Survival
Michigan Stats, April 6
Total Confirmed Cases: 17,221
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 727
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,503
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 110
It took me five weeks to start to crack.
***
At first there had been so much to do.
Two weeks of getting company employees ready to work from home.
Two weeks of ten-hour days spent in the laser intensity of hyperfocus, gathering passwords, funneling data, compiling checklists and spreadsheets, making the kind of split-second decisions that tell anyone who knows enough what I come from, problem-solving on the fly, sweating through my A-line dresses and crinolines as I knelt on the carpet boxing freshly configured laptops for transport to the regional offices.
Two weeks of sitting in meetings that were definitely above my pay grade, but I'm just so goddamn good in a crisis. Efficient. Collected. Decisive. Creative. Focused. Frighteningly large working memory processing connections at insane speeds. Lock the strategy and load the tactics. Give me a target. It's done.
Two weeks of looking at the national data, the alarmingly fast spread of illness, pictures from Facebook friends scattered all over the country of stores with rows of empty shelves, the federal government calling all Americans abroad to come home, the governor shutting down restaurants and bars except for takeout, the grim recognition of upcoming scarcity, of quarantine, of shutdown.
Two weeks of making three different trips to five different stores in two different counties to stock up. Everything I could need for at least two months, so I wouldn't have to leave the house. Toilet paper (stupid, maybe; nonsensical, maybe; but the rules of supply and demand don't care about intelligence or sense: if everyone is hoarding it, it doesn't matter if it's stupid, toilet paper will still be hard to come by), toothpaste, bleach (the suburbs still had bleach for a few days after the city ran out). Cans of evaporated milk, meat for the freezer (please let the lights stay on), jarred sauces, coffee, salt, sugar, flour, beans, rice, oats. NSAIDs, Tylenol, NyQuil. Multivitamins (in an ordinary world vitamins are generally unnecessary to a standard varied diet; but if we can't leave our houses, the fresh produce will run out and I don't want scurvy). Liquor. People laughed at my prepping, but I've been poor, and I've been depressed, and I've been in danger, and I've been raised badly. I know how to read what's coming down the pike. And I know that when paranoia pays off, it pays off big.
Two weeks of fitting everything into pantries and closets so that only I know that squirreled away throughout my apartment is an entire Oregon Trail general store with korma sauce and gnocchi stashed among the flour and salt. So that the feeling of hidden plenty, of a cache of security just on the other side of a door, can anchor my diaphragm when the panic hits (the panic always hits). So that, at a glance, my life still looks normal.
I knew orderliness would be important. I've been through apocalypses before.
Just on a smaller scale.
***
Third week. Settling into working from home. The comedown from the hyperfocus high lasted for days. I felt tired, accomplished, purposeful. Ready. The changes were novel. I like being at home. I let it feel like a vacation.
***
Fourth week. Quarantine. I started walking on my treadmill again. The endorphins felt good. New adaptations grafted onto old routines. Dedicated work area in the library. Daily showers. Newly acceptable work attire in the form of leggings and slippers; pajamas in the evenings. Regular bedtimes. Video happy hours with friends. My introvert self liked the seclusion. I thrived. I kept my own company. I also kept an eye on a low-grade spike in my temperature. I tried not to feel afraid.
***
Fifth week. Breakpoint.
It started with insomnia. It always does. Then heartburn. I started throwing up in the mornings again, my stomach pouring off the excess acid like beer foam sloughed off by a bartender. In the eighteen months since it started, I've learned to do it neatly, quietly, without popping the muscles in my jaws. It doesn't even touch my teeth. I still brush afterward.
My internal momentum stuttered like a car running out of gas, slowed, coasted to a halt. Focus shattered like a baseball bat to the windshield.
Numbness set in, then irritability, then grief, then emotional shutdown clamped like a seal over an upwelling of internal desperation. I tilted toward the edge.
By Thursday my feet were sliding over the lip of the abyss, hanging over nothing. I saw it coming and didn't particularly care.
