The COVID Conundrum

This is one of those posts where I went into a time warp. Sat down, started writing — and when I looked up just now, somehow two hours had passed in what felt like five minutes. So I’m just shrugging my shoulders and clicking ‘Share’, and I’ll do my usual thousand edits later. Or not.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the vast array of emotional responses I’m seeing around the pandemic. A lot of people have commented that it’s hard to know what we feel — from day to day, from minute to minute — but as the days pass, I’m starting to think it’s even harder to know what we’re publicly allowed to feel.

The logistics of this thing — new workplace algorithms, keeping a spare mask in the car, doing my training on the roof of my apartment parking deck, relearning how to cut my own hair — are starting to feel okay. Anything becomes routine after a while. But navigating interpersonal interactions — well, honestly, that part doesn’t feel a whole lot less exhausting than it did two months ago.

I’m the person who tries hard to think before speaking, who quietly kicks myself for days when I say something inadvertently tone-deaf or self-centered. This ISFJ (introvert) generally handles social settings quite gracefully — but those settings also exhaust me, because I’m contantly trying to anticipate how others are going to feel and respond. If I can’t accurately do that, I tend to stay quiet.

I can’t be the first one to make this comparison, but — fittingly enough — it occurred to me today that our masks are actually a decent symbol for the pandemic itself. I respect their function — but I despise what they do to communication. I can’t read others’ facial expressions, and they can’t read mine.

Which is a pretty great visual representation of the fact that, at the moment, it’s really hard to sense how others are going to react — to anything.

First, because everyone’s situation is different in terms of the logistical challenges that are being presented. Some people are suddenly unemployed and wondering how they’re going to make it through the month, while others suddenly have extra work responsibilities. Some students are thrilled to have the remainder of their school year essentially canceled, while many graduating seniors are missing a hard-earned milestone and unsure of what comes next. Some are taking extra precautions in support of their health or that of immunocompromised family members; others have already survived the virus and wish they could leverage an immunity certificate.

And second, because everybody’s emotions are going to be somewhat ephemeral right now no matter what the particulars of their situation are. The closest well-understood comparison is probably that of grief, where we ricochet back and forth among sadness, anger, denial, bargaining, and acceptance — but the bigger concept is just that almost every major challenge is associated with more than one emotional reaction.

For instance, a lot of parents are struggling hard with home-schooling and the sudden increase in ‘family togetherness’ — but also acknowledging intermittent bursts of gratitude for the time with their kids. ‘Essential workers’ feel fortunate to have job security — and also feel exasperated that ‘not much has changed’ for them. People expecting new babies are still filled with anticipation — mingled with fear at entering a medical environment, and dread at the realization that they won’t have hands-on help from their families during the tough early weeks. And I’ve spoken with many medical professionals who have voiced a rejuvenated sense of purpose in their jobs — yet there’s a subgroup of truly frontline providers who are also shedding daily tears as they eat and sleep in separate quarters from their families, to avoid infecting them.

The sole thing we all share is that something is hard for every single one of us right now.

But it’s not the same ‘something’ — and, as above — this is where the introvert at the cocktail party stays quiet. We don’t converse when we can’t reasonably predict the response of our audience. I’m not going to complain about working five shifts in six days, because what about my neighbor who doesn’t have a job anymore? I can’t sigh in relief over finally paying off my oldest student loan while I have this many friends on the brink of losing their small businesses. I won’t lament my N95 rubbing my face during a patient visit, because my emergency room colleagues don’t get to take theirs off for 12 straight hours (and because I have a fucking N95, how lucky am I?!?). I’m not going to text a friend to tell her how much joy I’m finding in training right now, because what if I’m catching her in a tough moment where my happiness is the last thing she wants to hear?

…Wash, rinse, repeat.

The problem is, not talking doesn’t solve anything either.

Returning to the mask metaphor for a moment, I invite you to consider: how many times have you averted your eyes to keep from meeting those of a stranger while you’re both wearing masks? (It happens to me in the parking lot at work Every. Single. Day.)

It’s a completely natural response. You can’t properly acknowledge one another with a visible smile, and a half-interaction is awkward — so we just avoid it altogether.

The takeaway, though, is that allowing our communication to be impaired means we just stop trying as hard.

And the second issue brought on by this impaired communication is that our brains — as brains are wont to do — try to helpfully fill in the missing pieces on their own. Which, I think, is when the guilt starts circulating — particularly among those of us who are mostly doing okay.

A few weeks back, my clinic received a shipment that contained a box of N95 masks — TEN entire masks! — and I just stood there holding it in my hands for a second. My clinic partner and I already had five masks apiece… while half my Facebook feed was full of friends and classmates in far more desperate situations. There was absolutely nothing I could do about the fact that this gift had been given to me and not to them (and for all I knew, with as rapidly as things were changing, my five masks might prove to not be sufficient) — but the guilt was there anyway.

It still is, sometimes. Small daily frustrations don’t go away just because there’s a pandemic, and when I’m struggling with a ripped trash bag or a tough piece of training or an attempt to carry all my groceries inside in just one load, I still find myself defaulting to that same ‘comparative suffering’. How dare I be annoyed over my cracked iPhone screen when my friend just lost a family member to coronavirus?

The same thing happens (probably more often) with positive emotions. What right do I have to be proud of my results on this cut, while so many people in my city are struggling to feed their families? How insensitive am I to be finding such incredible joy in the process of athletic training, when there’s a hospital full of ventilated patients less than a mile from my apartment?

What I’m starting to believe, though, is that it’s okay to both resent this moment and to acknowledge that you’re actually meeting this challenge pretty well.

To realize that karma comes in waves and that you can’t control your own ‘luck’, or lack thereof — just your responses.

To acknowledge that there will be good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments, just as there are under any circumstance.

And to allow the small joys and frustrations of daily life to still exist, and to own those — because that’s humanity; that’s resilience.

I’m not writing this to provide answers. I’m putting this on paper just because writing has always been my ‘fullest’ way of communicating. Because this blog isn’t ‘masked’. Because I want other people to know that it’s okay to feel lots of things all at once, to not know exactly ‘where’ others are in a given moment — and to try to talk anyway.

And because we’re living through history right now — and because I have a lot more perspective and coping skills than I did during 9/11 — and because I know there will come a day when I look back on this post and am glad that I committed to memory the time when I first consciously realized exactly how strong and resilient I’ve become.

Our kaleidoscope has shifted — yet the same pieces are all still there. The picture looks different now, but that doesn’t mean it’s broken.