As I lie within the confines of my home, sheltered behind the locked doors and windows, I feel a sense of safety from the evil that lurks on the other side. I know what is threatening my world isn’t waiting to pounce upon me the minute I step outside my door, but each time I think about doing so I get the feeling that what I fear is there waiting for me.
Is that what this pandemic has done to me, or is going to do to me within the next 30 days? Will the anxiety of this evil virus manifesting as a vaporous haze that will infiltrate my home if I open a door or window lead me to never want to smell the fresh air or feel the sunlight on my skin again because I don’t want to be overtaken by this scary killer that lies in wait to take me from this world?
Living alone with my cat, I anticipate the next 30 days to be filled with many lonely days. These will be days of minimal to no social interaction, a life of social isolation. What social interaction there will be for me will be through social media or texting with friends, but how long until even that won’t be enough and my feelings of isolation will grow even more intense and my depression grow stronger, I wonder. I am a social person, so these questions worry me.
The financial struggles of this pandemic frighten me, as I am sure it does many. But where to turn as questions swell inside me like a volcano building into an eruption leaves me even more confused and anxious. The worry swirls around me like the imaginary vaporous haze of the pandemic I imagine to be lying in wait just beyond my doors.
Daily I listen to our leaders in this crisis waiting for their words to calm me and tell me that this crisis has an expiration date, but I hear nothing, only words spun in circles like children playing with colorful sparklers on the Fourth of July in the darkened night. The imaginary vaporous haze lurking just beyond continues to lie in wait to overtake me.
30 days from now, will an alarm be sounded to issue an “all clear” so that I can emerge from the four walls that have been my prison from the evil that has been lurking just beyond my doors for so many days? Will I be able to once again interact with other humans face-to-face? Will I be able to touch them? Will I be able to see my loved ones? Will I even know how to be around people again because for 30 days I have been in the equivalent of my own solitude, the only difference from that of prison is the ability to watch television or use the telephone?
When this pandemic has gone it will not only have taken physical lives with it, but that imaginary vaporous haze that has been lying in wait just beyond my door will have taken with it a very large part of who I am as it evaporates and leaves.
