting back to normal or at least any kind of normal we once lived. We’re in a nightmare and will be lucky if we make it to the aftermath of this nightmare. But, how can you plan for a new version of the world that is unknown to everyone alive.
The virus is not an invisible enemy. The virus reveals that we are each other’s enemy. Some people compare quarantine rituals and productivity. Others test how much they can bend the rules. And, then there are those that flat-out deny what is happening or at least severely downplay it. When the going gets tough, we’re at each other’s throats.
We like to act tough in the face of a virus. How silly. We’re vulnerable to the virus. We cannot beat it because we cannot override our own mortality as much as we pretend we can.
The virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and we try to separate ourselves from them. They’re elderly and I’m not. They had a pre-existing condition and I don’t. And, then someone in the news looks exactly like us and we avert our attention.
We are not going to beat this one. We could instead surrender to our sensitivity and fragility. We could stay inside and wrap ourselves in blankets. We could stay squarely in our comfort zones. We do not have to attack, attack, attack. We can sometimes retreat and defend our trenches.
I guess that’s not an inspired, fervent message, but I’m tired of the political rhetoric. I’m not interested in hearing about how we can re-enter the world. This is the world now. The world is besieged by a virus. We are not the world on a detour from what the world should actually be. This is not a blip in our human history. This is change thrown our face. We will have to count our losses, grieve our losses, and surrender.
When fighting our own mortality, we always lose. Let’s give up the war chants for a moment. Let’s stop overcoming. Let’s panic in our nightmare. I’m a scaredy cat today. Are you?