In an online article, a
writer described the quasi-post-apocalyptic Twilight Zone that we are living in
as “the darkest time of our lives.”
Yes…I guess one could call it
“dark.” And frightening. And uncertain. And tedious…yet hyper-stimulating. In a very bad way.
For the first couple of weeks
after I fully began to understand the lay of this new pandemic land, it was all
of those things. I was scared almost out of my wits. Every morning I dreaded getting out of bed,
because I spent every waking hour in crazy fear; any time I had an ache or got
cold or sneezed or coughed…that was It.
I had It. I was going to
die. I couldn’t even think about my
sisters or husband or in-laws coming down with It. It was a death sentence for my loved ones that
I could not allow to enter my thoughts.
As it was, just obsessing about my own health, I was nearly paralyzed
with terror.
After a week or two, I knew
that I couldn’t go on like that. I was
literally going to kill myself with stress and anxiety. And the thought occurred to me that, hey, if
you’re worried about dying, THIS is not living.
Long ago, back in my
bible-thumping days, I learned a verse that went something like, “Who of you by
worrying can add a single hour to your life?” (Never let it be said, by even
the staunchest non-believer, that the bible does not contain nuggets of
extraordinarily simple wisdom…) I
remember reading that verse for the first time…and feeling my saner, more
logical self peering over her spectacles at my anxious, crazy-with-worry self
and saying, “Hmmm. Good point.” Countless times in the intervening years,
I’ve used those words to throw a wet blanket on the raging anxiety that has
threatened to incinerate me. I’ve calmed
myself to a kind of wobbly sensibility, and kept walking forward.
The upside-down, inside-out
world in which we now find ourselves required a repeated dose of that
verse…along with several sessions of self-smudging while boldly beseeching the
Creator for healing and calming of my distressed spirit.
And, it worked. I can get through a day without spending
every minute hyper-aware of every change in my body, real or imagined. I’ve learned the benefit of staying busy to
provide distraction from obsessing about my health. There are countless little projects to work
on around the house, and the sense of accomplishment that goes along with
getting things done has served to considerably lighten the load.
As well, I must admit that,
for me, the “social distancing” quotient of this weird and unsettled time has not
been a particularly heavy burden. I have
never needed to be around lots of people.
And since so much of our connection to other people these days is
virtual, I don’t understand how staying at home and haunting
electronically-enabled communities is so different from what our 21st-century
lives have been.
(I will state for the record,
however, that my view on this might be significantly different if I was
30-something, suddenly without a job or forced to work from home, and had to
simultaneously juggle that AND entertaining/educating my kids, for whom I had
heretofore enjoyed what amounted to state-funded daycare; which I never
considered could disappear in the wink of a pandemic, and in the absence of
which, there is no “plan b.” Many lives
have been pummeled and scattered to the four winds. My
life has shrunk into…a slightly more compact version of what it already was.)
When it comes to the
loneliness of social distancing, I’m kind of immune. Which is not to say that
I’m not well acquainted with loneliness.
A small handful of trusted
people have been as much “community” as I could ever handle. Unfortunately for me and for those people,
when they get close enough to be “trusted,” I sink my talons into them and hold
on for dear life. Most people don’t respond
well to that. As they have unhooked
themselves from my grasp and backed away to a safe distance, I’ve been left
mostly on my own. So loneliness has been
a constant thread throughout the fabric of my life.
Anyone familiar with
recurring themes of this blog knows that “the café years” irrevocably damaged
my relationship with my husband. But in
fact, it was well on its way to being damaged years before that…from about the
time my sister passed away in 1995. We
were still in the first half of our four-decade-and-counting partnership
then. We had only been married 19 years. Up
until then, we’d been hiking along, hand in hand, on the trail of upward
mobility. I got a great job. He got a great job. Then I lost my great job AND my sister,
within 6 months of each other. Suddenly
I was lying by the side of the trail, broken and hurt. He stayed beside me for a time, but I didn’t
get better. So he kept going…dragging me
along, for awhile. Then leaving me behind
to get strong and catch up with him when I was well. Ten years later, I had just about reached
him. We were inches from clasping hands
and resuming our journey together. Then
we bought the restaurant. And by the end
of that five years, he had balked and
run so far away from me that I couldn’t even see him. And I believed I never would see him
again.
Twenty years spent trying to
puzzle out exactly where he and I stood with each other. And bobbing and weaving, and slapping and
ducking, and giving up and striking out on my own; before coming to the
eventual painful conclusion that doing stuff alone is not only no fun…it might
not even be possible for an anxiety-ridden, emotionally exhausted sexagenarian.
That is the platform from
which we dived into “social distancing.”
I was holding down the fort in our new, mortgage-free digs in Eugene
while he lived in a succession of seedy motels three days a week, because…job.
Then the virus invaded, with its fear and uncertainty and economic
upheaval. The only imperative that
echoed through my entire being was, “Stay home.
Stay safe.” In mid-March, I told the
husband if he left the house to drive up to Portland that week, he should stay
there.
He didn’t go.
So. From a place of emotional truce facilitated
by leading largely separate lives, we came fact-to-face with the prospect of
inhabiting an 8000 square foot piece of property upon which squatted 1200
square feet of indoor living space.
Together. Alone.
This story is getting quite long. I think I'll break it into a couple of parts. Part 2 coming soon...I hope.