On Friday I fell over.
In a way it was a relief. I'm still getting used to how it feels to be healthy, and while it's better than how I'd lived for the 36 years prior, it still feels uncertain and unpredictable at times. I don't know how to call the plays. I don't even know how the plays are supposed to go. The fact that I'm hitting them flawlessly out of the park, every single time, only makes the whole thing more surreal. Like my subconscious is all in the know, like it took a quantum leap overnight, somewhere back down the road, like Neo in The Matrix downloading kung fu, so my instincts are killer but my conscious is still floundering and I don't get any of it.
Every time I reflexively do something right that I didn't know how to do before, navigate a conflict, enforce a boundary, I watch myself do it, then blink and say "whoa."
So sliding off the edge into the abyss was almost comfortable. Nostalgic. It's what you're supposed to do when the world ends.
Being broken I can handle. Being fine is weird.
***
Sixth week: present day. Survival.
Still healthy, apparently, because I'm broken in a fine way. (Still fucking surreal. Can't escape it. It's like a whole book of Dalis with lurking figures of joy instead of horror.) I've been so goddamned disciplined for the last five weeks. It was nice to take a weekend off and go feral.
Except it's not feral, not like it used to be, back when the depression was at its worst. Sure, I jumped the rails of some of my weekend routine. I didn't sleep, or eat, or shower, or water the plants, or run the Roomba, or fold my laundry. But I did the laundry. I ran the dishwasher. I put the dishes away. I knitted until my fingers were sore (I knit Continental-syle. My fingers are always on the points of the needles. I will not get a thimble). I played the piano for hours. I wrote a song. I read, and read, and read, until the capillaries in my eyes burst. I lost myself, and it was the only thing that felt a little bit good.
And I'm still not really broken. Cracked, strained, but not broken.
I started picking up the pieces of my routine before they were really pieces. I didn't want to water the plants last night, but I looked at how lush and gorgeous and thrivent they are, and remembered the last time I let all my plants die, and pulled out the watering can. I didn't want to fold my laundry, but I thought about how it would feel not to have the baskets all over the house, and dragged them to the couch and sat down to fold.
I'm not pushing myself too hard. I didn't put the laundry away. Some things can wait.
Sometimes you just have to phone it in.
It's the loneliness that's killing me. Frank said last week that I'm only an introvert because my family environment drove me to turn my sociality inward. It tracks. I'd been thinking for a while that I'm not so much an introvert as an extrovert who is really good friends with myself.
And when my own company isn't enough I invent whole other people to interact with. The imaginary friendships of my childhood evolved into worlds, into stories. When I can't stand my own isolation, I have whole realities to retreat to. I contain multitudes.
And up until the end of February I've had Simon. Simon, who was never just a cat. Simon, who has always been a person. Simon, whose love and intelligence, whose loyalty and devotion and sarcasm and Simon-ness, have rendered all other human closeness superfluous for sixteen years. Simon, who was gone so quickly I can still feel him sometimes, like a phantom limb.
I didn't know the full extent of what he was to me until he died.
I knew it would be cataclysmic. I didn't know it would be everything. Alpha to omega, center to outpost, core to magnetosphere, everything.
I've never been good at closeness to people. I was never supposed to be. I was molded and hammered into the shape of a vessel for the personhood of narcissists. I wasn't supposed to have a self to be close to.
More than one therapist has said that there is no scientific explanation for how I'm okay. For how I have not just a self, but a strong one; and not just strong, but intact. Frank uses words like impossible and miracle and otherworldly. I'm trying to accept that I may never know.
But if it can't be explained, it's probably not going to be taken away from me. It's something twined into the strands of my DNA. It'll get me through this shit too.
***
So I'm lonely. So I'm isolated. So I'm cracking a little. So is everyone. And it's okay, with continuous trauma, to be a mess. I already know that small-scale survival is one of the things I'm best at.
At least this time I'm not responsible for anyone else.
At least this apocalypse still has the lights on.
