I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan lately. He always strikes the right chord with me when I’m particularly contemplative, melancholy. When the country first started to shut down, I was in emergency mode. The Adrenalin was pumping. I felt almost manic as I started to sort out our new normal. Now, as we end our first month in isolation, the Adrenalin is gone and I’m just…Sad. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Uncertain. It feels a lot like grief, so I was nodding along when I read David Kessler’s interview with the Harvard Business Review: “…We’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different… The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”
All our daily lives have changed so abruptly and dramatically. I feel fortunate that my family unit is healthy and that we have income and a child care situation in place (I’m currently on leave from my job, which I realize is a huge privilege, so I can care for my two-year-old while my husband puts in 12-to-15-hour days for his job). I have felt the need to write like never before. Writing is my therapy. It’s my way to make sense of the world, to organize my thoughts. So much of this crisis is bringing many things into focus for me–what my values and priorities are, what I want for my life and my relationships. I NEED to write about all this. But, of course, there is so little space in the day. I put ideas into the Notes app of my phone. I go through Post-its with reckless abandon. These feel like little bursts that barely crack the surface of my psyche when what I need desperately is a violent earthquake of release.
I know other people–especially mothers who are doing what I call the juggle-and-struggle routine–feel this same angst. So many of us (especially artist types, especially introverts, especially sensitive people) need time and space for ourselves right now, and that is so hard to come by. Even if you live alone, it’s hard to feel like there is space with the way the news crowds us. It’s just all A LOT.
I’ve been having shortness of breath for several days now. At first I was worried it was The Virus, but now I think it must be anxiety. I remember someone saying once that anxiety (or maybe it was depression?) feels like an elephant is standing on your chest, and that’s how I feel. I usually fall asleep easily (because I’m exhausted and because my doctor prescribed a sleeping medication), but I wake up at 3am with heart palpitations. If I manage to jot down some of the thoughts circling my brain, I can fall back to sleep. Without that pen to paper, there’s no hope.
I keep falling back on that tired, old cliche–one day at a time. I can think of nothing better. If I think beyond today, I can’t take a deep breath. I try to write when I can because it’s the best self-care I have, and I know if the backlog of thoughts gets too unwieldy, my anxiety will just get worse. That’s the thing–I have anxiety about the pandemic itself, and I have anxiety about being unable to do the thing that would ease my anxiety.
I think I’ve hit my quota on the word “anxiety” for the day.
To those reading this, I hope you and yours are safe and healthy (and sane). If you feel like an anxious mess, you are most definitely not alone.