Fear
Now is the winter of our discontent. Full stop.
I am sinking in a soupy quicksand composed of grains of tripledemic pathogens bound together by media hype and personal fear. I have struggled to extricate myself by repeatedly grasping onto Moderna’s hypodermic needles. My face remains wrapped in prophylactic masks to prevent the ever-more-determined particles from planting their spikes in my lungs, while everyone around me goes bare. For me, this means that those who have liberated their faces just push me further into the mucky pool in which I struggle.
I suck on raw chunks of propolis like lozenges, guzzle EmergenC, and pop a daily dose of Vitamin D. Fire cider laces all my iced teas. I don’t put my oft-Purelled and washed hands within a mile of my facial mucous membranes. I echo Tina Fey, just post 9/11 on SNL when she said “Bitch, I can’t be more alert than I already am.”
Stuck in this mire, like Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, I have an excessive amount of time to ponder how this onerous era of illness has affected us, and to wonder how history’s hindsight might frame it. Books and films have already emerged, but I suspect that time - lots of it - will provide a kaleidoscopic perspective on its scientific, sociological, economic, and psychological impact.
For me, it has proven a powerful paralytic. I waste so many good hours worrying about getting sick and trying to avoid it that I can hardly appreciate the good health with which I’ve been blessed. And, in a cruel twist of irony, the constant fretting no doubt erodes the wall of immunity that I work so hard to erect. This pandemic has bred in me a paranoia that sees people as walking weapons, waiting to spew aerosolized particles of illness at me.
Yes, I fall, due both to age and my lungs’ proclivity to shut down at the mere mention of a virus, into a vulnerable category. Nevertheless, while others seem to have adjusted to the new Covid19-Normal, I remain frozen in an ice cold block of fear, which perplexes and frustrates me. Why am I so afraid of getting sick that I get stuck?
I ruminate in an attempt to make some sense of this cannibalistic phobia.
As far as I know, I’ve not yet had the novel coronavirus, and I’d like to keep it that way given my pulmonological Achilles’ heel. I resist even writing those words for fear of jinxing myself. (I’m sure that as soon as the ink hits the paper the virus will triumphantly find me).
So many things surrounding this ailment worry me: the potential specter of long covid looms large among them. Feeling awful feels awful. I dodge the spiky little invader like a middle schooler in a dodgeball game because I’d prefer to avoid the opportunity costs exacted by the ailment: social and professional commitments and the pleasure and income derived therefrom. I dread losing control - yes, I know intellectually that control is only an illusory security blanket. Illness of any kind is, for me, the ultimate loss of control: my own body’s rebellion and betrayal. And while I don’t really fear death, the horrors like hospitalization and intubation that lurk on the path towards it terrify me.
In his 1933 inaugural address, FDR famously said, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Indeed, for me, the fear itself has become a constant, unwelcome companion to whom, ironically, I have ceded much control over my quotidian existence.
I need a long, strong lasso and the ability to throw it accurately and deftly at this phantasm to wrangle it. I try, as many therapists and repetitive self-help articles have suggested, to focus on what I know to be true. Just the facts, ma’am. Like the now probably mostly mythical statistics on each mutant variation and infection levels in the population. Like how and when to get vaccinated and boosted. Like what I can do to minimize the risk.
I do the things within my actual control: get the jabs, wear the masks, sanitize my hands, and avoid big indoor crowds that force close contact. Beyond that, I know it’s out of my (clean) hands. And with any luck, out of my lungs too.