Total Confirmed Cases: 17,221
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 727
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,503
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 110
It took me five weeks to start to crack.
***
At first there had been so much to do.
Two weeks of getting company employees ready to work from home.
Two weeks of ten-hour days spent in the laser intensity of hyperfocus, gathering passwords, funneling data, compiling checklists and spreadsheets, making the kind of split-second decisions that tell anyone who knows enough what I come from, problem-solving on the fly, sweating through my A-line dresses and crinolines as I knelt on the carpet boxing freshly configured laptops for transport to the regional offices.
Two weeks of sitting in meetings that were definitely above my pay grade, but I'm just so goddamn good in a crisis. Efficient. Collected. Decisive. Creative. Focused. Frighteningly large working memory processing connections at insane speeds. Lock the strategy and load the tactics. Give me a target. It's done.
Two weeks of looking at the national data, the alarmingly fast spread of illness, pictures from Facebook friends scattered all over the country of stores with rows of empty shelves, the federal government calling all Americans abroad to come home, the governor shutting down restaurants and bars except for takeout, the grim recognition of upcoming scarcity, of quarantine, of shutdown.
Two weeks of making three different trips to five different stores in two different counties to stock up. Everything I could need for at least two months, so I wouldn't have to leave the house. Toilet paper (stupid, maybe; nonsensical, maybe; but the rules of supply and demand don't care about intelligence or sense: if everyone is hoarding it, it doesn't matter if it's stupid, toilet paper will still be hard to come by), toothpaste, bleach (the suburbs still had bleach for a few days after the city ran out). Cans of evaporated milk, meat for the freezer (please let the lights stay on), jarred sauces, coffee, salt, sugar, flour, beans, rice, oats. NSAIDs, Tylenol, NyQuil. Multivitamins (in an ordinary world vitamins are generally unnecessary to a standard varied diet; but if we can't leave our houses, the fresh produce will run out and I don't want scurvy). Liquor. People laughed at my prepping, but I've been poor, and I've been depressed, and I've been in danger, and I've been raised badly. I know how to read what's coming down the pike. And I know that when paranoia pays off, it pays off big.
Two weeks of fitting everything into pantries and closets so that only I know that squirreled away throughout my apartment is an entire Oregon Trail general store with korma sauce and gnocchi stashed among the flour and salt. So that the feeling of hidden plenty, of a cache of security just on the other side of a door, can anchor my diaphragm when the panic hits (the panic always hits). So that, at a glance, my life still looks normal.
I knew orderliness would be important. I've been through apocalypses before.
Just on a smaller scale.
***
Third week. Settling into working from home. The comedown from the hyperfocus high lasted for days. I felt tired, accomplished, purposeful. Ready. The changes were novel. I like being at home. I let it feel like a vacation.
***
Fourth week. Quarantine. I started walking on my treadmill again. The endorphins felt good. New adaptations grafted onto old routines. Dedicated work area in the library. Daily showers. Newly acceptable work attire in the form of leggings and slippers; pajamas in the evenings. Regular bedtimes. Video happy hours with friends. My introvert self liked the seclusion. I thrived. I kept my own company. I also kept an eye on a low-grade spike in my temperature. I tried not to feel afraid.
***
Fifth week. Breakpoint.
It started with insomnia. It always does. Then heartburn. I started throwing up in the mornings again, my stomach pouring off the excess acid like beer foam sloughed off by a bartender. In the eighteen months since it started, I've learned to do it neatly, quietly, without popping the muscles in my jaws. It doesn't even touch my teeth. I still brush afterward.
My internal momentum stuttered like a car running out of gas, slowed, coasted to a halt. Focus shattered like a baseball bat to the windshield.
Numbness set in, then irritability, then grief, then emotional shutdown clamped like a seal over an upwelling of internal desperation. I tilted toward the edge.
By Thursday my feet were sliding over the lip of the abyss, hanging over nothing. I saw it coming and didn't particularly care.
On Friday I fell over.
