The Corona Collective Crisis

It’s so incredibly hard to write a post about the current state of the world.  Can I truly share my dark thoughts on this matter, in an honest, no bars way that is the purpose of this forum? Will I insult or harm whatever audience I have by my words, if I capture a feeling that feels a million miles away from how they are internalizing and experiencing this crisis?

We are in a collective crisis, as a world.  Everyone is touched by the coronavirus, whether they’ve come to know someone who has been infected, or worse yet died, have anxiety about contracting illness or they are struggling financially from a loss of income, or  are navigating the quarantine/social isolation it seems the whole world will now be under for the entirety of April.  It feels like there’s not a single person in the world who is in not touched by this, even if the impact varies significantly.  Psychologically, we are all helpless, we have no control, there is a lot of uncertainty to grapple with.  And even those who still reach to look for the “bright side” are cognizant that any lessons learnt, any positives drawn, are coming with the costs of unthinkable horrific losses. 

So much of my angst I’ve documented through this blog, stemmed from being a loser. 

I am a loser, because my life failed in the way while my peers seemed to thrive and progress along the precise narrative arc that they aspired to. 

I am a loser, because I had enormous privilege and was in communities where I was expected to be on par with high-achievers even though my illnesses kept creeping and capturing me, like zombies grabbing at my ankles I could never outrun, making everything exponentially more difficult.  And I couldn’t compete.

I am a loser, because I encountered abuse and terrible conditions in the working world, every which way I turned, and it was presumed that I must have made bad choices or prompted the mistreatment and thus secretly deserved it. 

I am a loser, because while streams of sexual or love interests rotated into my life, everyone ultimately was a different shade of awful and when the stream started to ebb, and I never found anything close to a match, had no more entertaining stories to share, my love life was fertile ground for everyone’s opinions and judgments and uninvited advice on how to better achieve the idealized capture of a monogamous partner.

I am a loser, because in spite of all the wellness solutions abound and lifestyle choices I could be actualizing, my mental illness persisted and my physical illness manifested and my inability to cure myself of my bipolar and autoimmune disorders demonstrated I was complacent and not trying hard enough.  

I am a loser, because I have this enviable travel/work lifestyle that others claim they couldn’t possibly pull off, and I don’t celebrate my good “luck”, and instead still repeatedly want to kill myself. 

I am a loser, because everyone who loves me, has absolutely no clue how to support me, because I think I’m uniquely misunderstood, and fail to recognize how everyone is trying hard and has good intentions, or people are fundamentally flawed and selfish and the true problem is I just have too high of expectations. 

But now this crisis is turning people’s lives on their heads, it’s creating obstacles, concerns, it affects people psychologically in ways they can’t even recognize, affecting moods, the body.  It is denying them the narrative arc they place in faith in that everything will turn out okay and happens for a reason. 

I have empathy.  But there is something bizarre about feeling as though some of the demons I’ve battled with my whole life are descending upon even the most charmed of my friends.  

When I was diagnosed with a chronic physical illness, people tried to deny me the right to be upset about how this would disrupt my quality of life going forward, they wanted me to immediately own it, minimize it, glorify how I would elegantly manage it along with my mental illness and thrive in spite of the challenges.  I felt utterly silenced. 

I don’t want to turn around and do the same to others. 

Shit is tough.

And this time I feel privileged.  I found myself in a safe comfortable place to quarantine early on, and my friends were protective of me and my immunocompromised system offering generosity.

I had tried to roll back amount of work I was doing before this time, so at this moment I am neither juggling working from home nor do I have children to look after. 

I don’t fear death.  So while I don’t want to contract the virus and die in pain amidst a broken health care system, it doesn’t cause me anxiety that I may get the virus.

I am not the loser under the current scenario.

But I am not celebrating.  This is a collective crisis and it’s important that I offer the warmth I’ve felt so denied through my own private sufferings. 

I don’t have any lofty notions that this will teach people a lesson or I’ll feel less misunderstood in the future.  I for the most part, refuse to think or speculate about the future.  It’s psychological training I have endured through years of messiness, one that is subject to falter, but I’m desperately holding on to for the moment. 

This is the best I can do for a post.