In a way it was a relief. I'm still getting used to how it feels to be healthy, and while it's better than how I'd lived for the 36 years prior, it still feels uncertain and unpredictable at times. I don't know how to call the plays. I don't even know how the plays are supposed to go. The fact that I'm hitting them flawlessly out of the park, every single time, only makes the whole thing more surreal. Like my subconscious is all in the know, like it took a quantum leap overnight, somewhere back down the road, like Neo in The Matrix downloading kung fu, so my instincts are killer but my conscious is still floundering and I don't get any of it.
Every time I reflexively do something right that I didn't know how to do before, navigate a conflict, enforce a boundary, I watch myself do it, then blink and say "whoa."
So sliding off the edge into the abyss was almost comfortable. Nostalgic. It's what you're supposed to do when the world ends.
Being broken I can handle. Being fine is weird.
***
Sixth week: present day. Survival.
Still healthy, apparently, because I'm broken in a fine way. (Still fucking surreal. Can't escape it. It's like a whole book of Dalis with lurking figures of joy instead of horror.) I've been so goddamned disciplined for the last five weeks. It was nice to take a weekend off and go feral.
Except it's not feral, not like it used to be, back when the depression was at its worst. Sure, I jumped the rails of some of my weekend routine. I didn't sleep, or eat, or shower, or water the plants, or run the Roomba, or fold my laundry. But I did the laundry. I ran the dishwasher. I put the dishes away. I knitted until my fingers were sore (I knit Continental-syle. My fingers are always on the points of the needles. I will not get a thimble). I played the piano for hours. I wrote a song. I read, and read, and read, until the capillaries in my eyes burst. I lost myself, and it was the only thing that felt a little bit good.
And I'm still not really broken. Cracked, strained, but not broken.
I started picking up the pieces of my routine before they were really pieces. I didn't want to water the plants last night, but I looked at how lush and gorgeous and thrivent they are, and remembered the last time I let all my plants die, and pulled out the watering can. I didn't want to fold my laundry, but I thought about how it would feel not to have the baskets all over the house, and dragged them to the couch and sat down to fold.
I'm not pushing myself too hard. I didn't put the laundry away. Some things can wait.
Sometimes you just have to phone it in.
It's the loneliness that's killing me. Frank said last week that I'm only an introvert because my family environment drove me to turn my sociality inward. It tracks. I'd been thinking for a while that I'm not so much an introvert as an extrovert who is really good friends with myself.
And when my own company isn't enough I invent whole other people to interact with. The imaginary friendships of my childhood evolved into worlds, into stories. When I can't stand my own isolation, I have whole realities to retreat to. I contain multitudes.
And up until the end of February I've had Simon. Simon, who was never just a cat. Simon, who has always been a person. Simon, whose love and intelligence, whose loyalty and devotion and sarcasm and Simon-ness, have rendered all other human closeness superfluous for sixteen years. Simon, who was gone so quickly I can still feel him sometimes, like a phantom limb.
I didn't know the full extent of what he was to me until he died.
I knew it would be cataclysmic. I didn't know it would be everything. Alpha to omega, center to outpost, core to magnetosphere, everything.
I've never been good at closeness to people. I was never supposed to be. I was molded and hammered into the shape of a vessel for the personhood of narcissists. I wasn't supposed to have a self to be close to.
More than one therapist has said that there is no scientific explanation for how I'm okay. For how I have not just a self, but a strong one; and not just strong, but intact. Frank uses words like impossible and miracle and otherworldly. I'm trying to accept that I may never know.
But if it can't be explained, it's probably not going to be taken away from me. It's something twined into the strands of my DNA. It'll get me through this shit too.
***
So I'm lonely. So I'm isolated. So I'm cracking a little. So is everyone. And it's okay, with continuous trauma, to be a mess. I already know that small-scale survival is one of the things I'm best at.
At least this time I'm not responsible for anyone else.
At least this apocalypse still has the lights on.
Comments
Post a Comment